24 to the topic under discussion” Davies, 2000. For example, Mom asks if her
daughter knows who she is talking to in the telephone:
9 Mom: Who you’re talking to?
Lita: Umm, my new friend Ana.
In the purpose of creating humor, Giora 1991 states that “The joke’s marked
constituent is least relevant but not irrelevant, that is, not entire distant or unrelated” p. 470.
4. Maxim of Manner: be perspicuous, and specifically, 1 avoid obscurity, 2
avoid ambiguity, 3 be brief, 4 be orderly. Grice 1989, p. 26. For example, a teacher ask about how to replace the:
10 A: Can you show me where the common room is?
B: Yes. It is next to K.12.
Under this category, the general idea is what is said should be expressed in a
direct, clear, brief and orderly way without any other communicative intention involved and without thinking whether our behaviors will affect other person’s
feeling. If we put this kind communicative way into the coordinate, it will possess the zero position. Different direction and different distance from this
zero point will make the communication achieve different effect. Actually, people usually communicate in an “ambiguous” way, which violates manner
maxim. The speaker provides only some information hints for the hearer to infer all what the speaker should say. Violations of the maxim of manner can
take many forms: order of presentation of information; vagueness and ambiguity; volume and pace; choice of words; attitude; even facialgestural
expressions Cheung and Winnie, 2009.
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2 Non-Observance Maxims
Maxims of CP can be exploited for communicative purpose. There are many occasions which the conversational interaction between speakers do not happen as
what expected. In certain situation, people fail to observe the maxims for some purpose. As the example, the speakers observe the maxim but pretend to fail rather
than cooperate. Other examples, they are incapable of speaking clearly or because they deliberately choose to lie. According to Grice in Thomas 1995, there are five
ways of failing to observe a maxim which are flouting, violating, opting out, infringing and suspending maxim. However, the territory of the discussion is
narrowed down explicitly into four ways of failing maxims discovered in this research, described as follows:
1 Flouting Maxims
A flout occurs when a speaker obviously fails to observe a maxim at the level what is said, with the deliberate intention of generating implicature Thomas,
1995, p. 65. According to Grice 1975, this additional meaning is called Conversational Implicature and the way by which such implicature is called
flouting a Maxim p. 71. For example: A lecturer speaks to a student who arrives late more than ten minutes to the
class:
11
A: Terrific You’re such a punctual fellow Welcome to the class.
B: Sorry, Miss It won’t happen again.
The lecturer flouts maxim of quality to deliver implicitly a sarcastic tone. Furthermore, speaker may flouts maxim of quantity when she intends to be
humorous.
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12 A: Where are you now?
B: I’m in my clothes.
Or, the speaker may flout maxim of relevance to avoid hurting someone’s feeling:
13 A: What are you and C talking about?
B: Oh well… why don’t we go get something to drink?
Moreover, the speaker flouts maxim of relevance when she utters slang or ambiguous utterance:
14
A: Let’s play emoji tennis.
B: Ok.
The word ‘emoji tennis’ is ambiguous. However, it is a slang, meaning texting nothing but emoticon back and forth between a friend or partner.
2 Violating Maxims
According to Grice 1975, the speaker violates a maxim when the speaker will liable to mislead the hearer to have such implicature. The speaker deliberately
tries to make the hearer misunderstanding the truth meaning of speaking. The hearer is misled to look for the surface meaning. This make the hearer infers an
implicature. People in real life tend to tell lies for different reasons, hide the truth, save face, feel jealous, satisfying the hearer, cheer the hearer, building one’s belief,
avoid hurting the hearer, and convincing the hearer as cited in “Non Observance of Grice Maxims”, 2013. As said by Tupan and Natalia 2008, people believe that
a lying is the natural tool to survive and to avoid from anything that may put the speaker in an inappropriate condition p. 64-66.
A speaker violate maxim quality when she lies to cover the truth:
15 A: Who was with you last night?
B: He’s my cousin.
