a cake, I do not expect to be handed a good book, or even an oven cloth (though this might be an appropriate contribution at a later stage)." With respect to this maxim, Grice writes,Though the maxim itself is terse, its formulation conceals a number of problems that exercise me a good deal: questions about what different kinds and focuses of relevance there may be, how these shift in the course of a talk exchange, how to allow for the fact that subjects of conversations are legitimately changed, and so on. I find the treatment of such questions exceedingly difficult, and I hope to revert to them in later work. Maxim of manner (clarity) In simple terms, the maxim of manner is to be clear. Whereas the previous maxims are primarily concerned with what is said, the maxims of manner are concerned with how what is said is said. Supermaxim: Be perspicuous. Submaxims: Avoid obscurity of expression — i.e., avoid language that is difficult to understand. Avoid ambiguity — i.e., avoid language that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Be brief — i.e., avoid unnecessary prolixity. Be orderly — i.e., provide information in an order that makes sense, and makes it easy for the recipient to process it. Maxims in practice Often the addressee of an utterance can add to the overt, surface meaning of a sentence by assuming the speaker has obeyed the maxims. Such additional meanings, if intended by the speaker, are called conversational implicatures. For example, in the exchange A (to passer by): I am out of gas. B: There is a gas station round the corner. A will assume that B obeyed the maxim of relation. However, B's answer is only relevant to A if the gas station is open; so it has the implicature "The gas station is open." Grice did not, however, assume that all people should constantly follow these maxims. Instead, he found it interesting when these were not respected, namely either flouted (with the listener being expected to be able to understand the message) or violated (with the listener being expected to not note this). Flouting means that the circumstances lead us to think that the speaker is nonetheless obeying the cooperative principle, and the maxims are followed on some deeper level, again yielding a conversational implicature. The importance is in what was not said. For example, answering "Are you interested in