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ABSTRACT
Limbong, Kristin Natalia. Registration Number: 8136112041. Conversational Maxims of Autism Children. Thesis: English Applied Linguistic Program, Postgraduate School, State University of Medan, 2017.
ABSTRAK
Limbong, Kristin Natalia. Registration Number: 8136112041. Conversational Maxims of Autism Children. Thesis: English Applied Linguistic Program, Postgraduate School, State University of Medan, 2017.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In the name of Almighty, the most gracious and merciful, all praises for His mercy
and guidance to bless the writer so this thesis entitled “Conversational Maxim of Autism
Children” could be completed. Blessing and peace be upon our prophet Muhammad SAW
who has brought human being to the better life.
This thesis is conducted to fulfill of the requirements for the degree of Magister
Humaniora at the English Applied Linguistics Study Program, Postgraduate Schoold of State
University of Medan. This thesis could not be completed without a great deal of help of many
people. In accomplishing this thesis, the writer would like to extend her deepest gratitude for
her beloved parents, Bapak (Sahat Limbong, S.Pd), and mamak (Arta Sitorus, S.Pd) for
their endless love, prays, motivations, and financial support and her beloved sister (Silvia
Nurhafiza) who had given great inspiration in accomplishing this thesis. She is nothing
without all of you.
Her enormous gratitude and best appreciation are expressed to both of her advisers,
Prof. Dr. Lince Sihombing, M. Pd and Dr. Didik Santoso, M. Pd who had spent precious
time in giving suggestions, encouragement, guidance, advices until this thesis comes to its
due time.
The writer’s appreciation also goes to all lecturers who have given her the valuable
knowledge and science during her study at the English Applied Linguistics Study Program of
Postgraduate School, State University of Medan. In particular, she addresses her gratitude
also to Dr. Rahmad Husein, M.Pd, the Head of English Applied Linguistics Study Program,
Dr. Anni Holila Pulungan, M.Hum, the secretary of English Applied Linguistics Study
Program. The Administration staff (Farid), for his assistance in the administrative
She is also deeply grateful to all her sisters and her brothers and family. Furthermore,
she would like to express her gratitude to her best friends (Willy Andika, Erikayani
Sembiring, Yuswita, Sukma Angraini, Khaulah and Sumayyah), and LTBI Unimed
Group and friends that can not mention for sharing ideas and developing friendship.
The writer realizes that this thesis is far from being perfect. Therefore, the writer
expects some suggestions and critics for this thesis. At last, the writer hopes that this thesis
will be useful for all.
Medan, January 18th, 2017
The Writer,
Kristin Natalia Limbong
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2.3.1. Pragmatic Deficitss of Autism children ... 20
2.4. Reasons of Conversational Maxim ... 22
Occurrences 2.5. Relevant Studies ... 25
2.6. Conceptual Framework ... 27
CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ... 29
3.1. Research Design ... 29
3.2. Data and Sources of Data. ... 29
3.3. Instrument of Data Collection ... 30
3.4. Technique of Data Collection ... 30
3.6. Trustworthiness ... 32
CHAPTER IV DATA ANALYSIS, ... 34
RESEARCH FINDINGS, DISCUSSION 4.1 Data Analysis ... 34
4. 1.1 Data Collection... 34
4. 1.2 Data Condensation ... 34
4. 1.3 Data Display ... 37
4. 1.4 Drawing Conclusion / Verifying ... 38
4. 1.5 The conversational maxim occurrence of autistic children... 39
4.1.5.1 Observance Maxim ... 39
4. 1.5.2 Non Observance Maxim ... 47
4.1.6 The Reasons of The Autistic children’s Conversational Maxim Occurrences ... 55
4.2 Research Findings ... 72
4.3 Discussion ... 72
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION ... 76
5.1 Conclusions ... 76
5.2 Suggestions ... 76
REFERENCES ... 78
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LIST OF TABLES
Page
Table 4.1.2.3 The Conversational Maxims of Autism Children ... 36
Table 4.1.4 The Percentage of The Autism ... 38
Children’s Conversational Maxims
Table 4.1.5 List of Data Used for finding in 4.1.2.1 ... 54
LIST OF DIAGRAM
Page
ix
LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix A Data I ... 81
Appendix B Data I... 112
B Data II... 124
CHAPTER I
1.1 The Background of the Study
The speakers and listeners always make efforts to contribute efficiently
when they partake in conversation in order to achieve the purpose. In achieving
the purpose, the conversation should have direction. Grice considered this by
proposing conversational maxims to set the mechanism of conversation in order to
make the speaker and listener understand each other based on which people
interpret others’ utterances.
