AN ANALYSIS OF FLOUTING MAXIMS IN “FOREST GUMP” FILM BASED ON GRICE’S COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLES. (A PRAGMATICS APPROACH)
AN ANALYSIS OF FLOUTING MAXIMS IN “FOREST GUMP” FILM BASED ON GRICE’S COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLES.
(A PRAGMATICS APPROACH )
THESIS Submitted as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for Sarjana Sastra Degree in English Department Faculty of Letters and Fine Arts Sebelas Maret University
By: Mulyani C03035049
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF LETTERS AND FINE ARTS SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY 2010
AN ANALYSIS OF FLOUTING MAXIMS IN “FOREST GUMP” FILM BASED ON GRICE’S COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLES.
(A PRAGMATICS APPROACH )
BY Mulyani
C0305049
Approved to be examined before the Board of Examiners Faculty of Letters and Fine Arts Sebelas Maret University
Thesis Consultant
Drs. Budi Waskita, M. Pd NIP. 19521108 198303 1001
Head of English Department
Dr. Djatmika, MA NIP. 196707261993021001
AN ANALYSIS OF FLOUTING MAXIMS IN “FOREST GUMP” FILM BASED ON GRICE’S COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLES. (A PRAGMATICS APPROACH ) BY MULYANI
C0305049 Accepted and Approved by the Board of Examiners Faculty of Letters and Fine Arts Sebelas Maret University On
March 3 rd 2010
Board of Examiners Position
Dr. Djatmika, MA
Ida Kusuma Dewi, SS, MA
NIP. 197105251998022001
3. First Examiner
Drs. S. Budi Waskito, M.PD
NIP. 195211081983031001
4. Second Examiner
Drs. Sri Marmanto, M. Hum
NIP.195009011986011001
Dean of Faculty of Letters and Fine Arts
Sebelas Maret University Surakarta
Drs. Sudarno, MA NIP. 195303141985061001
PRONOUCEMENT
Name : MULYANI NIP : C 03035049 Stated whole heartedly that this thesis entitled An Analysis of Flouting Maxims in “Forest Gump” Film Based on Grice’s Cooperative Principles (A Pragmatics Approach) is made by the researcher. It is neither a plagiarism, nor made by others. The things related to other people’s work are written in quotation and included within the bibliography.
If it is then proved that the researcher cheats, the researcher is ready to take the responsibility
Surakarta,
The researcher
MULYANI
MOTTOS Man proposes, God disposes.
What does not kill you will strengthen you. Verily, with every difficulty, there is a relief.
(Al insyira: 6)
I’m Proud to be me
By. The researcher
DEDICATION
This precious work is dedicated to
My beloved Mom and Dad My beloved sister and my friends
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Bismillahirrohmanirrohim. Alhamdulillahi robbil ‘alamin All praise are just for Allah S.W.T, the
Almighty and the All Merciful God for His blessing that I can complete this thesis as one of the requirements for accomplish the Undergraduate Degree of Sarjana Sastra.
This thesis would not be completed without help, guidance, and advice from others. It is a big pleasure to acknowledge the generosity of the following persons for their encouragement, support, and the most important, their guidance and advice. Therefore, in this opportunity, I would like to express my fondest gratitude to:
1. Allah subhanahu wa Ta’ala and his messenger, Rasullah sa, who never let me down.
2. Drs. Sudarno, M.A, as the Dean of Letters and Fine Arts Faculty, for approving my thesis.
3. Dr. Djatmika as the Head of English Department for the permission to write this thesis.
4. Drs. Budi Waskito, M. pd as my thesis supervisor. Thank you very much for your guidance, patience, concern and advise so that I can finish my thesis.
5. All the lecturers of English Department. Thank you very much for the guidance and knowledge you have given to me.
6. My family, my beloved mom and dad thanks for everything you have given to me, attention, pray, love, and care. Mom I always love you, hope Allah always love you in heaven. Dad thanks you for your patience to me, to my stubborn 6. My family, my beloved mom and dad thanks for everything you have given to me, attention, pray, love, and care. Mom I always love you, hope Allah always love you in heaven. Dad thanks you for your patience to me, to my stubborn
7. My dearest friend D’ KAMPRETS, lilies and Tomy “The Angels” (thanks for your holly words to be realistic and patience, remember the days we fought together to finish our thesis), Yogi “Nene” (thanks for supports, advices and your patience to listen my story all night long), Nurin (thanks to joyful in the new year and also the hot gossips you always share to me), Hesti (thanks for checking my thesis, lets get crazy shopping again!), Nunik (thanks to your delicious food and your support to get “him”), Fitria (thanks for your patience to always be victim of my violence), Woro (thanks for your funny story and the translation, you are my dictionary), Ima (thanks for your wise words which give the enlightenment for my soul), Puspa (thanks for the advices for my black hole), Dini “The Twinner” ( thanks for the spirits you gave to finish my thesis), Kiki (thanks for to be my friens).
