In the

Neo-Gricean In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly sayi ...

approach to

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (f ...

and

pragmatics In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...

advanced by

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

linguist

Laurence Horn Laurence Robert Horn (born 1945) is an American linguist. He is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at Yale University with specialties in pragmatics and semantics. He received his doctorate in 1972 from UCLA and for ...

, the R-principle ("R" for "Relation") is a reformulation of

Paul Grice Herbert Paul Grice (13 March 1913 – 28 August 1988), usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H. Paul Grice, or Paul Grice, was a British philosopher of language. He is best known for his theory of implicature and the cooperative prin ...

's maxim of relation (''see''

Gricean maxims In social science generally and linguistics specifically, the cooperative principle describes how people achieve effective conversational communication in common social situations—that is, how listeners and speakers act cooperatively and mutual ...

) combining with the second sub-maxim of quantity and the third and fourth sub-maxims of manner. The R-principle states: "Say no more than you must (given Q)." As such it interacts with the

Q-principle In the Neo-Gricean approach to semantics and pragmatics championed by Yale linguist Laurence Horn, the Q-principle ("Q" for "Quantity") is a reformulation of Paul Grice's maxim of quantity (''see'' Gricean maxims) combined with the first two sub-ma ...

, which states: "Say as much as you can (given R).""Implicature"
in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely accessible to Internet users. It is maintained by Stanford University. Eac ...

."The Gricean Model"
in the Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. According to the R-principle, there is no reason to make a stronger statement (say more) if the extra information can be contributed by

implicature In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly sayi ...

. For instance, the inference from "He broke a finger" to "He broke a finger of his own" is an R-based inference, i.e. deriving from the R-principle, since the economy of expression implies that a more informative statement was not needed.

References

Semantics Pragmatics {{pragmatics-stub