Non-observance of Gricean maxims in family dinner table conversation

The present study addresses the issue of indirect speech and implication in family dinner conversations, viewed from a Gricean perspective. Dinner conversations in 19 families were video recorded and analysed with regard to acts of non-observance (i.e. flouting or violating) of Gricean maxims. The recordings were divided into two groups in terms of the age of participating children (6–10 or 10–14 years respectively). The results gave no evidence that the degree of non-observance differed between the two age groups or between mothers and fathers totally, thus not confirming findings of previous studies [Rundquist, S., 1992. Indirectness: a gender study of flouting Grice's maxims. Journal of Pragmatics 18, 431–449]. But quantitative data showed variations regarding the distribution of different contexts and types of non-observance between the two groups of fathers and between the two groups of mothers, as well as between the groups of children and between the parents and children of the two groups. Furthermore, qualitative analyses suggest that fathers more often than mothers use hints for socializing purposes whereas the children, especially in the older group, seem to break against the maxims primarily for social purposes, e.g. joking.