VIOLATING
MAXIMS IN “THE DILEMMA” MOVIE BASED ON
GRICE’S COOPERATIVE PRI
NCIPLES
A THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra
By:
ELKA FERNANDO L.TOBING
Registration Number: 209220011
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
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ABSTRACT
Elka Fernando L.Tobing. Student Registered Number 209220011. 2016. Violating maxims in “The Dilemma” movie based on grice’s cooperative principles. Thesis. Faculty of Language and Art, State University of Medan. Advisor : Drs. Lidiman S.M Sinaga,M.Hum
This study focused on violation maxims that made by the main character in “The
Dilemma” movie. The research was conducted by using qualitative descriptive research method. The data were collected from the script of “The Dilemma” Movie. The findings of the thesis showed that there were 32 violating maxim which classified into four types. They were violation maxim of quality (17/25,37%), violation maxim of quantity(21/31,34%), violation maxim of manner(21/31,34%) and violation maxim of relation(8/11,94%). The dominant type of maxim that violated in “The Dilemma” Movie is violation maxim of quantity and manner, both with 38% occurrances from the whole violation. The main character made violation to both types of this maxims mostly intended to keep some secret from others. In some condition he made the violation to create a humors and funny conversation.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
All praise and greatest gratitude are due to Jesus Christ, whose compassion and blessing have continuously enabled the writer to accomplish this Thesis. This Thesis is aimed to fulfill one of the requirements for the degree of Sarjana Sastra of English And Literature Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State
Dr. Isda Pramuniati, M.Hum., the Dean of Languages and Arts Faculty,
State University of Medan
and his Thesis Reviewer, who has contributed her critical, comments and suggestions to revise this Thesis
Syamsul Bahri, SS., M.Hum the Head of English Literature Study
Program and also his Thesis Reviewer.
Dra. Masitowarni Siregar, M.Ed, his Thesis Reviewer, who has
contributed her critical comments and suggestions to revise this Thesis
All Lectures of English and Literature Department, who have guided
and educated his during his academic years.Eis Sri Wahyuningsih,
M.Pd., the Administration Staff of English Department, who has helped to
fulfill the administrative requirements.
Pasifik L. Tobing and Meirita br. Hutapea, his beloved parents, who
have showed unconditional love, support, and sacrifice in his lifetime particularly for encouraging his to finish this thesis.
His beloved siblings Melva Kristin L. Tobing, S.Pd., Andi Putra L.
Tobing and Weni Kartika L. Tobing, for their love, prayers and support. His best friends: , who always be his companions in his ups and downs and
for always motivating his to finish his study.
And All of his friends who gives every single support no matter how much it is. Especially Aini Melbeba Wati Saragih, SPd. for all her advance and precious time, Teguh K.I Tarigan, Handrian Sigalingging, Junaidi, for every moral support. Sukri, Daud, Gusti Dwi Nanda, Sartika, Nurul,
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The writer realizes that this thesis is still far from being perfect. Thisefore, any suggestions, comments, and critics for the improvement of this thesis are greatly appreciated. He hopes that this thesis would be beneficial for those who read it particularly for readers who are interested in conducting similar research.
Medan, September 2016
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CHAPTER IV. DATA AND DATA ANALYSIS ... 27
A.Data ... 27
B.Data analysis ... 27
1. Discussion on the data analysis ... 28
a. Violating maxims quantity ... 28
b. Violating Maxims of Manners ... 30
c. Violating Maxims of Quality ... 31
d. Violating Maxims of Relation ... 34
C.Research Findings ... 35
D.Discussion ... 36
CHAPTER V ... 38
A. Conclussion ... 38
B. Suggestion ... 39
REFERENCCES ... 40
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LIST OF TABLE
Table 4.1. The total occurrence and percentage of types of violating
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of Study
Language as a means of communication has an important role in our daily life. In order to learn about the meaning of language, language user needs the concept of language. Utterance types meaning are matter of preferred interpretations (Levinson, 2000:1). Without language it will be difficult to communicate and interact with each other. For example, a headache can provoke a speaker to tell his friends about it because he needssome help to buy medicine. The speaker would have to use signs such as pointing to his head, temples, or eyes. He would not be able to tell at once what he mean by the signal which actually indicates that he had a headache. There can be a misunderstanding. That is why language is an important thing for human beings.
