Grice's cooperation

Bethan Davies, on Grice’s Cooperative Principle.

‘Grice’s cooperative principle: meaning and rationality', The Journal of Pragmatics.

Davies argues for the need to read Grice’s work on cooperation in the context of his philosophy as a whole.

In particular, she suggests that such a reading might provide a check on what she aptly calls ‘cooperation drift’, by which Grice’s very specific and technical notion tends to merge in discussions by linguists into the more general notion of ‘cooperation’ as an admirable form of human behaviour.