8. My PADANG family, antigue (thanks for the supports, understanding for this 7,5 years we had spent together, and sorry for my careless which always drops everything in your room), Ipha ( thanks for the joyful and the “chick-chick” style you infected in every single part of Padang’s), mbak Ipeh, Kristin, and Dwi (thanks for the supports and the happy time that we had), Ratih (lets finish your thesis soon), Deny (thanks for the supports and sorry for the torture that I’ve done to you).
9. My old friends, Lilis and Angga thanks for your supports and advices.
10. All my friends in ED ’05, Sony (thanks to be the lovely chairman, Intan (thanks for checking my grammar error, Arif (thanks for repairing my laptop),
Sari, Fera, Eva, Naphis, Chemitz, Winda, Dian catur, Ratih wula, ratih dwi, Anggi, vian, Hemi, Us, Ebsi, Ongko, Galih, Febri, Alwi, Udin, Lambang, Adwin, Arin, Arum, Yuni, Elis, Ismi, Jotika, Astri, Fauzi, Kiki adi, Dida, Leony, Maya, Wunendro as we go on we’ll remember all the times we had together.
11. The last but not least “Yellow” thanks for always be my side and the support.
12. For everyone who I cannot mention, thank you for all support and help in doing my thesis.
I believes that this thesis is far from being perfect, thus constructive criticism and suggestion are open-handedly accepted. Hopefully this thesis will be beneficial as it is purposively written. Thank you
Surakarta, February , 2010
Mulyani
99
3. Implicature…………………………………………….……
4. The reason…………………………………………………... 100 CHAPTER V. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
A. Conclusion…………………………………………………………..
102
104 Bibliography………………………………………………………………... Appendices………………………………………………………………….
B. Suggestion………………………………..………………………….
ABSTRACT
Mulyani. 2009. C0305049. An Analysis of Flouting Maxims in “Forest Gump” Film Based on Grice’s Cooperative Principle (A Pragmatics Approach). Thesis: English Department Faculty of Letters and Fine Arts Sebelas Maret University.
This is a qualitative descriptive research entitled An Analysis of
Flouting Maxims in “Forest Gump” Film Based on Grice’s Cooperative
Principle (A Pragmatics Approach) . The topic is chosen since it is interesting to figure out what speaker really means in his or her utterance.
This research applies Pragmatics approach based on Grice’s theory. It consists of Cooperative Principles, their maxims and flouting maxims. In this research, the sources of data are the film entitled Forest Gump and the film script. In analyzing, the researcher applies a total sampling technique, where all 21 data are displayed in this research.
This thesis is aimed to describe how the flouting maxims and the cooperative Principle can help the addressee to understand reason the intended meaning (implicature) employed by the characters in the film.
The results of the data analysis show that there are three categories. The first category is flouting clash between maxims found in 21 data. The flouting clash between maxims is divided into 5 sub-categories. The first is the flouting maxims of Quality, Quantity and Manner which shows that the participants blatantly give more information than it is required with something which is untrue and also difficult to understand because it is unclear and long winded. The second is the flouting maxims of Quantity, Manner and Relevance which shows that the participants blatantly give more information which is long winded and not relevant to the question. The third is the flouting maxims of Quality and Quantity. It shows that the participants blatantly say something untrue by giving more information that it is not required. The fourth is the flouting maxims of Quantity and Manner. The overlap between the two maxims above shows that the participants blatantly give more information than it is required which may create ambiguous, convoluted perception. The fifth is the flouting maxim of quantity and relevance which shows that the participants blatantly give more or less information than it is required and not relevant to the question.
The second category is the flouting maxim of Quantity. It shows that the participants in the dialog blatantly give more information than it is required. The third category is the flouting maxim of quality. It shows that the
participants blatantly say something untrue and lack of adequate information. The results of the data analysis show that the maxim/s flouted in the conversation may contain hidden meaning (implicature) which has certain intention. The implicature in this film are used when the speaker cannot say directly, with certain consideration related to the context of situation. The implicature shows the speaker’s feeling and intended meaning. The implicature helps the hearer to catch the speaker’s intention. By creating implicature, the speaker actually wishes to make the hearer look for the real meaning (intended meaning).
The results also show that the data analysis reveals the use of an implicature in the dialogue between the characters in the film “Forest Gump” depends on the context of situation. The characters employ the flouting maxims in order to make the conversation run smoothly.