Conversational maxims are a set of rule in conversation between speaker
and the listener as Chapman (2000:131) says that conversational maxims are the
areas in which conversational partners cooperate. The speaker and the listener
cooperate during conversation by delivering his/ her intention for speaker and
interpreting the speaker’s intention for the listener so that the communication
becomes effective. Therefore, understanding conversational maxims is
fundamental for smooth communication, and conversational maxims which are
shared in society may contribute to mutual understanding during conversation.
Sometimes the listener misunderstands what the speaker says. This can
occur if the speaker does not say something directly what he/ she means. When
the speaker does not say what he/ she means, it means he/ she implies the
meaning. It can be understood if the listener can misunderstand the speaker’s
utterance because sometimes what the speaker means is different with what
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Therefore Thomas (1995: 63) divided conversational maxims into two
types, they are Observance maxims and Non-Observance maxims. Observance
maxims are the speaker and listener observe or obey the maxims during
conversation. Meanwhile, non-observance maxims are the speaker and listener
disobey the maxims during conversation.
Conversational maxim is not a challenge to the majority of normal people
because they have intact pragmatic language skills. However for a significant
number of people like Austim Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children, conversational
maxim is difficult to be understood. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is known
as developmental disorder characterized by atypical deficit in social,
communicative and cognitive functioning.
American Psychiatric Association (1994) defines autism as a pervasive
developmental disorder which is characterized by impairments in communication
and social interaction and restricted, repetitive and stereotypic patterns of
behavior, interests and activities, less frequent and varied speech acts, difficulty in
making appropriate judgments about how much/little to say in conversational
responses, problems in taking another’s perspective in conversation.
Autism children lack of the cognitive and linguistic skills which take the
listener from a decoded utterance to what the utterance means in a particular
context so that they have poor topic maintenance, preservation with language,
failure to signal turn taking, etc.
SLB Yapsi Tebing Tinggi is an elementary school for children with
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functioning children, hyperactivity disorder children and learning disability
children. This school educates these children to be independent in doing their
activities and help them to develop their potential. The researcher chose SDLB
Yapsi as the data because this school manages the class based on the children’s
severe such as children with mentally retardation will be in a class, children with
autism will be in a class so on. Furthermore autism children at this school are able
to communicate with others.
The researcher observed autism children during learning activities in this
school. The following is an example that researcher found at SDLB Yapsi Tebing
Tinggi. An autism child did not obey conversational maxim. In Bahasa Indonesia
lesson, the teacher asked Yoga about daily life as follows:
T: Y di mana kita buang sampah? Y: Bu buang sampah.
T: Y di mana kita buang sampah? Y: Buang sampah.
The example above shows Yoga disobeyed conversational maxim. When
the teacher asked where he should throw the trash, he misunderstood by repeating
his teacher’s words. Realizing he misunderstood with the question, the teacher
repeated the question to make it clear. Nevertheless he still gave wrong answer by
repeating his teacher’s words.
Furthermore, some previous studies about conversational maxim
performance of autism children support the communication characteristic of
autism children which are deficit in communication especially in identifying the
conversational maxim. These previous studies found that autism children are not
4
Baron-Cohen et al (1996) tested three different groups of children, one of
the group is autism children. They found that, autism children offered extra
information that is known to the listener. Here examiner asked Jane about
breakfast: Examiner: What did you have for breakfast?
Jane : A hard boiled egg cooked in hot water in a saucepan.
