AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

According to Grice’s Cooperative Principle (CP) and maxim of Quality, it is rational to presume our interlocutors are being truthful, or at least, are trying to be truthful during conversation. However, I argue that presuming the truthfulness of an interlocutor, i.e the maxim of Quality holds, is not necessary for the CP to be operative. More generally, I argue that the CP and Grice’s conversational maxims come apart; a common misunderstanding is to take the conversational maxims as part of what it means to be cooperative, but Grice’s maxims are only generated by specifying the goal of conversation as the maximal exchange of information in conjunction with the CP. The second aim of my paper is to analyse a conversational context where the goal is not the maximal exchange of information: the British comedy panel show Would I Lie to You?, where panellists are "cross-examined" and tasked to deceive each other. I argue that it is rational to presume that one’s interlocutor is both trying to deceive and trying to be truthful in the show’s context, as part of what it means to uphold cooperativity.