thse are the rules of conduct followed whilst in conversation. It describes how, when engaged in conversation, the two people involved follow a set of unconscious rules. These rules include:-
- being truthful: Don't speak of things you know to be false, don't speak of things for which you lack appropriate and acceptable evidence.
- maxim of quantity: the intervention has to bring enough information, it should not bring more information than neccessary
- being releveant: you must be relevant, however this does not account for subject changes.
- be clear: you must be clear and easy to understand, be brief, avoid ambiguity, be orderly, avoid obscurity of expression.
- We often talk about people as if they have particular attributes as 'things' inside themselves -- they have an identity, for example, and we believe that at the heart of a person there is a fixed and true identity or character (even if we're not sure that we know quite what that is, for a particular person). We assume that people have an inner essence -- qualities beneath the surface which determine who that person really 'is'. We also say that some people have (different levels of) power which means that they are more (or less) able to achieve what they want in their relationships with others, and society as a whole.
- Foucault rejected this view. For Foucault, people do not have a 'real' identity within themselves; that's just a way of talking about the self -- a discourse. An 'identity' is communicated to others in your interactions with them, but this is not a fixed thing within a person. It is a shifting, temporary construction.
- People do not 'have' power implicitly; rather, power is a technique or action which individuals can engage in. Power is not possessed; it is exercised. And where there is power, there is always also resistance.