VIOLATION OF MAXIM ON FACEBOOK STATUS
OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN NORTH
SUMATERA
A THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra
TESHA LIDIA ARITONANG
Registration Number: 2113220043
ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTEMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
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ABSTRACT
Aritonang, Tesha Lidia. 2113220043. Violation of Maxim on Facebook Status of University Students in North Sumatera. A Thesis. English Department. Faculty of Languages and Arts. State University of Medan. 2015
This study deals with violation of maxin on facebook status. The objectives of the study were to find out the types of maxim which were violated by university students and described the reasons why they did it in the conversation. The data were the utterances and were taken from fifty selected status of students from 9 universities in North Sumatera and collected by randomly sampling technique. This study was conducted by using qualitative descriptive design. The findings of the study showed there were three types and reasons of using violation of maxim. They were maxim of quality (1), maxim of quantity (17), maxim of relation (24) and as the most dominant type. Their reasons were to show respect, change a topic and create humor.
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CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ... 1
A. Background ... 1
B. Problem of The Study ... 5
C. Objectives of Study ... 5
D. Scope of Study ... 5
E. Significance of Study ... 6
CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW ... 7
A. Theoritical Framework ... 7
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3. Co-operative Principle ... 11
4. Types of Maxim ... 13
6. The Purpose of Maxim Violation ... 17
7. Media ... 19
B. Conceptual Framework ... 25
CHAPTER III. METHODOLOGY ... 26
A. Research Design ... 26
B. The Source of Data ... 26
C. The Technique of Collecting Data ... 27
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CHAPTER IV. DATA AND DATA ANALYSIS ... 28
A. Data ... 28
B. Data Analysis ... 28
1. Type Analysis of Violation of Maxim ... 31
2. The Purpose of Violation of Maxim ... 36
C. Findings ... 39
D. Discussion ... 39
CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS ... 41
A. Conclusions ... 41
B. Suggestions ... 41
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LIST OF TABLE
Page
Table 4.1 The Violation of Maxim on Facebook Status of
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LIST OF APPENDICES
Pages
Appendix A The Analysis of Violation of Maxim used in 36 status of
University Students in North Sumatera ... 44
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of The Study
Language, as a means of communication, has a very important role in
human daily life. People need language to convey all messages to others. To
fulfill those needs, people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical
structure and words but also perform actions through those utterances, Yule(1996:
47).
Language needs two or more persons to make a conversation then they can
communicate each other. They talk in two ways, spoken and written language.
Spoken language is more basic and natural than written language as it is more
spontaneous in use and more widespread. One of the form of spoken language is
conversation. While written language tends to be more formal, complex, and
intricate.
Conversation happens when the participant is more than one. People make
conversation at anywhere, anytime because it does not limit the place and time.
Includes in social networking, people can easily connect with others by the
helping of mobile phone and doing communicating.
Social networking is becoming a tool of communication that is mostly
chosen by people. They believe that they can build an easy conversation with
friends by using social networking as their medium of written conversation. The
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communicate. In facebook, people allow to write anything including their
feelings, thoughts and conditions. Research conducted by GlobalWebIndex in
2014, the world’s largest market study, showed that Facebook is still the
most-interested social media in 2013. It proves that facebook is one of social media that
is mostly used in recently year.
Communication in facebook has two forms, they are status and comments.
The status is the form of expression that is being considered by the
speakers/writers. While the comment is the feedback from the other users.
Communication among social networking users commonly happens in
informal situation so people express theirselves without thingking about the
characteristic of good writing. They tend to use informal language to deliver a
message from explicit to implicit meaning,Yus (1999:3). People imply another
meaning from what they say and expect the hearer to know what they mean. Thus,
users have to understand what speaker says by interpreting what is said and is
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On the other hand, the unexpected feedback can cause misunderstanding
between speakers and hearers in conversation that could lead into blur
conversation. Grice proposes his cooperative principle, as a rule of conversation,
due to misunderstanding conversation. His cooperative principle consists of four
maxims: maxim of quality; maxim of quantity; maxim of relation; maxim of
manner (Grice, 1975, cited in Levinson, 1983: 101).
