58 Discourse and Rape A participant in a conversation may fail to fulfil a maxim in various ways (Grice 1975, 49). S/He may violate a maxim that s/he may be liable to mislead, s/he or opt out from the operation both of the maxim and the CP. S/He may be faced by a clash (fulfil one maxim and violate the other), or s/he may flout or blatantly fail to fulfil a maxim. Flouting a maxim means the maxim is being exploited. The CP and its maxims are not designed for ethnographic observations; instead, they serve as default settings or presumptions (Bach and Harnish 1979 in Horn 2004, 8). A speaker, who observes CP and its maxims as default and also expects her/ his hearer to observe them, can expect the hearer to recognize the apparent violation of the maxims as a source of contextual inference. The hearer is thus expected to perform the appropriate contextual adjustment. However, it is not just the presumption of cooperation that gives rise to implicatures or inferences, for the inferences drawn depend on assumed knowledge within the local context or within the culture or world knowledge. Thus, the cooperative principle must be supplemented by contextual information and background knowledge in the process of calculating conversational implicatures. According to Sadock (2004, 58), Grice’s articles on implicatures have a profound influence on speech act theory. Grice posited that ordinary communication happens not directly by means of convention, but in the speaker’s manifesting of certain intentions and having her/his hearer recognize these intentions. Grice’s framework also emphasizes how various maxims of cooperative behaviour are exploited by speakers to make sure that the speaker’s intentions in uttering words under particular circumstances are recognized. The speaker’s intention in making the utterance and recognition by the hearer of that intention plays an important role in speech act theory. The basic notion provided by speech act theory, developed by John Austin (1962,) in “How to Do Things with Words” concerns the performative nature of linguistic expressions. Austin posits that certain types of verbs (performative verbs) have the capacity to perform actions when uttered under appropriate circumstances. For example, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” seems designed to “do” something – “to wed,” rather than merely “to say” something.