The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek    57

CP operative, interlocutors should observe four general con­versational maxims:

Grice is extremely careful to avoid the impression that his "maxims of felicitous conversation" are either exhaustive or all-inclusive. He allows that in a conversation some other maxims might be observed (aesthetic, social, moral) to implement a specific goal toward which the talk is di­rected. Furthermore, not all conversations, he concedes, are dedicated to­tally to the most effective passage of information, and so these maxims will have to be broadened to accommodate various strategic uses of lan­guage. Finally, not every instance of nonfulfillment of the four maxims necessarily entails the abandonment of the CP. Grice lists four ways in which a speaker might fail to observe a maxim:

1. He may quietly and unostentatiously violate a maxim; if so, in some cases he will be liable to mislead.
2. He may opt our from the operation both of the maxim and the CP; he may say, indicate, or allow it to become plain that he is unwilling to co­operate in the way the maxim requires....
3. He might be faced by a clash: He may be unable, for example, to fulfill the first maxim of Quantity (Be as informative as is required) without vi­olating the second maxim of Quality (Have adequate evidence for what you say).
4. He may flout a maxim; that is may blatantly fail to fulfill it. On the as­sumption that the speaker is able to fulfill the maxim and to do so with­out violating another maxim (because of a clash), is not opting out, and is not, in view of the blatancy of his performance, trying to mislead, the hearer is faced with a minor problem: How can his saying what he did say be reconciled with the supposition that he is observing the overall CP? This situation is one that characteristically