Background of the Study

A. Background of the Study

Speaker and listener must contribute to make their conversation to reach the main goal. Making a conversation becomes successfully, people on the position as a ‘speaker’ must communicate directly their ‘speech’ and ‘information’ which they need to communicate to the listener. On the other hand, speaker sometimes does not realize that he does not give relevant information in the conversation. Therefore, this is more than just about the language’s structure but come straight into the meaning that was not being stated. Pragmatics as a branch of linguistic study, deals with the meaning that cannot capture by Semantics. 1 Although, semantics comes before the pragmatics, but the analysis is different. While semantics in some cases can solve the problem that deals with the meaning, semantics cannot solve the meaning deeper. Yule, in his work, argued that Semantics deals with the relationship between linguistics form and entities in the world or on how words literally connect to things. 2 Semantics can not answer what the speaker’s means by saying a word. Furthermore, the semantics analysis is internally and focuses on the words meaning. The result of words meaning is accurate and also does not need to see the connections between the words and the speaker or the writer. Semantics concentrates to the meaning of the words entirely. If semantics is about the meaning internally then it is different with pragmatics. Pragmatics is the study of those relations between language and context. 3 It concerns with the meaning contextually. The meaning analysis is through some theories that deal with language use. The word meaning analysis does not only look at the literal meaning, but it also concerns with the situation when and how the words was being spoken. The word meaning becomes an important issue. This will come at how the information, in a given period will not making a miss communication. In order to give the information, pragmatics has one principle that solves the 1 Aitchison, Jean, Linguistics: an Introduction Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1995, p. 93 2 Yule, George, Pragmatics Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1996, p. 4 3 Mey, Jacob L, Pragmatics: An Introduction Oxford: Blackwell Publisher. 1993, p. 212 2 problem and requires obeying a principle. As a result, speaker and listener have to fulfill some of the rules which bind between the speaker and listener called cooperative principle. The cooperative principle in the human daily activity hopes the application when people communicate. At first, the cooperative principle was stated by a philosopher, H.P. Grice, in his college at Harvard University on the year 1975. 4 He explained that the cooperative principle can support the participants speaker and listener to reach the main goal of the conversation. In addition of his explanation, he gives a basic form of why people can communicate and names it as maxim. He mentioned and introduced the theory of cooperative principle in his article called Logic and Conversation. He mentioned that a speaker must give a contribution in each conversation in which appropriate with the listener need. 5 Unfortunately, the information delivery always seems unconstructive because of the appearance of the other meaning from the real meaning in the conversation. The speaker’s remark ever makes a meaning that cannot be reached by the listener. Thus, it will cause raise another meaning or an additional meaning called Implicature. 6 Afterwards another linguist Leech gives his point of view about meaning. At this part he said that in each distance of meaning, the word meaning must correlated with the fact that was watched. Besides the word meaning can be concluded in the simplest one and must be generalized. 7 Moreover, when a conversation continues, mostly the speaker puts the topic or another issue. If it happens then it will change the purposed of why the words was being stated and make the information seems unrevealed by the listener. The cooperative principle explains about the referential meaning while the conversation happens. It focuses on the sentence which are being told and to what people mean while the speech is being told. 8 For the example in this 4 Grice, H.P. “Logic and Conversation.” Syntax and Semantics. Vol. III: Speech Acts, ed. Peter Cole and J. L. Morgan New York: Academic Press. 1975, p.45 5 Grice, H.P. 1975, loc. cit. 6 Kushartanti, Pesona Bahasa, Jakarta: PT. Gramedia Utama. 2005, p. 105 7 Leech, Geoffrey, Prinsip-prinsip Pragmatik Jakarta: Penerbit Universitas Indonesia. 1993, p.10. 8 Short, M.H, in Applied Linguistic. Vol II: Discourse Analysis and the Analysis of Drama Oxford: Oxford University. 