Grice's Theory Of Conversational Maxims

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The present study attended to investigate the applicability of the theory of conversational maxims proposed by Grice on different languages other than English and to investigate the role of culture in violating these maxims. Therefore a dialect from the Arabic language, namely Mahbashi Yemeni Arabic, is used for this purpose. Fifteen minutes recorded and spontaneous conversation between the researcher and his brother who share the same non-standard Arabic took place as data for this study. After that, the researcher has transcribed the recorded speech and then translating it into English. The study had shown that Grice’s theory of the conversational principles in the field of pragmatics seems to be a worldwide theory which is valid to languages all over the world. Furthermore, the study had proved that the violation of these maxims is ascribed to cultural norms due to different purposes and such violation resulted in showing the solidarity and unanimity among family members. Keywords: Conversational Maxims, Pragmatics, Mashbashi Yemeni Arabic, Cultural norms 1-Introduction We use language as a way of communicating and sharing our ideas and thoughts .In our daily conversations, we do not pay attention to some principles that must govern our speech. We may, sometimes, find it useful deliberately to violate or disregard it as when we receive an unwelcomed call from a telephone, or where we are being interviewed by a police officer. The topic of this paper stems from the