How to Appear to be Conforming to the ‘Maxims’ Even if You Prefer to Violate them

Abstract

This chapter discusses a dialog system designed to illuminate certain familiar features of everyday dialogs which in most contexts are difficult to model precisely: 1. When deciding what information to offer to a listener, a speaker must make some assessment of the desirability of the impact that the information would have on the beliefs and judgments of the listener. 2. A speaker may be biased toward the presentation of certain types of information, even if this bias is not in the interest of the listener. 3. Listeners often interpret informative statements by considering what the speaker might have said but did not say; and the speaker can take this fact into account when deciding what to say. 4. A listener may hold an incorrect assumption about the dialog goals of the speaker; and the speaker may consider such a misconception desirable and attempt to behave in accordance with it. 5. The extent to which a speaker can achieve noncooperative dialog goals such as these depends on the constraints placed by the contributions of the other dialog participants. 6. Some dialog contributions are intended primarily to convey a certain image of the speaker’s dialog motivation, even if they do not refer to it explicitly. 7. Speakers must often deal with the above considerations when uncertain of the beliefs that the listener has or while simultaneously addressing several listeners who have differing beliefs. 8. A speaker who has assumptions about the listener’s values may try to avoid letting the listener recognize the content of these assumptions.