11 lend me a pen?’ Then, the last is commissives, the acts to commit the speaker to
some future action, as in ‘I promise to pay you the money.’
d. Politeness
Politeness is a central concept of pragmatics concerning the polite behavior of people when they speak. In his book, Yule 1996: 60 defines politeness as a
situation in which people show awareness of another person’s self-image. In this case, politeness can be the effect of both, distant or close relationship between
people. Similar to Cooperative Principle in a conversation, politeness has also politeness principless. According to Leech 1983: 80, politeness principless
complement Cooperative Principle in pragmatics. Expressing politeness can be performed via two common strategies; they are
negative politeness and positive politeness strategies. Positive politeness leads to a more friendship relation between speakers in a conversation. It is usually
expressed through expressions such as ‘Hey, I’d appreciate it if you…’ On the other hand, negative politeness strategy is usually used for a social distant
relationship. It is usually expressed via questions, such as ‘Could you…?’ or ‘May I ask…?’
e. Implicature
Grice 1975: 43 states his logic of conversation that conversation will work, even when people do not say what they mean. As Yule 1996: 35 argues
that pragmatics is the study of how people interpret what is unsaid, Grice in Yule, 1996: 35 uses the term ‘implicature’ to refer to the unstated meaning of
someone’s utterance. The additional conveyed meaning belongs to implicature.
12 Grice 1975: 45 divides implicature into two types; they are conventional
implicature and conversational implicature. Conventional implicature is associated with specific words and results in additional conveyed meaning when
those words are used. An example of the words is but in ‘He is poor but honest.’ The interpretation of this utterance will be he is poor and he is honest plus an
implicature of ‘contrast’ between the information. Contrast is the conventional implicature of but. Then, honesty is considered to be the opposite of having no
money. The second type of implicature is conversational implicature. It includes
context in understanding the additional conveyed meaning of an utterance. The meaning of an utterance in conversational implicature is indirectly stated in the
utterance. An example of utterances containing conversational implicature is In the following dialog:
Charlene : I hope you brought the bread and the cheese.
Dexter : Ah,
I brought the bread .
Yule 1996: 40 In the conversation, Dexter tries to convey an unstated meaning, that he
did not bring the cheese. As the listener, Charlene is expected to understand the unstated meaning of Dexter. Charlene should assume that Dexter is aware and
being cooperative. The unstated meaning inferred from the conversation above belongs to conversational implicature. Yule 1996: 42 puts this kind of
implicature into a more detailed type of implicature, which is a particularized conversational implicature.