Keyword: Pragmatics, flouting maxims, Grice’s cooperative principle, xvi+ 99, 5 appendices Bibliography: 18 (1979 - 2009)
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. Research background
Communication is a part of the society. It happens because in the social life we need to communicate to share our feeling, our needs and our willing. To communicate with each other we need a means called language. Language will help us to express what we feel, need and want. According to Wardhaugh (1992) language is used by people to communicate each other expressing their feeling, need and want.
Conversation is one of the ways people use to communicate each other associated with language. Conversation involves at least two participants and it also needs the place where it occurs and the time when it happens. When people talk to someone they want to deliver some messages or purposes. In the conversation the addressee should be able to understand what the speaker means. Because of that, the addressee should know the context.
Almost every time we have to communicate with other people. Automatically when we communicate, we are engaged a conversation. In a conversation, we become one of the participants or we can only become the audience of the conversation. We become the participants when we are involved in the conversation and we become the audience when we listen, watch or read a conversation through visual or printed media.
Film is one of media to communicate moral and social values to the society through the situation and the dialogue which occur in the film. People’s Film is one of media to communicate moral and social values to the society through the situation and the dialogue which occur in the film. People’s
be said succeed if the messages of the film can be absorbed by the audience. To make the film easy to understand, the dialogue of the film must be supported by the body language and mimic face of its characters. Besides that, the context of situation is also needed in understanding the film. The situation and cultural background of the film can help the audiences understand the story and interpret the messages of the film.
Besides, the language which is used by the characters also plays an important role in understanding the film. The dialogue consists of explicit and implicit utterances in delivering the messages. In order to understand the implicit utterances, the audience should know the meaning of the utterances spoken by the characters. The audience should interpret the information by themselves. The implicit utterances may become the problem for the audience in understanding the meaning and absorbing the messages of the story. Thomas (1995:56-58) asserts that there are times when people say exactly what they mean, but generally they are not totally explicit. In some ways people manage to convey further than their words using something quite different from the meaning of their words. The different meaning is conveyed by means of implicature.
According to Thomas (1995: 58), implicature is to hint, suggest or convey some meaning indirectly by means of language. Implicature is generated intentionally by the speaker and may (or may not) be understood by the hearer. Gazdar (1978) states that implicature is a proposition that is implied by the utterance of a sentence in a context, even though that proposition is not a part of entailment of what actually said.
To understand about implicature, Grice introduces his theory (Grice’s Theory). Grice’s theory (1975:41-58) explains about how the hearer gets from what is said to what is meant, from the level of expressed meaning to the level of implied meaning. Grice also distinguishes two different sorts of implicature namely conventional implicature and conversational implicature.
In order to explain the mechanism by which people interpret the conversational implicature, Grice introduces four conversational maxims and cooperative principle (CP). The conversational maxims are the maxim of quantity (informatively), quality (sincerely, said the real and the truth), relation (relevantly) and manner (orderly). The four conversational maxims help us establish what implicature might be. The CP runs as follows:
Make your contribution such as required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged (Grice 1975). However, there are many occasions when people fail to observe the
maxim. Grice (1975, cited in Thomas 1995, p.64-78) introduces five ways of failing to observe the maxims namely flouting a maxim, violating a maxim, infringing a maxim, opting out a maxim, suspending a maxim. Flouting maxim itself has four types, they are: flouting maxim of quality, quantity, relation and manner.
Forest Gump is chosen by the researcher to become the source of the data since the film is one of comedy-drama films adapted from the novel written by Winston Groom in 1986. It has a lot of messages about moral values which are conveyed implicitly. The script writer tries to deliver the messages of the film Forest Gump is chosen by the researcher to become the source of the data since the film is one of comedy-drama films adapted from the novel written by Winston Groom in 1986. It has a lot of messages about moral values which are conveyed implicitly. The script writer tries to deliver the messages of the film
There are some flouting maxims that occur in the film Forest Gump. The writer is going to analyze the implicatures that are generated through flouting maxims in the film dialogues. The following examples of the flouting maxims in the movie dialogue are included to make the background clearer.
FORREST Is this your house? JENNY
Yeah, it's messy right now. I just got off work
The dialogue above occurs in Jenny’s apartment. Forest asks Jenny whether the apartment is her own or not. Jenny blatantly gives more information than the situation required by saying “yeah, it’s messy right now. I just got of work”. It is obvious that Forest just asks about the owner of the house but Jenny answers more than Forest required. Jenny gives more information by adding her answer with “it’s messy right now. I just got off work”. This information actually is not needed by Forest. She could simply have said “yes, it is”. Therefore, it flouts the maxim of Quantity.
Ø DOCTOR
How do those feel? His legs are strong, Mrs. Gump. As strong as I've ever seen.
