Understanding communication

It was in a bid to make friends that i decided to chat up a guy from india in a discord group.

It was amazing to understand that, while chatting with a person from a different religion or sociolinguistic background, there is need to apply gricean maxims if you are to understand each other.

It was difficult at first understanding each other's conversation, untill we took into cognizance that we are from different religion and sociolinguistic background.

so we need to avoid any kind of implicatures in our conversation with a person that does not share the same background knowledge with us.

Below is a conversation between mr mcluz and mr lucky.

mr lucky : Good morning, mcluz.

mr mcluz: Am fine, how was your night?

mr lucky: I thank God.

In the above conversation, mr lucky flouted the communication when he said "I THANK GOD" because that response does not has communication value, if mr mcluz does not share the same religion background of I thessalonian chapter 5 verse 18, which says; " in everything give thanks to God, for this is the will of God in christ jesus concerning you".

Now see this other conversation.

mr lucky: am rich, please lend me two thousand naira.

mr mcluz: I don't have any dime in my account right now.

The above conversation between mr mcluz and lucky suggest, they share some background knowledge of joel chapter 3 verse 10 which says, " let the weak says i am strong and the poor says i am rich". Even though they flouted the gricean maxims by giving a contradictory statement, but they understood each other because they share the same background knowledge of the same faith.