question. He does not say briefly whether or not she looks good in those clothes. He only gives a hint and lets her decide her own appearance. In order to be
cooperative in a conversation, Luke could have given a brief and non-ambiguous answer.
Another example of flouting conversational maxims is the flouting of maxim of Quality that can be found in a situation when an employer is
interviewing an applicant. The employer finds out that the applicant does not have the criteria the company is looking for. Thus, the employer tries to find a nice way
to reject the man by saying: „By having great skills and experiences in engineering like what you have now, I am sure that you will easily fit in a larger company than
our company.‟ In here, the employer actually does not say what he really thinks. It can be concluded that the employer lies to the applicant in order to let him down
easy. By saying this, the employer expects that the applicant will understand the implied meaning from his utterances, which is, that he is not accepted in the
company.
6. Violating Conversational Maxims
Different from flouting a conversational maxim when the speakers expect the hearers to understand the implied meaning, violating a maxim is a situation
when a speaker fails to obey a conversational maxim in order to intentionally generate misleading implicature in a conversation Thomas, 1995: 73. Speakers
are said to violate a conversational maxim when they know that the hearers will not know the truth and will only know the expressed meaning of what is said. In
other words, the speakers intentionally mislead and deceive the hearers.
An example when a speaker is violating conversational maxims can be seen from the explanation bellow:
Example 12: Husband
: How much did that new dress cost, darling? Wife
: Less than the last one. Cutting, 2002: 40
From the example above, the wife does not give the husband sufficient information about the price of the dress. The wife in that situation is said to
violate the maxim of Quantity. She could have just given sufficient information by mentioning the price of the dress to her husband. Besides the maxim of
Quantity, the wife could have violated the maxim of Quality by not telling the real price of the dress to her husband. She could have violated the maxim of Relation
by saying: „Yes, it looks good on me, right? Let‟s have dinner‟. In here, the wife directly changes the topic of discussion in order to distract him from asking about
the price of the dress. That is said to be a violation of maxim of Relation because the wife is successful in distracting the husband since he does not ask further
information about the dress. The wife could have also violated the maxim of Manner by answering her husband: „My salary is more than enough to cover the
price, eve n though it was almost impossible for me to buy it.‟ In here, the wife
gives long-winded explanation of the price to her husband. She could have just said directly how much the dress costs.
7.
Conversational Analysis
Conversation is an activity where people exchange information with each other. It can be seen as a form of interaction in the society. Interaction can be
found in different social encounters, such as, a lecturer explaining a lecture to his
students, an employer interviewing an applicant, two people who are debating about an issue, and other kinds of social encounters in which there is interpersonal
exchange of talk. The type of talk is based on the contexts of interaction. It is different from one context to another. However, the structure of the talk, which is
the basic pattern of „I speak – you speak – I speak – you speak‟, will become the fundamental structure in an interaction. That structure is called the structure of
conversation Yule, 1996: 71. Most of the time, conversation consists of two, or more, participants. As
explained by Yule 1996: 72, the participants have the right to speak in a
conversation which is usually called the floor. At the moment the participants
have the floor, they are able to control it. Having control of the floor at certain
time is called a turn. Speakers take turns. Only one person talks at a time; when
someone is talking, the other is listening. The participants are able to manage the
cooperation in a conversation through turn-taking. Turn-taking works in accordance with local management system. It is a set of principles for getting
turns, keeping turns, or giving them away to the other interlocutors. This system is needed at the points where there is a possible change in who has the turn. The
possibility of a change-of-turn point in a conversation is called a Transition Relevance Place or TRP. The participants accomplish change of turn smoothly
when they are aware to take turns at an appropriate TRP. When speakers do not want to wait until the right TRP to take turn in a conversation, it is commonly
called an interruption.