But his back is as crooked as a politician.
The dialogue occurs in the doctor’s office. The doctor gives explanation about the condition of Forest’s legs and backbone. It is patently false that Forest’s The dialogue occurs in the doctor’s office. The doctor gives explanation about the condition of Forest’s legs and backbone. It is patently false that Forest’s
From the examples above, it can be seen that there are different flouting maxims found in the film dialogue. Those flouting maxims have their own implicature related to the context of each dialogue, where the dialogues occur, when the dialogues happen and the reason why people flout a maxim. Based on the phenomenon, the researcher is interested in analyzing the flouting maxims generated by the speakers and the cooperative principles that occur in the dialogue of film entitled “Forest Gump”. Therefore, the title of this research is AN
ANALYSIS OF FLOUTING MAXIMS IN “FOREST GUMP” FILM BASED ON GRICE’S COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLES (A Pragmatics Study).
B. Problem Statement
From the research background above, the researcher proposes some problems as follow:
1. What kinds of the flouting maxims are employed by the characters in “Forest Gump” film?
2. How the cooperative principles employed by the characters in the “Forest Gump” film help the addressee to understand the intended meaning in the dialogue?
3. Why are the flouting maxims employed by the characters in “Forest Gump” film?
C. Research limitation
The research focuses on the analysis of flouting maxims in Forest Gump film based on Grice’s Cooperative principle covering the maxim of quality, quantity, relation and manner, since they are found in the dialogues of the film.
D. Research Objectives
The purpose of the research is to find out the answers of the problem statements. Therefore the research’s objectives are:
1. To explain the various kinds of the flouting maxims are employed by the characters in the “Forest Gump” film
2. To describe how the cooperative principles which are employed by the characters help the addressee to understand the intended meaning in the dialogue of “Forest Gump” film.
3. To explain the reasons of the characters in the film entitled “Forest Gump” employed the flouting maxims.
E. Research benefits
Every research must have benefits to the researchers themselves and other people. This research tries to contribute the benefits as follows:
a. For the students who want to learn about flouting maxims, it is hoped that having read the result of the research, the students will
be more understand the flouting maxims and maxims in the film.
b. For other researchers, the result of the research is hoped to be a stimulant for other researchers, so that they will lead to conduct more comprehensive research in such topic.
F. Research methodology
This research is a descriptive qualitative research. In this research, the data which are used by the researcher are words, sentences and dialogues which are found in the “Forest Gump” film. A qualitative research is a type of research which does not conclude any calculations/ enumerations (Moleong, 2001:6). It is also called descriptive because it takes some steps such as collecting data, making an analysis and drawing the conclusion (Moleong, 2001:6).
This research uses purposive sampling technique to obtain the data needed since the whole data collected are the utterances categorized as flouting maxims. The population of this research is all dialogues in “Forest Gump” film. Further explanation of research methodology will be clarified in chapter III.
G. Thesis organization
This thesis is organized by some chapters and items as follow: CHAPTER 1 covers Introduction consisting of research Background,
Problem statement, research limitation, research objective, research benefits, research methodology, and thesis organization.
CHAPTER II covers Literature Review consisting Definition of Pragmatics, Conversational Implicature, The Cooperative Principle, The Four Conversational Maxims, The Flouting Maxim, Context, Theory of film, review of other related studies, and synopsis of the film.
CHAPTER III covers Research Methodology consisting of type of the study and research method, Data source, Sample and Sampling Technique, Instrument of the research, Technique of Collecting Data, Data Coding and Technique of Analyzing Data
CHAPTER IV covers Data Analysis consist of the analysis and discussion CHAPTER V covers Conclusion and Suggestion
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Pragmatic
1. Definition of Pragmatic
There are several definitions of pragmatics. Richard in Kuncoro Rahardi (2002:5) defines that pragmatics is the study of the use of language in communication, particularly in the relationship between sentences and the contexts and situations in which they are used. Leech (1983:10) also states that pragmatics is the study of the relation between language and context that is the basic to an account of language understanding. Both linguists define pragmatics as
a study that involves meaning and context. But Levinson emphasizes more on the ability of a speaker to create any form of utterances in any context or situation, while Leech emphasizes on the language understanding.
Yule (1996: 3) states the four areas that pragmatics is concerned as follows:
a. Pragmatics is the study of meaning Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). It analyzes more in what people mean by their utterances than in what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves.
b. Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning This type of study necessarily involves the interpretation of what people mean in a particular context and how the context influences what is said.