1981, p.189 3 conversation when A asking whether B enjoys the drama which they already watched by saying “Did you enjoy the play?”, then B answers with “Well, I thought the ice creams they sold in the interval were good”. 9 The conversation implies that B indirectly stated that he cannot enjoy the drama play, even though he didn’t declare it directly but he succeeded in telling of the feeling politely. In this part, the point that the listener got about the B’s answer was an Implicature about how he didn’t enjoy the drama. However, B was disobeyed the cooperative principle. Grice, as quoted by Kushartanti, says the Cooperative Principle is about how a speaker must obey the four maxims. Furthermore, the term of maxim is a principle that is must be obeyed by the speaker and listener in interacting. This is must be obeyed by the participants the listener and speaker whether textually or interpersonally on the way to accelerate the communication process. 10 In fulfilling the appropriate contribution, the speaker must obey the four maxims such as: 1 Maxim of Quantity, 2 Maxim of Quality, 3 Maxim of Relation, and 4 Maxim of Manner. 11 Grice hopes the four maxims will be obeyed so that it can give a relevant contribution. But there is a time when a speaker and a listener cannot follow the rules and showing non- observance. One kind of the non-observance is maxim’s violation, and the violation happens because of the raising of the side meaning or implicature in which already talked by the writer before. In particular case between A and B, it shows that there are maxim violations on the first, second, and third maxim when B answers A’s question. But however it still obeys the cooperative principle, because A still understand and realize the impliacture that B cannot enjoy the drama play, it just because of B didn’t want to declare it directly and impolite to tell it. The implicature exists because there is no intention from the speaker and listener as the participants; break the cooperative principle. Mostly it happened coincidently when people communicated, and it also can be seen in 9 Short, M.H. 1981, loc. cit. 10 Kushartanti 2005, loc. cit 11 Grice 1975, loc. cit. 4 literature works like Drama. In drama, there is one speaker and one listener or even more than without any planning of the script writer, they disobey the cooperative principle. Yet drama is a text but in the understanding text, people must realize that it is an object that unites together with the language and other aspect and others like Sociolinguistics, literature. 12 Nowdays, there are many literature text analyses, moreover especially about drama is not merely just about performance and plot but also the analysis is through the Linguistic Aspect using the linguistic Theories. The concentration of the text analysis is still rarely being conducted by the linguist. Even there is a text analysis in linguistics’ analysis but it is still in the work of syntactical analysis. Almost the same as in linguistic, the drama also get the same situation. The literature text analysis concentrates in the stage and story analysis. Here, the writer tries to conduct a new way of analysis about the literary works based on the linguistics point of view. The writer decides a drama dialogue’s analysis and she finds the Arthur Miller’s drama called ‘The Last Yankee.’ Arthur Miller was one of the leading American playwrights of the twentieth century; 13 he won for many literary award and prizes in literature works. One of his famous dramas is The Death of a Salesman, in which won a Tony Award as well as a Pulitzer Prize. 14 All of his drama works are interesting because they are about the drama of family. 15 It seems so interesting to analyze, however, the writer does not want to analyze the drama as literature text analysis. She tries to use the linguistics as a tool of analysis. Further, the writer finds it interesting and makes her to analyze this drama on the linguistics’ point of view. Hence, the writer chooses Grice’s theory about a set of rule of how people contribute to make their communication reach the main goal; that is the cooperative principle within the maxims of conversation. The writer also 12 Short, MH 1981, p. 183 13 Taken from http:www.gradesaver.comauthorarthur-miller , accessed on 1 st April 2010. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 5 focuses to the disobedience of the maxims of conversation to gain and explore more the drama’s dialogue. Based on those reasons, the writer is interested in analyzing about The Non-Observance Maxim of Conversation in Arthur Miller’s the Last Yankee Based on Grice’s Theory of Cooperative. It is hopes that can enrich the student’s perception about the linguistic analysis and the text analysis which focuses on drama as an object.

B. Research Methodology