with longer utterances, he could have violated the maxim of quantity. It is important to give the right amount of information, although the degree of the right
amount is realtive to the situation. When we talk in an interview, of course we will only answer as needed by the interviewer, on the other hand, we will not do
the same thing when we want to persuade someone. For example, if the situation was in a trade, perhaps we can see that quantity maxim is often violated. A sellers
offer will always be more informative than actually required by buyers. The intention of the violation is to persuade the buyer to buy the product. The act of
persuading needs a lot of words in order to assure the potential buyer about price, quality, guarantee, spare-parts, or service. If the seller only uses a little amount of
words, he probably will lose the opportunity to sell the computer. Accordingly, the seller would violate the maxim of quantity.
4.2 Quality Maxim
It contains two sub-maxims ; Try to make your contribution one is true, i.e. a do not say what you believe to be false b do not say that for which you lack
adequate evidence Grice 1975 in Mey 1993: 65. This maxim emphasizes in the truth condition of the contribution. If the
contribution is untrue or lack of evidance, it violates the maxim. For example; we can see a conversation in which a participant violates the maxim.
2 A : Whos you name?
B : Robert A : Where do you live?
B : Jakarta. 3
Judge : Can you prove your innocence? Bad guy : No, Sir. Only God knows my innocence.
Assume this, if in the first conversation, B has lied to A. Suppose his real name is Rojak, not Robert, and he lives in Tegal, not in Jakarta. By doing such
things, B has violated the maxim of quality. The second example shows how the
inability to give adequate evidance for important thing can lead into violating quality maxim.
Study these following examples: 4 Smoking demages your health
The contribution in 4 is qualitatively true because the speaker believes he has enough evidance that it does. It is true that smoking can damage our health.
Many smoking people have been attacked by many disease, such as lung disease, etc. This contribution obeys the maxim of quality.
5 The capital of East Java is Malang. 6 The capital of East Java is Surabaya.
The contribution in 5 is not cooperative because we know that is not true. He appears to be violating the maxim of Quality; there must be a reason for him
saying something patently false. People knew that The capital of East is Surabaya So that, the following contribution in 6 obeys the maxim of quality
and cooperative.
4.3. Relation Maxim
It is described as: Make your contribution relevant Grice 1975 in Mey 1993:65. The maxim is often called super maxim because of its independency from other
maxims. Sperber and Wilson, as quoted by Mey 1993: 80 mention that relevance is the genuine rule in conversation that cannot be omitted. They explain
sperber and Wilson in Mey 1993: 80 : Communication doesnt follow the principle of relevance; and they
could not violated it even if they wanted to. The principle of relevance applies without exceptions.....
In accordance with their theory, communication cannot violate relevance theory even if the participants want to. However, the degree of relevance in
communication depends on the shared knowledge of the context where the communication occurs. Sperber and Wilson mention the term contextual effect, or
the addition of new information to reinforce previously shared knowledge. Based
on the context of communication, the participants then can infer the meaning from the less relevant contributions.
However, to support their previous thesis about the impossibility to violate relevance theory, Sperber and Wilson then propose the devision of the degree of
relevance into strong and weak relevance. According to them, there are two steps in understanding meaning; ostensive-inferential communication. First, ostension,
which is a speakers act of showing or making manifest through language. Second, inferencing, which is waht hearers do when they attempt to decode acts of
ostension in their search of meaning. Strong relevance means that the hearer reader doesnt have to do hard
effort to infer the meaning from an ostensive stimulus. In other words, the hearer should not do hard effort to decode the meaning, for example:
7 A : Wheres my box of chocolate ? B : Its on the drawer in the living room.
On the other hand, in 8 if the participant needs more hard effort to infer the meaning, it has a weak relevance, for example:
8 A : Wheres my box of chocolate? B : I saw the children in your room this morning.
By saying less relevant answer, as Bs answer in 8, the hearer reader A should understand the context of communication. The inference that could be
taken from 8 is the children might have taken teh box of chocolate when A was not in the place.
4.4 Manner Maxim