It requires the consideration of how the speakers organize what they want to say in accordance with who they’re talking to, where, when, and under what circumstances.
c. Pragmatics is the study of how we recognize what is meant even when it is not actually said This approach also necessarily explores how listeners can make influences about what is said in order to arrive at an interpretation of the speaker’s intended meaning. This type of study explores how a great deal of what is unsaid is recognized as part of what is communicated. We might say that it is the investigation of invisible meaning.
d. Pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative distance This perspective raises the question of what determines the choice between the said and the unsaid. The basic is tied to the notion of distance. Closeness, whether it is physical, social, or conceptual, implies shared experience. On the assumption of how close or distant the listener is, speakers determine how much needs to be said.
Thus, we can make a conclusion that pragmatics is appealing because it’s about how people make sense of each other linguistically, but it can be a frustrating area of study because it requires us to make sense of people what they have in mind. While Thomas (1995: 21-23) stated the definitions of pragmatics as follows:
a. Pragmatics as speaker meaning. The speaker meaning tends to be favored by writers who take a broadly social view of the discipline; it puts the focus of attention firmly on the a. Pragmatics as speaker meaning. The speaker meaning tends to be favored by writers who take a broadly social view of the discipline; it puts the focus of attention firmly on the
b. Pragmatics as utterance interpretation. This term tends to be favored by those who take broadly cognitive approach, but at the cost of focusing too much on the receiver of the message which in practice means largely ignoring the social constrains on utterance production. It focuses almost exclusively on the process of interpretation from the point of view of the hearer.
c. Pragmatics as meaning interaction. This reflects the view that meaning is not something that is inherent the words alone, nor is it produced by the speaker alone, nor by the hearer alone. Making meaning is a dynamic process involving the negotiation of meaning between a speaker and a hearer, the context of utterance (physical, social, and linguistic) and the meaning potential of an utterance.
It can be concluded that pragmatics is the study of meaning from the utterance spoken by a speaker or a writer and interpreted by a hearer or a reader, and it involves the context as a consideration of how the speaker or the writer organizes what he wants to say.
2. The Scope of Pragmatics
There are some topics discussed in pragmatics. Levinson (1997: 27) states that pragmatics is the study of deixis, implicature, presupposition, speech act and aspect of discourse structure. In this research, implicature will be There are some topics discussed in pragmatics. Levinson (1997: 27) states that pragmatics is the study of deixis, implicature, presupposition, speech act and aspect of discourse structure. In this research, implicature will be
a. Deixis Deixis is a technical term (from Greek) for one of the most basic things we do with utterances. Deixis means ‘pointing’ via language (Yule, 1996:9). Deixis is clearly a form of referring that is tied to the speaker’s context. Therefore, the deixis of utterance is meaningful if the context of the utterance is accurately known.
b. Implicature It is a proposition based on the interpretation of the language use and its context of communication in a bound that the participants can interpret what the implication of a message or utterance in a different way from what the speaker literally means.
c. Presupposition According to Yule (1996:25) presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance. Presupposition of a statement will remain constant even when that statement is negated.
For example, two statements ‘John’s car is not red’ and ‘John has a car’ have similar assumption that John has a car and the color is not red.
d. Speech Act Speech act carries some actions in an utterance. Austin in Yule (1996:49) states that in uttering a sentence, one might be said to be performing action. There are three basic acts, namely:
1) Locutionary act, it is the basic fact of utterance because it produces a meaningful linguistic expression.
2) Illocutionary act, it is performed via communicative force of an utterance in order to make a statement, an offer, an explanation or other communicative purposes.
3) Perlocutionary act, it is done to have an effect from the utterance.
e. Discourse Structure It relates with the organization of conversation. Every conversation can
be analyzed through conversation analysis because it has structures. For example turn taking is done when someone respects other people in taking their turns in speaking and adjacency pairs is a fundamental unit of conversational organization, that manage the kind of paired utterances of which question should be replied by answer, greeting by greeting, or offer by acceptance.
Those five aspects have the relation with the context because without appreciating the context of utterance, the messages of a speech cannot be interpreted accurately.
B. Implicature
A philosopher, H.P. Grice, outlines an approach to what he terms as implicature. The word of implicature is derived from the verb to imply, which means to fold something into something else (Mey, 1993:99). According to Yule implicature is an additional conveyed meaning. Meanwhile, Gazdar also states that ‘an implicature is a proposition that is implied by the utterances of a sentence in a context even though that proposition is not a part or not an entailment’
(Gazdar, 1979:38). In Thomas (1995:57) Grice divides implicature into conventional implicature and conversational implicature.
From the definitions above, it can be concluded that implicature is hidden meaning conveyed in an utterance in certain of context of situation. In this research, conversational implicature will be the main concern for the researcher.
