Tuesday, April 5 - 0 comments

Conversation and Communication Principles


Grice state that communication is governed by principles of human rationality. The principles should apply to, not only conversation but also, all other types of discourse. The principles are as follow.
1 Quantity principles: 1) say as much as it is required (be concise!), 2) do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
2 Quality Principles: 1) do not say what you believe to be false; 2) do not say things for which you lack evidence.
3 Relation principles be relevant
4 Manner principles: be perspicuous i.e. 1) avoid obscurity expression, 2) avoid ambiguity, 3) be brief 4) be clearly
As the principles are derived from human rationality, i.e. derived from a psychological process, it should be possible to figure out one’s personality, how or the way s/he thinks – and to figure out how intelligent s/he is, by learning his/her speech or writing.
A well structured/ ordered piece of writing or speech will also be easier to be processed (in the mind) for comprehension than an unstructured piece of writing or speech.

Discourse Structure: cohesion and coherence
Different forms of discourse have different structure. They are not described in detailed here, but some structure, is easy to figure out, especially when you are familiar with it.
A text or discourse is said to be cohesive if it has a unity in text, and is said to be coherent if it has a unity in meaning. However, that a coherent; because the use of cohesive devices but also from outside the text or context.

Some cohesive devices normally used to the text are:
Referents: anaphora (backward reference), anaphora (forward reference) and antecedent.
Discourse markers (first, next, finally…etc) including conjunctions.

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