B here is violating Grice’s maxims. That’s the point. He’s not following the cooperative principle. He’s trying to insult A (perhaps because he is frustrated with the conversation). So applying Gricean reasoning to deduce B’s intended meaning is incorrect.
If A asks “why are you changing the subject?”, B’s answer would likely be something along the lines of “And your mother’s face is ugly too!”.
My point is that Grice’s maxims, useful though they are, do not fully capture how human conversation goes — most notably, those cases in which at least one party has a hostile or uncooperative attitude toward the other. People in such cases do get that they’re being insulted or whatever; A, as you portray him, comes off as simply bad at understanding non-literal meaning (or he is being intentionally obstructive/pedantic).
B here is violating Grice’s maxims. That’s the point. He’s not following the cooperative principle. He’s trying to insult A (perhaps because he is frustrated with the conversation). So applying Gricean reasoning to deduce B’s intended meaning is incorrect.
If A asks “why are you changing the subject?”, B’s answer would likely be something along the lines of “And your mother’s face is ugly too!”.
Then he doesn’t get to complain when people mis-get his point.
My point is that Grice’s maxims, useful though they are, do not fully capture how human conversation goes — most notably, those cases in which at least one party has a hostile or uncooperative attitude toward the other. People in such cases do get that they’re being insulted or whatever; A, as you portray him, comes off as simply bad at understanding non-literal meaning (or he is being intentionally obstructive/pedantic).