Preferred and dispreferred responses
I have dedicated four separate entries to Grice's Maxims, which are very useful for the construction of dialogues. The maxims have to be seen in the context of preferred and dispreferred responses. The theory is very easy: If you ask someone to marry you, you hope a yes and you fear a no. Anything that is not a yes, including maybe (which is uninformative), extra information, being asked back something else (Will you marry me? How long have to been waiting to ask?), jokes, irony, anything, is a dispreferred response.
When you say a compliment, you expect a thank you. Sometimes you expect modesty: What a lovely meal Oh, its nothing, its a very simple recipe. That is a preferred response. Anything else is dispreferred.
When you ask for permission, you hope a yes and fear a no. You ask your boss if you can leave early on Thursday. Yes is preferred. Yeah, right, and next week youll ask Thursday off, and the following week youll ask Thursday off and a rise. That sentence is not a no. Still, it is a dispreferred response because it is delaying a real yes or a real no. It is breaking Maxims Three and Four. As answers to Can I leave early on Thursday?, the difference between How are you doing with this weeks workload? and You can leave early on Thursday if youre nearly finished with the weeks assigned work is that the question is a dispreferred response; the conditional yes is not a good as a plain Sure!, but still, it is a preferred response because it is straightforward.
In short: the preferred response is what a person (or character) wishes or anticipates to get as a plain answer. Anything else is a dispreferred response.
The worst dispreferred response of them all is silence.
When you say a compliment, you expect a thank you. Sometimes you expect modesty: What a lovely meal Oh, its nothing, its a very simple recipe. That is a preferred response. Anything else is dispreferred.
When you ask for permission, you hope a yes and fear a no. You ask your boss if you can leave early on Thursday. Yes is preferred. Yeah, right, and next week youll ask Thursday off, and the following week youll ask Thursday off and a rise. That sentence is not a no. Still, it is a dispreferred response because it is delaying a real yes or a real no. It is breaking Maxims Three and Four. As answers to Can I leave early on Thursday?, the difference between How are you doing with this weeks workload? and You can leave early on Thursday if youre nearly finished with the weeks assigned work is that the question is a dispreferred response; the conditional yes is not a good as a plain Sure!, but still, it is a preferred response because it is straightforward.
In short: the preferred response is what a person (or character) wishes or anticipates to get as a plain answer. Anything else is a dispreferred response.
The worst dispreferred response of them all is silence.
1 comentario
Jose Angel -