C. Conventional implicature
Thomas (1995:57) states that in the case of conventional implicature, the same implicature is always conveyed, regardless of context. While Yule (1996:45) states that conventional implicature is not based on the cooperative principle or the maxims of Grice. It does not have to occur in a conversation, and they do not depend on special context for their interpretation. This kind of implicature is unobserved in this research. On the other hand, in this subchapter the researcher purely focuses on the conversational implicature, which is related to the research.
Conventional implicature is associated with specific words and result in additional conveyed meanings when several words are used. For example is the word “but”.
Mary suggested black, but I choose white. (From Yule, 1996, 45) The utterance associates that the expectation between Mary and I is different.
D. Conversational implicature
Mey (1993:99) states that a conversational implicature is something which is implied in conversation, that is, something which is left implicit in actual language use.
While Leech (1983:40) assumes that conversational implicature is the directness of which is motivated in politeness rather than to what is actually said. Yule (1996:40) also states that conversational implicature is an additional unstated meaning that has to be assumed in order to maintain the cooperative principle. It is implicature derived from a general principle of conversation plus a number of maxims, which the speaker will normally obey. Conversational implicature is divided into:
a) Generalized conversational implicature It is implicature that arises without any particular context or special scenario being necessary, for instance:
Charlene: I hope you brought the bread and the cheese. Dexter : Ah. I brought the bread.
(Yule: 1996:41) From the conversation above, it is seen that there is no need of a particular context to interpret other additional meaning.
b) Particularized conversational implicature It is an implicature that arises become some special factors inherent in the context of utterance and is not normally carried by the b) Particularized conversational implicature It is an implicature that arises become some special factors inherent in the context of utterance and is not normally carried by the
Ricky: Hey, coming to the wild party tonight? Tom : My parents are visiting.
(Yule: 1996: 43) From the conversation above, it is seen that Tom was not strictly answered Ricky’s question. However he delivers the response which indirectly completes the speaker’s goal. Based on Tom’s utterance, it implicates that he will not attend the party since he has to welcome or spend his evening with his parents.
Thus, we can make a conclusion that conversational implicature is how the speaker’s utterance is interpreted by the hearer. An utterance which is spoken by the speaker sometimes has a hidden meaning which implies something behind the utterance. In this case, a speaker intends to convey a certain meaning through his utterances based on a certain background knowledge and context of situation. So that the hearer must assume the speaker means to convey more than is being said.
E. The cooperative principles
In order to explain the mechanism by which people interpret conversational implicature in logic and conversation, Grice introduced four conversational maxims and the cooperative principle (Thomas 1995: 61-63). The cooperative principle runs as follows:
‘Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.’
In this principle, Grice tells the speakers how they ought to behave. He suggests that in conversation interaction people work on the assumption that a certain set of rules is in operation, unless they receive indications to the contrary. When the speaker has conversation, he should obey the regularity or the principle in order not to make the conversation misleads. But there will be time when the hearer has wrong assumption or misinterpretation in understanding the speaker’s mean because of mistakes and misunderstandings. Thomas (1995: 62) says that Grice is not (as some commentators have erroneously assumed) suggesting that people are always good and kind or cooperative in any everyday sense of that word. On the whole, people observe certain regularities in interaction and their aim is to explain one particular set of regularities. Therefore, it governs the generation and interpretation of conversational implicature. Example:
The speaker has accidentally locked herself out of her house. It is winter, the middle of the night and she is stark naked:
A: Do you want a coat? B: No, I really want to stand out here in the freezing cold with no clothes on. On the face of it, B’s reply is untrue and uncooperative, but in fact this is
the sort of sarcastic reply we encounter every day and we have no problem at all in interpreting. According to Grice, if A assumes that, in spite of appearances, B is observing the Cooperative Principle and she has made an appropriate response the sort of sarcastic reply we encounter every day and we have no problem at all in interpreting. According to Grice, if A assumes that, in spite of appearances, B is observing the Cooperative Principle and she has made an appropriate response
F. The conversational maxim
Grice’s theory (1975) develops the concept of implicature. The basic notion of his concept is how people use language. Grice in Thomas (1995: 63-64) proposes four basic maxims of conversation as a guideline. They are maxim of quality (sincerely, said the real and the truth), maxim of quantity (informatively), maxim of relation (relevantly) and manner (orderly) which are formulated as follows: The Maxims
1. Quantity
1) Make your contribution as informative as is required
2) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required The maxim relates to the amount of information given by the participants. They have to give sufficient information, no more and no less then what is required since the speaker gives insufficient information will cause failure in conducting conversation.
2. Quality
1) Do not say what you believe to be false
2) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence There are two important keywords in the above explanation; true that can be connected with the participant’s belief and adequate evidence as proves that the contribution is true.
