Making Up Stuff

uppose I’ve advertised a postdoctoral researcher position, and in one applicant’s file I find a very short reference letter from a PhD supervisor praising her student’s excellent command of English, impeccable use of MS Word templates, and remarkably regular seminar attendances. Even though the letter doesn’t say anything negative, it might make me think twice about hiring this student. How did I arrive at this nonliteral interpretation of the letter? According to the philosopher H P Grice, it all comes down to the assumption that communication is fundamentally a cooperative endeavour. At first sight, the letter-writer’s focus on irrelevant trivialities might seem rather uninformative, and hence not very helpful in assessing the candidate’s suitability for the job. At that point, Grice’s assumption of cooperativity can trigger the following line of reasoning: if the professor had held a high opinion of the student’s academic skills, she surely would have put something to that effect in the letter; she didn’t, so she probably doesn’t think very highly of her student, and is thus communicating to me that I shouldn’t hire her.