Question

Question 1. Give 3 utterances including hedges and explain which Gricean Maxims the speakers violate in each utterance.

Answer 1

Answer:

There were more or less 100 people at the theater.

In short, we broke up.

I assume he´s not coming.

Explanation:

The Hedges are in bold.

The Gricean Maxims are:

Maxim of Quantity: a contribution should be as informative as necessary for the exchange.

Maxim of quality: do not say what you believe to be false or something of which you lack adequate evidence.

Maxim of relation: provide only relevant information.

Maxim of manner: avoid vagueness and ambiguity, be brief and orderly.

The first two sentences infringe the Maxim of Quantity because the hedges reflect a lack of detail in the information provided, meaning that information necessary for the exchange is missing.

The third sentence infringes the Maxim of quality because an assumption is information based on no evidence.