3. Relation:
1) Be relevant It means that each of the participants must say something that is
relevant to the subject of the conversation. The participants of the conversation will find difficulties in understanding the topic if it has no relevance and the utterances will appear quite unconnected.
4. Manner
1) Avoid obscurity of expression
2) Avoid ambiguity
3) Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity)
4) Be orderly Consider the following example: FORREST: Ma'am, what'd they do with Lieutenant Dan? NURSE : They sent him home.
In the dialogue above, the Nurse answers Forest’s question clearly (manner), truthfully (quality), gives just the right amount of information (quality) and directly addresses Forest’s goal in asking the question (relation).
G. The flouting maxim
Grice in Thomas (1995: 65-71) explains that a flout occurs when a speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim at the level of what is said, with the deliberate intention generating an implicature. According to Grice, there are four kinds of the flouting maxims that are generated as follow:
1.The flouting maxim of quality Flouts which exploit the maxim of Quality occur when the speaker says something which is blatantly untrue or for which he or she lacks adequate evidence.
Example: The speaker was Lady Lucinda Lambton and she was talking about John
Patten, who at the time was the Secretary of State for Education. “I lived in the same house as the man for three years and he’s the man I hate
most in all the world. In all my greasy past, he is the biggest grease spot”.
It is patiently false that John Patten is a grease spot. Lucinda Lambton does not appear to be trying to make us believe that John Patten is a grease spot. So, in this instance the speaker is unable to simultaneously to observe the maxim of Quality. (Thomas, 1995: 67)
2.The flouting maxim of quantity
A flout of the maxim of Quantity occurs when a speaker blatantly gives more or less information that the situation requires. Example:
The speaker is Rupert Allason (author, M. P. and expert on British intelligent services). He is discussing the identity of the so-called “Fifth Man”. Interviewer: So, who is the Fifth Man? Rupet Allason: It was Graham Mitchell or Roger Hollis and I don’t
believe it was Roger Hollis.
In this example, Rupert Allason blatantly gives more information than the situation requires. He could simply say “The Fifth Man was graham Mitchell” (Thomas, 1995: 65).
3.The flouting maxim of relation The maxim of Relation is exploited by making a response or observation which is very obviously irrelevant to the topic in hand (by abruptly changing the subject or by overtly failing to address the other person’s goal in asking a question); (Thomas, 1995: 70). Example:
Forrest gets up and runs toward the car. He tries to look in the window as he steps over to the driver's side door. He opens the door and begins to punch the boy inside. Jenny jumps out of the car and runs over to Forrest.
JENNY : Forrest, why'd you do that? FORREST: I brought you some chocolates. I’m sorry. I'll go back to my
college now.
(Taken from “Forest Gump”) Forest’s utterance is not relevant toward Jenny’s question. There is no connection between Jenny’s question and Forest’s answer. Forest abruptly (Taken from “Forest Gump”) Forest’s utterance is not relevant toward Jenny’s question. There is no connection between Jenny’s question and Forest’s answer. Forest abruptly
4.The flouting maxim of manner The maxim of Manner is exploited by making a response which is unclear so that the hearer can not catch what the speaker means. The following is an example of flouting of the maxim of Manner:
This interaction occurred during a radio interview with unnamed official from the United States Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haity. Interviewer: Did the United States Government play any part in Duvalier’s departure? Did they, for example, actively encourage him to leave?
Official : I would not try to steer you away from that conclusion.
Actually, the official could simply have replied: ‘yes or no’. Her actual response is extremely long winded and convoluted and it is obviously no accident, nor through any inability to speak clearly, that she has failed to observe the maxim of manner. She gives a confusing answer so that the interviewer gets difficulties in understanding the official’s mean. However, there is no reason to believe that the official is being deliberately unhelpful (she could have simply refused to answer at all, or said, “No comment”. Therefore, she fails to observe the maxim of Manner (Thomas, 1995: 71).
H. Context
Context plays an important role in understanding the meaning of utterance. The term of context was firstly introduced by Brownislaw Malinowsky in 1923. Malinowski in Halliday and Hasan (1985:5) points out that there are two notions of context, context of situation and context of culture. Both have an essential role in the interpretation of meaning. Context of situation is the situation in which the utterance event occurs in the environment of the text. Context of culture is the cultural background or historical setting behind the participants.
In order to understand the meaning of any utterance, someone should know and understand the cultural background of the language, such as the participants who are involved in the speech, the time, social condition, etc (Halliday and Hasan, 1985: 6).
The importance of context in language can be seen from the opinion of Levinson who says, “Pragmatics is the study of the ability of language user to pair sentences with the context in which they would be appropriate (1983: 24)
Further, Leech (1983: 13) states that context deals with the relevant aspect of the physical or social setting of an utterance. Context is a background knowledge, which is showed by the speaker and the hearer in understanding their utterances.