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give contributions or messages, which can be understood by listener or hearer. There are the rules called cooperative principle that should be obeyed in order to achieve a cooperative communication among speaker and hearer. The Cooperative Principle describes how people interact with one another. People use the cooperative principle to cooperate with the others by giving some utterances which can be understood easily, and to interpret those utterances by assuming that those utterances are obeying the principle.Grice used the term maxims rather than rules because conversational maxims may appear to be broken than grammatical or phonological rules (Cole and Morgan, 1997)
Sometimes people break the cooperative principle in their conversation. When the speaker does not fulfill or break the principle (maxims), the speaker is
said to “violate” the maxims. When the speaker violate the maxim, the conversation between the speaker and the hearer can be unsuccessful since they will misunderstand each other. Speaker who violate a maxim cause the hearer not to know the truth and only understand the surface meaning of the speaker’s words. For example, if Mary asks Elizabeth, “Where’s mom?”, and Elizabeth responds
Mary’s question, “Bedroom or kitchen.” Elizabeth does not give as much as
information as Mary wants about their mother’s exact location.
However, conversation itself consist of two kinds; written and spoken. We can find the conversation in written such as movie scripts (screenplay) in a movie, dialogues in a play, and in spoken such as talk shows or interviews in television.
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conversation (movie script).Some researchers actually have done the study about
Grice’s theory of cooperative principle. Irawati (1996) analyzed the conversation
in ‘Dunia Bintang’, an SCTV program, by using Grice’s theory of conversational
maxims to determine which conversational maxims are followed and violated during the interview. She also used Geoffrey Leech’s theory tofind out why those maxims are violated. She also uses Searle’s categories of illocutionary acts to help categorizing the politeness principle maxim. Another researcher, Leonard (2004) analyzed the flouting of Grice’s cooperative principle in “The Boy Comes
Home”.He focused only on how the maxims are violated. Thenext researcher is Tandyo (2007) who studied about the violation of four maxims in the drama
“Desperate Housewives”, concerns with the conversations among the parents and
their children, consciously or unconsciously, she focused the violation of four maxims whether maxim of quantity, maxim of quality, maxim of relation and maxim of manner by Grice’s theory.
From the previous studies, this study has some differences from others. The previous studies analyzed the violation of fourmaxims. In this research, The writer focus more on ways why someone deliberately violates the maxims and investigates which the utterances violate maxims from the conversations of
“The Dilemma” movie.
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maxim and they often break the rules in their conversation. Even the writer hisself realizes that he also break the rules in his daily conversation with others.
B. The Problem of Study
Related to the background above, the problems of this study were formulated as follows:
1. What types of maxims are violating in “The Dillema” movie? 2. Which maxim is dominantly violating in “The Dillema” movie?
3. Why the dominant maxim is violating in “The Dillema” movie?
C. The Scope of Study
This study focus on the violating of maxims as found in “The Dillema”
movie based on Grice’s theory namely Cooperative Principle. In order to have specific research, the writer decided to limit the study only on the main
character’s dialogues which contain the violating of maxims.
D. The Objective of Study
In relation to the problem, the objectives of the study as follow: 1. To find out the types of violating maxim in “The Dillema” movie. 2. To find out the dominant violating of maxim in “The Dillema” movie.
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E. The Significance of Study
This study is conducted to give some benefits and contributions for the writer and others who want to develop their knowledge about the Cooperative Principle and Maxims. So, the research findings will be useful for:
1. The students of English Department in learning and understanding more about cooperative principle and Maxims.
2. The readers who want to know about the cooperative principle and Maxims.
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
A. Conclusions
Based on the analysis of the main character dialogue in The Dilemma
movie’s script in the previous chapter, it can be concluded that :
1. There are four types of maxims which are violated by the main characters in The Dilemma movie such as maxim of quality, quantity, relation, and manner in responding the question or statement given by the other characters. It caused by some factors such as the speakers use irony words, say the utterances which have lack evidences, give untrue information, give more or less information than is required, make unrelated respond with the topic and say an obscurity expression.
2. The maxim which is dominantly violated in The Dilemma movie’s script is maxim of quantity (21 occurrence,31,34 %) maxim of manner (21 occurrence, 31,34%%), quality ( 17 occurrence,25,37 %) and relation ( 8 occurrence,11,94 %).
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B. Suggestions
Base on findings and conclusions, the writer would like to contribute some suggestions as follows :
1. To English and Literature Department students of University of Medan, who want to learn about maxims. Hopefully this research can give more information about maxims.
2. It suggested that people can learn about maxims to make any conversation as contributed as required
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