In social science generally and linguistics specifically, the cooperative principle describes how people achieve effective conversational communication in common social situations—that is, how listeners and speakers act cooperatively and mutually accept one another to be understood in a particular way. The philosopher of language Paul Grice introduced the concept in his pragmatic theory, argued such: Accordingly, the cooperative principle is divided into Grice's four maxims of conversation, called the Gricean maxims—quantity, quality, relation, and manner. These four maxims describe specific rational principles observed by people who follow the cooperative principle in pursuit of effective communication. Applying the Gricean maxims is a way to explain the link between utterances and what is understood from them. Though phrased as a prescriptive command, the principle is intended as a description of how people normally behave in conversation. Lesley Jeffries and Daniel McIntyre (2010) describe Grice's maxims as "encapsulating the assumptions that we prototypically hold when we engage in conversation." The assumption that the maxims will be followed helps to interpret utterances that seem to flout them on a surface level; such flouting often signals unspoken implicatures that add to the meaning of the utterance. Grice's maxims The concept of the cooperative principle was introduced by linguist Paul Grice in his pragmatic theory. Grice researched the ways in which people derive meaning from language. In his essay Logic and Conversation (1975) and book Studies in the Way of Words (1989), Grice outlined four key categories, or maxims, of conversation—quantity, quality, relation, and manner—under which there are more specific maxims and sub-maxims. These describe specific rational principles observed by people who follow the cooperative principle in pursuit of effective communication. Applying the Gricean maxims is therefore a way to explain the link between utterances and what is understood from them. According to Grice:Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction. This purpose or direction may be fixed from the start (e.g., by an initial proposal of a question for discussion), or it may evolve during the exchange; it may be fairly definite, or it may be so indefinite as to leave very considerable latitude to the participants (as in