AN ANALYSIS ON DUKE’S FLOUTING CONVERSATIONAL MAXIMS ON “G.I JOE” FILM

AN

ANALYSIS ON DUKE’S FLOUTING CONVERSATIONAL

MAXIMS ON “G.I JOE” FILM

THESIS

Written By:

DENNY BUDIKUSUMA

08360202

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF MUHAMMADIYAH MALANG

AN

ANALYSIS ON DUKE’S FL

OUTING CONVERSATIONAL

MAXIMS ON “G.I JOE” FILM

THESIS

Written By:

DENNY BUDIKUSUMA

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF MUHAMMADIYAH MALANG

AN

ANALYSIS ON DUKE’S FLOUTING CONVERSATIONAL

MAXIMS O

N “G.I JOE” FILM

THESIS

This thesis is submitted to meet one of the requirements to achieve

Sarjana Degree in English Education

Written By:

DENNY BUDIKUSUMA

08360202

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF MUHAMMADIYAH MALANG

MOTTO AND DEDICATION

Barangsiapa bersungguh-sungguh, sesungguhnya kesungguhannya itu adalah untuk dirinya sendiri

(QS: Al-Ankabut [29]: 6)

Tuhan menciptakan kedua mata kita di depan karena kita harus terus melihat ke depan, bukan kebelakang dan terpaku pada masa lalu

(Mario Teguh)

DEDICATION:

I dedicated this thesis to: My beloved parents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ... 1

1.1 Background of the Study ... 1

CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE ... 9

2.1 Film ... 9

2.2 Genre of Film... 11

2.3 Element of Film ... 13

2.4.1 Maxim of Quantity ... 21

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ... 29

3.1 Research Design ... 29

3.2 Object of the Study ... 30

3.3 Data Collection ... 31

3.4 Data Analysis ... 31

CHAPTER IV: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ... 33

4.1 Reasearch Findings ... 33

4.1.1 Kinds of Flouting Maxims by Duke ... 33

4.1.2 The Maxims that Flouted the Most by Duke ... 40

4.1.3 The Reason of Duke Flouts Conversational Maxims ... 40

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION ... 47

5.1 Conclusion ... 47

5.2 Suggestion ... 48

5.2.1 Suggestion for The Lecturer ... 48

5.2.2 Suggestion for Engslish Department Students ... 49

5.2.3 Suggestion for Further Researcher ... 49

REFERENCES

Ary, Donald. 2002. Introduction to Research in Education. Belmont: Wadsworth.

Barsam, Richard. 2010. An Introduction to Film. W.W Norton and Company: New York, London

Beattie, Stuart., John Lee Hancock, Brian Koppelman and David Levien. 2007. G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra Script. < http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/G.I.-Joe-The-Rise-of-Cobra.html>.

Brown, G. and George Yule. 1983, Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cook, Guy. 1989. Discourse. England: Oxford University Press.

Creswell, John W. 2009. Third Edition Research Design Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods approaches. London: Sage Publications, Inc.

Dowling, Laura. 1998. Mrs. Dowling’s Literature Terms. <http://www.dowlingcentral.com/MrsD/area/literature/Terms/conflict.html>. (accessed on September 18, 2014)

Khosravizadeh, Parvaneh and Nikan Sadeh Vandi.(2011). International Conference on Languages, Literature and Linguistics, 26, 122.

Soumya, Shashwati.(2013). Text, Context and The Theory of Relevance. The Criterion An International Journal in English, IV, 2.

Grice, H.P. 1975. Logic and Conversation. University of California, Berkeley.

Grice, H.P. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Littlejohn, Stephen, 2009. Encyclopedia of Human Communications. SAGE Publications Macmillan. 1987. Understanding Literature. Advision of Macmillar Company, Mission

Hills, California.

Meyer, Michael. 1990. Introduction to Literature 2nd _{edition. Australia}

Schmidt, Jan Zlotnik; C. R Bogarad and L. Crokett. 2006. Legacies Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Nonfiction. Thomson Wadsworth

Vassiliou, Andrew. 2006. Analysing Film Content: A text-Based Approach. University of Surrey

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter is devided into six parts, those are background of the problem,

statement of the problem, objectives of the study, significance of the study, scope and

limitation of the study and definition of key terms.

1.1 Background of the Study

Everybody needs language to communicate with other people because by

using language people can make a good communication and good relationship to each

other. Communication needs at least two participants or more to send information to

other people and in order to make the conversation understood by each other. The

participant needs to know how to use the language. Littlejohn (2009:13) argues that

people engaged in communication share common principle of communication leading

them to interpret each other utterances. Thus, communication is cooperative between

the speaker and the hearer. They share the same assumption and expectation about the

topic in case to develop their communication.

Language as a means of communication plays an important role in human’s

life, and the function of language is to transfer information and establish social

relationship. Language is a very complex system which is composed of various

functional components. One of its components is maxims. However, to convey the

strategies or what language philosopher and Grice has termed as cooperative

principle.

According to Grice in Journal of International Conference on Languages,

Literature and Linguistic (2011:122), the principle consists of four maxim: quality,

quantity, relevance and manner which represent how people are anticipated to

perform in conversation in general. In other words, the cooperative principle imposes

certain restriction on participants to adjust their speech in correspondence with the

maxims. If these maxims are used in conversation, it can go on smoothly. Language

may be used to socialize with each other in the conversation, which involves at least a

speaker and a hearer. They have to be cooperative and have contributions in order to

have a smooth conversations.

