The conversation between Penelope and Nancy happened in the living room of the Longstreets’ apartment. Penelope told that the permanent implants
could not be done yet to her kid. Then, Nancy gave her sympathy about Penelope’s son who had been struck by her son. She responded to Penelope’s
statement by saying “I hope… I hope it all turns out all right.” Thus, Nancy
had saved Penelope’s positive face by using the strategy of giving gifts to H
goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation 4:35 Penelope Longstreet : Shut the hell up.
Michael Longstreet : Take one cigar, Alan.
Relax. PPC064
Alan, Nancy, Michael and Penelope were arguing each other. Therefore, Michael wanted to make the situation better by using one of the
strategies of positive politeness. He got up and took a box of cigars from one of the cabinets and then he came back and held it out to Alan. He used giving gifts
to H goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation strategy to sav e Alan’s
positive face. In this case, Michael gave a cigar as a gift to him.
2. Maxim Violation when the Characters are expressing the Positive
Politeness Strategies
The findings of the analysis show that all of the conversational maxims are violated, except the maxim of quantity. In fact, violation of relation maxim ranks
the highest for the category of the most-often appearing phenomenon. On the other hand, violation of manner maxim ranks the lowest for the same category.
The explanations as well as the examples are presented as follows.
a. Violation of quality maxim
The phenomenon of violation of quality maxim in this research gets the second highest rank with the percentage of 23.81. This means that there are 5
data which represent the phenomenon. One research datum that portrays violating the maxim of quality is as follows.
4:36 Nancy Cowan : Those tulips are gorgeous.
Penelope Longstreet : Its that little florist way up on Henry, you know? PPC005
Nancy walked into the living room to retrieve her coat. There was a large bouquet of tulips in a transparent vase. She said that the tulips were
gorgeous. However, actually she thought that the flowers were not beautiful. In the end of the movie, she whacked the tulips with her handbag and said
“This is what I think of your stupid flowers, your hideous tul
ips” Therefore, when Nancy said
“Those tulips are gorgeous”, Nancy had violated the maxim of quality by giving wrong information or not being honest about what she
thought. Another example can be seen in the following dialogue.
4:37 Michael Longstreet : What does he call her? Penelope Longstreet : Doodle Michael and Penelope laugh
Alan Cowan : Yes, I call her Doodle. Alan appears
Penelope Longstreet : Oh, I’m sorry.
Michael Longstreet : We call each other darjeeling, like the tea. Ask
me, thats a lot more embarrassing PPC051
In this conversation, the character who violated the maxim of quality was Michael. Michael and Penelope made fun of
“Doodle” name, the name that Alan used to call his wife. However, they did not know that Alan was