The first maxim of cooperative principle is Maxim of Quality. This maxim
expects the speakers to be sincere, to be saying something that they believe
corresponds to reality. The second is Maxim of Quantity which is concerned in
giving the contribution as informative as required (for the current purposes of the
exchange. The third is Maxim of relation which says that speakers are assumed to
be saying something that is relevant to what has been said. And the last is Maxim
of manner that tells the speakers to be perspicuous, avoid obscurity of expression,
avoid ambiguity, be brief precise utterances, avoid unnecessary prolixity, be clear,
and be orderly in our interaction.
Sometimes people do not pay attention to cooperative principles while
doing communicating. This occurence refers to violation the maxims. It also
happens in facebook. The readers often give the feedbacks which does not have
adequate evidence. In this case, the readers do not obey the cooperative principle.
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Violation of cooperative principle also occurs because of the goal of
particular meaning, for example to make a joke so the situation is not too icey. For
example, a speaker updates a sorrow expression.
Girl : “I can’t stand anymore to this feeling. It hurts me so much.”
Boy : “Wanna join me to beach?”
From the conversation, the girl actually wants someone understand the
sadness by asking her why but the hearer or the boy violates the conversation by
giving a respond which is not relevant to the topic. So the boy in this case violates
the maxim, namely maxim of relation.
The previous study related to Violation of Maxim has done by Irma
(2013). In her research, she analyzed about violation of maxim in Facebook
Conversation. She compared how male and female users fail to observe a maxim in
their conversationon facebook and she found that male users commonly failed to
observe the maxim of relation by giving irrelevant contribution (53.13%), while
female users commonly failed to observe the maxim of quantity by giving more
information (44%).
Another research conducted by Fikri (2012). In his research,He found that
the dominantly violated is maxim of quality.
Bekti (2013) also did her research about using cooperative principle in
Javanese Language in Social Media. She found that there was violation in
facebook conversation.
Therefore, based on the explanation, reason and previous researches that
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utterances on facebok status. The explanation above makes the researcher curious
to discover whether the phenomena of conversational maxims occur in facebook.
The researcher is interest in conducting further analysis of Grice’sunder the title
“Violation of Maxim on Facebook Status of University Students in North
Sumatera”.
B. Problem of The Study
Based on the background research, the researcher decides three problems,
they are:
1. What kinds of maxims are violated on the students’ facebook ?
2. Why do university students have violation maxim in commenting status?
C. Objectives of Study
1. To find out the kinds of maxim that are violated on facebook status of
university students.
2. To describe the reasons of university students using violation maxim in
doing conversation on facebook status.
D. Scope of Study
Based on the problems above, this research focusses on the utterances
which have violation of four maxims on facebook. All kinds of maxims will be
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E. Significance of Study
The findings of the study are expectedly to be useful for the writer and
readers either theoretically or practically. Theoretically, this study is expected to
enhance the knowledge about violation of maxim. So it can be one of references
for the readers, especially English students.
Practically, this study is expected to make an understanding between
speaker and hearer in doing conversation, especially in media social, facebook,
in order to create the purpose of communication which is based on the theory of
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS
A. Conclusions
Having analyzed the data, some conclusions are given below:
1. There were three types of maxims violated on facebook status of
university students, they are Maxim of Quality (1), Quantity (17), and
Relation(24) as the most dominant of all.
2. There were three reasons why university students on facebook did
violation, namely to show respect, change a topic, and create humor.
3. Suggestions
Having concluded the results of this research, it is suggested that:
1. This research can be used as one of references to enhance the knowledge
about violation of maxim.
2. Facebook users should understand or realize the cooperative principle so
they can avoid misuderstanding in the conversation, especially in social
media, facebook.
