Miscommunication and Maxim Violation: A Gricean Study of Some Select Texts

Grice in his “Logic and Conversation (1975) spells several maxims for successful communication. He goes one step ahead for locating implicatures with a view to demarcate the pragmatic meaning of an utterance with respective literal meaning expressed by utterances (Jacob L. Mey, 1998:371). A number of cases can be found in conversation taken from literary work of art like novels or short stories. This paper analyses how several small talks of Manoj das and Oscar Wilde suffers from flouting of the Gricean Maxims which defeats the very purpose of social cohesiveness. Miscommunication tends to weaken or erode our ability to maintain close ties with other people. This correlation between flouting of maxim and possible loss of meaning is established.