"We may decide to withhold whatever information we possess:’ No comment!’ We may inadvertently infringe a maxim or we can secretly violate a maxim—e.g. A could maliciously and falsely tell B that Janet had walked in the opposite direction from the post office. Or – more importantly – we can make a blatant show of breaking one of the maxims (Grice terms this flouting a maxim), in order to lead the addressee to look for a covert, implied meaning."[22] . For examples,
(3) "At the time of recording, all the members of the cast were members of The BBC Players. ( Implicature: One or more of them are no longer members of The BBC Players.)"[23]
Generally speaking, "in Grice’s analysis, the speaker’s flouting of a maxim combined with the hearer’s assumption that the speaker has nor really abandoned the co-operative principle leads to an implicature"[24]. One thing that deserves our attention is that the four maxims, expressed in the imperative mood have sometimes been misunderstood as instructions for a speaker to behave in conversation.
5.Possible violating the Cooperative Principle in the use of euphemisms
In the light of the foregoing literature review and the theoretical bases, we know that euphemisms or euphemistic expressions are important and people often use them in communication. In reality, it can be found that these diplomats and statesmen etc. also use euphemisms or euphemistic expressions in the question-answer patterns. These statesmen make sharp things or unpleasant things sound pleasant etc. otherwise the use of euphemisms may even cause misunderstandings. So the next we will talk about communication with the theories of Cooperative Principle. For example, to be specific, diplomatic euphemisms of press conferences are mainly chosen as the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive word or expression for one that is harsh, indelicate or unpleasant to the other side. They are chosen from both the lexical approach and the rhetorical approach.
In communication like the question-answer patterns in press conferences, generally people or participants are required to observe the CP in order to make their conversation moves forward smoothly and successfully. But in reality, in order to meet a certain communicative need, especially in press conferences concerning diplomacy, actually people seldom speaks by always faithfully observing these four maxims of the CP. Therefore Grice himself also suggests 5 ways participants can deal with these maxims. First, speakers can straightforwardly follow the maxims, that is, they can speak the truth while giving just enough relevant information in a clear, unambiguous, succinct and orderly manner. Many people do just that most of time. Second, someone may violate a maxim, as you would do if you told a deliberate lie. A third thing that can happen is that a speaker can ‘opt out’ of a maxim, this seems to be an uncommon occurrence. The fourth possibility is the maxim clash; cases in which you would have to violate one maxim in order to fulfill another. And perhaps this is the most case of violation of the maxims in press conferences. The fifth and most intriguing way to deal with the maxims of conversation is to flout one of them. When a maxim is flouted, a speaker doesn't observe the maxim, but cannot be accused of violating it either, because the transgression is so flagrant that it is totally obvious that the speaker knows he or she is not observing it and realizes everyone else in the conversation knows it too.