the cooperative principal and the literary narrative

8/3/2019 The Cooperative Principal and the Literary Narrative

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The cooperative principle and the literary narrative; an analysis of the

story The Reigate Squires by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The aim of this paper is to apply Grices maxims related to the

cooperative principal to a literary narrative text. The paper tries to apply

the modified maxims as suggested by Richard J. Watts in The

Pragmalinguistic Analysis of Narrative Texts to a short story by Arthur

Conan Doyle. We will first summarise Watts reformulation of the

Gricean maxims and then try to see its applicability to literary narratives.

Watt says that a literary narrative is a kind of display text in which there

is an apparent non-participation of the reader. He reformulates the

cooperative principals to suit the special needs of a text in which the

addressee has no chance to interfere during the discourse to seek

clarifications or express doubts. He reformulation of the Gricean maxims

is repeated below.


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a. The Maxim of Quantity

1. The narrator should include within his narrative turn at least an

orientation section and as many narrative clauses, complicating actions

and resolutions as are required to bring his turn adequately to a close.

He may also introduce an abstract and a coda.

2. The narrator should include within his narrative turn as much

evaluation as is required to make the narrative turn interesting to his

audience.

3. The narrator should not include within his narrative turn more

evaluation than is required to make the narrative turn interesting to his

audience.

b. The Maxim of Quality

1. The narrator should not report narrative events which he believes to

be false in terms of the fictional world created.


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4. The narrator should present his narrative events in an orderly

sequence. (Watts, 1981, 89-93)

It is quite clear that no narrative text can adhere to all of these maxims.

But the way in which a narrative text breaks these maxims or

manipulates them is what we are proposing to study. Such cases of

violations of the narrative maxims should be treated as implicatures

which reveal authors communicative intentions. Further, it is possible

that certain types of literary narrative texts need certain violations of the

communicative principals. The maxim d.,4, is always violated in the

detective fiction because the communicative intention is to maintain

suspense. Thus, every violation may tell us about the priorities that the

author has in mind. Let us look at the short story The Reigate Squires

keeping in mind the above possibilities.

An analysis of the short story The Reigate Squires

When talking about the cooperation in a short story, we have to keep in

mind that the authors purposes and the narrators purposes can be


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different. In the short story that we have taken for analysis, we have a

first person narrator in Dr. Watson. We also have the author of the work.

Without going into the questions of implied writer and the implied

reader, we can still talk about the authors narration and Watsons

narration. We will mainly focus on the way in which the narrator Watson

cooperates with the readers in the short story.

Let us first look at the maxim of quantity. Quantity here refers more to

what is necessary to make a narrative complete than to the actual size of

the novel. We can see that the narrator Watson follows the maxim of

quantity well. There is no abstract in Watsons narrative (the title of the

story is authors abstract) and there is also no coda. But maxim a.1.

clearly states that abstract and coda are only optional elements. To be

cooperative, the narrator of a literary narrative should primarily have

adequate orientational, narrative and evaluation clauses to bring the

narrative turn to a close. Watson gives all the background information

necessary to orient the reader towards the story, gives the complicating

actions in a clear and chronological manner from his point of view and

ends the story when the resolution has reached. Watsons narrative


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follows the unmarked pattern of labovs model of coherence and hence

can be said to be very cooperative.

Watsons narrative is also cooperative in terms of maxims a.2 and a.3

respectively. This is one story where the evaluatory clauses are very

limited and there is hardly an evaluatory comment that is not related to

the narrative action. There is no general comment about life or criminals

or women or society. It seems that Watsons whole point is to tell an

interesting story about the extraordinary detective powers of Holmes and

the evaluatory comments that he makes are all related to this aspect of

the tellabilty of the story. (Singular and complex problem, pg.117; ---

it was admirably done, pg. 137) Thus, we can say that Watson follows

the maxim of quantity very well.

As for as maxims of quality are concerned, we should again remember

that Watson is the narrator of the story. His narration is necessarily

limited by his knowledge and his interpretation of the events. He does

not ever consciously mislead us. His interpretation of certain things may

be wrong. For example, when Holmes faints, he does not know that

Holmes is pretending. He assumes that Holmes is really not well. The


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author deliberately uses the first person narrator to mislead us, the

readers. Watson also never enters into the mind of other characters and

presents their thoughts. He strictly follows the two maxims of quality.

Watsons narration is also very strictly relevant. If we look at the event

sequences in the novel, we can see that all the events are connected to

the one theme of the detection. In this regard, both the author and the

narrator follow the maxim of narration. There is no event that remains

unconnected to the main theme at the end of the novel. Sometimes

relevancy is postponed, but the final resolution will show that the event

was relevant after all. For example, Holmes fainting seems to be

irrelevant at that particular point of time. Nevertheless, we later on know

that that event has connections with the detection of the crime.

Watson also follows the maxim of manner within his limitations. When

he does not follow the maxim of manner, it is mainly because he himself

is not clear about the significance of the events. Obscurity and ambiguity

are there because Watson has not been able to decipher the clues. Even

then, he tries his best to be cooperative, as when he reproduces the

facsimile of the piece of paper which is an important clue. He does not


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make the narrative long and he does present the events in an orderly

manner from his point of view. That is, he has narrated the events in the

order in which he has come to know them.

It is here that we should note that the authors purpose and the narrators

purpose are different. Watson, as he has been used in the novel, is a

faithful narrator who wants to follow the cooperative principles. But the

author, in addition to following the cooperative principles, should also

follow the specific demands of the type of narrative text that he is

creating. Sometimes, the demands of the script may go against the

cooperative principals. When such violations occur, we should think of

them as deliberate and look for the implicatures. For example, the

overriding focus of a detective fiction of the type that was popularized

by Doyle and later on by Agatha Christie is the suspense. Any orderly

presentation of facts will certainly destroy the raiso-de-etre of

detective fiction. Ambiguity and obscurity are also a necessary part of

the detective fiction. In other words, to write a detective novel, an author

will have to violate the cooperative principles.


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It is here that the use of a narrator like Watson becomes very important.

This narrator is apparently cooperative, but his cooperation is a mask for

the violation of the cooperative principals by the author. Thus, Watson in

this short story, as else where becomes a narratorial tool for creating the

illusion of cooperation.

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Sources-

Doyle, Arthur Conan The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1950) Penguin

Books

Watts, Richard J. The Pragmalinguistic Analysis of Narrative Texts

(1981) Gunter Narr Verlag Tbingen

the cooperative principal and the literary narrative

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