HP Grice, in his theory of conversational implicature, demonstrated the heavy reliance of linguistic communication on contextual cues (Grice, 1975). In "Logic and Conversation" (1975), he states: "Make your conversational contribution as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the exchange of words in which you are engaged . » This cooperative principle (CP) asserts that participants in a conversation will adapt their contributions to the conversation to advance its goal. Most conversations follow the cooperative principle in that the speaker wants to convey his or her intention and the listener wants to understand the speaker's intention. Situations in which the cooperative principle is not in place are more unusual or artificial. The American legal system can create situations in which participants in a conversation are not subject to PC. While the court's goal is ostensibly to discover the truth and serve justice, the prosecution and defense clearly disagree in the purpose of their statements. In this essay, I will explore the ways in which lawyers, witnesses, law enforcement officials, and suspects exploit the tension between the artificial environment of the courtroom with its strictly defined rules and the norms of conversation expected for their own purposes. lawyers and witnesses manipulate expectations by implication. Grice defined the concept of "implicature" as something different from the literal meaning of sentences spoken when participants in a conversation observe the PC. Grice defined four basic rules relating to the cooperative principle:1. Quality maxim – Be honest2. Maxim of Quan...... middle of paper ......o.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/implicature/.Grice, HP (1975). Logic and conversation. In A. P. Martinich (ed.). The philosophy of language (pp. 171-181). New York: Oxford University Press. Searle, J.R. (1975). Indirect speech acts. In A. P. Martinich (ed.). The philosophy of language (pp. 182-195). New York: Oxford University Press. Shuy, R. W. (2005). Creating Linguistic Crimes: How Law Enforcement Use (and Abuse) Language. New York: Oxford University Press. Shuy, R. W. (1993). Language Crimes: Use and Abuse of Linguistic Evidence in the Courtroom. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Solan, LM and Tiersma, PM (2005). “Consensual” research. Talking about crime: the language of criminal justice (pp. 35-52). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tiersma, Peter. (1999). The Language of Perjury, from http://www.lingualandlaw.org/PERJURY.HTM