Mey (1993: 38) says that context is a dynamic, not a static concept: it is to
be understood as the surroundings, in the widest sense, that enable the participants to interact in the communication process, and that make the linguistic expressions of their interaction intelligible.
According to Yan Huang (2007:13) context may in a broader sense be defined as referring to any relevant features of the dynamic setting or environment in which a linguistic unit is systematically used.
Based on the explanations above, it can be concluded that context is important in interpreting the meaning of an utterance in a conversation. The hearer can fail in interpreting the meaning of speaker’s utterance if the hearer does not understand the context in the conversation.
I. Synopsis of the Film
Forrest Gump is a 1994 comedy-drama film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film tells about a man and his life journey which is influenced by popular culture and first-hand historic events of the 20th century while being largely unaware of their significance, due to his low intelligence. The major character in this film, Forest Gump who has low IQ, has great experience in his life. He experiences many historical events and meets important people in America from the late 1950's through the 1970's including a meeting with Elvis Presley, JFK, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.
The film begins with a white feather falling to the feet of Forrest Gump. He sits beside a black woman at a bus stop in Savannah, Georgia. Forrest picks up the feather and puts it in the book Curious George. Then, he tells the story of his life to a woman sits next to him. The listeners at the bus stop change regularly throughout his narration. Each of them shows a different reaction to his narration ranging from disbelief and indifference to rapt veneration.
In his first day to school, he meets a girl named Jenny Curran and then Forest falling in love with this girl. All Forest’s life is related to Jenny. Although
he has low IQ, his life has much luckiness. In college, he gets football scholarship, joins with All-America, and meets President John F. Kennedy. After graduating,
he enters the United States Army, awarded the Medal of Honor by President Lyndon Johnson and successes in his business. But in his love story, Forest is not much lucky. He is left by Jenny, a girl who he loves. Besides, he also loses his best friend (Buba) in the Vietnam War.
But one day, Jenny sends him a letter to come to her house. There, he finds that he has a young son. At that time Jenny also says to Forest that she suffers a virus. Forest accepts Jenny’s condition and they decides to go back to Greenbow, Alabama. Jenny and Forrest finally marry but Jenny dies not long after their marriage. In the end of the film, Forest lives together with his son happily.
J. Reviews of Other Related Studies
The researcher includes some related studies based on Grice’s maxims and Cooperative Principles. A previous research based on cooperative principles was done by Tety Ratna Artanti (2006), in her thesis entitled “An Analysis of the Flouting Maxims in Princess Diaries 2: ROYAL ENGAGEMENT film based on Grice’s Cooperative Principle (A Pragmatics Study)”.
This study used Pragmatics approach based on Grice theory of implicature covering of cooperative principle and its maxims, namely maxim of quality, quantity, relevance and manner.
The result of the study shows that there are flouting maxims in “Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement” film. Grice’s Cooperative Principle is not perfectly fulfilled by the characters in their dialog. The results also shows that based on the analysis of flouting a maxim, there are 3 flouting maxims employed by the characters, namely flouting maxim of Quality, Quantity and Manner. Furthermore, the research shows that there are found two phenomena. The first is that the most of flouted maxims in the data have low information content and high affective content. It shows that the characters tend to express the affective (the implicatures of their utterances) rather than the information of their utterances (what is actually said by the characters). The second, the researcher also finds overlapping incidence, which there are two or more maxims flouted in one utterance.
Another similar research was done by Sarah Fajrin Amalia (2008), in her thesis entitled the analysis of implicatures based on Grice’s flouting maxim in the film entitled “GUESS WHO” (a Pragmatic approach). This research applies pragmatic approach based on Grice’s theory. It consists of Cooperative Principles, their maxims and flouting maxim.
The results of the data analysis shows that the maxim/s flouted in the conversation may contain hidden meaning which has certain intention. The hidden meaning is related to the context, so it is called particularized conversational implicature. The use of implicature in the utterance is to make the hearer able to catch the speaker’s intention through the employment of flouting maxim/s since by creating implicature, the speaker actually wishes to make the hearer to look for The results of the data analysis shows that the maxim/s flouted in the conversation may contain hidden meaning which has certain intention. The hidden meaning is related to the context, so it is called particularized conversational implicature. The use of implicature in the utterance is to make the hearer able to catch the speaker’s intention through the employment of flouting maxim/s since by creating implicature, the speaker actually wishes to make the hearer to look for
CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
A. Type of Research and Research Method
In this research, the researcher applies the descriptive qualitative method. It is called descriptive, since the researcher merely collects the data, makes an analysis them and draws the conclusions from the analysis (Moleong, 2001: 6).