In this example, Jane answered overly precise to the question. She added extra
information that was already known. She must not add “cooked in hot water in a
saucepan”. It was enough to say “A hard boiled egg”.
Perkins (2007:231) tested an autism child by playing guessing game. Here
he found that the child had difficult to draw the conclusion to the clue as follows:
Adult: this is something to help you travel, to go places on and it’s got wheels.
Child: car
Adult: and it’s got a seat to sit on, and it’s got a handlebar, and only one person can ride on it.
Child: wheelchair
Adult: and it’s got pedals. It’s got two wheels and pedals and a seat and a handlebar and one person can ride it.
Child: wheelchair
When the adult generally gave the first clue, the child could understand by
answering car but because the child could not get enough with the clue, then the
adult gave another clue. On the second clue, the child misunderstood that seat
with handlebar and only one person ride on it was wheelchair. On the third clue,
the adult gave specific clue but the child still could not answer it. Here the child
was hard to draw conclusion of the clue given even the adult had give specific
5
Ghani (2010:90) did research about conversational skill of autism
teenager. He found that Y (the autism teenager) always lost his focus in
conversation as follows:
M: What did you have for breakfast? Y: wang (money)
M: What did you have for breakfast this morning? Y: I see……
M: No,not I see. Say “I had ……….. “ Y: I had………….
M: nasi lemak, chicken…. Y: nugget, egg
In this example, Ghani explained that Y knew “money” is not food; and he
knew that M wanted to know what he had at the school canteen. M continued
asking Y until he was able to tell what he had for breakfast. So, in order to obtain
the truth from Y, the conversational partner had to ask him several times because
he got distracted and always lost his focus in a conversation.
Based on these phenomena, the researcher is interested to investigate the
conversational maxim of autism children in SLB Yapsi Tebing Tinggi. This
research observed the occurrence of autistic children’s conversational maxim
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1.2 The Problem of the Study
Based on the explanation given in the background, the problems of the study
are formulated in the following questions:
1. What types of conversational maxims are used by the autistic children?
2. Why are the conversational maxims used in the way they are?
1.3 The Objectives of the Study
In accordance with the problems of the study, the objectives of this research
are:
1. To find out the types of conversational maxims used by the autism children.
2. To give the reasons of conversational maxims used by the autism children in
the way they are.
1.4 The Scope of the Study
The scope of this study is limited into conversational maxim in autism
children. The data is limited to the Indonesian words that produced by autism
children at SLB Yapsi Tebing Tinggi. The aspects of the study are the occurrences
of observance and non-observance in maxims proposed by Grice.
1.5 The Significance of the Study
The findings of this study have two general significances, namely theoretical
and practical significance.
1. Theoretically, this study enriches the theory of pragmatics especially in the
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2. Practically, the findings of this study could be used for further research
and sort of guidelines for the teachers and parents who directly involve in
this area, in order to be able to guide autism children to create good
76 CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
5.1 Conclusions
Based on the analysis, the conclusions were stated as the following:
1. The observance maxim and non observance maxim occur in autistic
children’s conversation except suspending maxim. The observance
maxims are (1) Quantity maxim, (2) Quality maxim, (3) Relevant maxim,
(4) Manner maxim. The non- observance maxims are (1) Flouting maxim,
(2) Violating maxim, (7) Infringing maxim, (8) Opting out maxim.
2. The reasons of the autistic children’s conversation occurrences are the
combination of (1) The theory of mind deficit; (2) Executive function
deficit; (3) The linguistic deficit.
5.2 Suggestions
In relation to the conclusions, suggestions are offered as the following:
1. Since the subjects of this study were limited to the autistic children, it is
suggested that further research focuses on autistic teens or adults in order
to have further data or finding which may support or weaken the findings
of the present study.
2. Based on the place of the research, this study is focused on school
environment which the communication was limited on the autistic children
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research at home to get deeper findings of autistic children’s conversation
with their member family.
3. The teacher and parents should keep teaching the autistic children how to
have proper conversation because actually they can answer the
conversational partner’s question but it is different from the way normal
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