However, sometimes people flout the maxims inevitably for some certain

reasons; for instance, people sometimes answer a question by giving ambiguous

statement and saying something which is not related to the topic. Surely, they have

reasons of doing this. Moreover, speakers do not always abide the four maxims

mentioned above. In other words they often flout the maxims. Flouting the maxims

means that speakers violate the conversational maxims.

Considering the problem above, the researcher enthusiastically focuses in

conducting an analysis to find out the purpose behind the flouting of conversational

maxims since they are important in making communication more effective both in

spoken and written communication and to make sentences more acceptable to the

In this study, the researcher would like to analyze the film script of “G.I.Joe”

film by exploring the flouting maxims which are focused on the conversation of the

main character of the film; he is Duke. The researcher is interested in using “G.I Joe”

film as the object of analysis because of the uniqueness of the utterances from this

film that contains many flouting maxims. The film script of G.I.Joe has many

conversation especially Duke. He speaks English fluently and should be capable to

obey the rule of conversation maxim. Many of Dukes conversation is still flouting in

their conversation although he is fluent in speaking English.

This research has the same relation to the previous researchers on the same

field. Helmi (2010:67-68) states that the maxim are flouted by the main characters in

“Daddy Day Camp” produce the utterances in the form of rhetorical strategies;

tautology, metaphor, understatement, overstatement, rhetorical question and irony.

Furthermore, the maxims are hedged when the utterances produced by the main

characters in this study are not totally accurate but they seem informative, well

founded and relevant. It shows that the main characters in “Daddy Day Camp” do not

follow the rule of Cooperative Principle because they often break the maxims of

Cooperative Principle.

Further, in another research findings, Islahiyatin (2010:58-59) states that

between the major and minor characters on “Step Up 2” often violate the maxims

because the speaker is not informative, untrue, irrelevant and unclear enough anyway

also between the speaker and hearer intimate each other. Moreover, she concludes

apply in all cultures and languages. Even though the speaker and the hearer often

violate the maxims in their conversations but the conversations still run smoothly.

Also, Grice cooperative principle can prove useful for both the speaker and the

hearer. Besides, it applies in cross-culture communications. Hence, violating the

maxims does not break the conversation exchange.

In addition Natalia (2007:77-78) states that she found out that the characters

in “Desperate House Wives” film used the violation of maxims as the strategy to tell

lies. The violation of maxims happened because the characters wanted to eliminate

any chance for the interlocutor to respond so that the interlocutor would ask no more

question and the characters could achieve their goals easily. It means the violation of

maxims is for the negative thing, such us: strategy to tell a lie and the reason vary

from one to another in accordance with the purposes they want to reach.

Related to this study, the researcher argues that this research has some

differences from others. The researcher discusses about flouting conversational

maxims and statements of problems are different from previous studies. This study

focused on the types of the flouting maxims used by Duke as the main character on

“G.I Joe” filmand researcher uses Grice’s theory to analyze the data.

In reality, the cooperative principles can be flouted in daily conversations. G.I

Joe is famous action film whose the main character has given deep impression to the

viewers especially from his utterance. When the researcher was watching this film

and reading the script, he noticed that there were maxims flouted in his conversation.

researcher is interested in analyzing on Duke’s flouting of conversational maxim on

G.I Joe film. The researcher expects that discussing about flouting conversation

maxims can give contribution toward linguistic study.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Related to the background of the problem, the researcher would like to

analyze the Conversational Maxims applied by Duke as main character on G.I.Joe

film. In this case, the researcher formulates the research question as follows:

1. What type of maxims is flouted by Duke on G.I.Joe film ?

2. Which maxims are flouted the most by the Duke on G.I.Joe film ?

3 What is the reason of Duke flouted conversational maxims on G.I.Joe film ?

1.3 The Purpose of the Study

Based on the statement of the problem, the researcher wants to describe the

objective of the study as follows:

1 To figure out what type of maxims is flouted by Duke on G.I.Joe film.

2 To find out which conversational maxims is flouted the most by Duke on

G.I.Joe film.

3 Discover the reason of Duke flouted conversational maxims on G.I.Joe film.

1.4. The Significance of the Study

By identifying the flouting of conversational maxims which are found

maxims theory he can answer his curiosity about types of flouting the maxims

and why it is used. Besides, this study will be useful as a reference for the

readers, especially students of University of Muhammadiyah Malang to

understand about Grice’s maxim. The readers can learn about the flouting of

maxims through this study and they may have a smooth conversation if they

use conversational maxims appropriately. Further, the readers know the

probable reasons why the maxims are flouted which is reflected in G. I Joe

film.

1.5 Scope and Limitation of the Study

The scope of this study is discourse analysis particularly dealing with

conversational maxims. The researcher limits the discussion on analyzing

flouting conversational maxims used by main character on “G.I.Joe” film; he

is Duke.

1.6 Definition of Key Term

In this study, the key terms are :

1 Discourse Analysis: examine paragraph structure, the organization of whole

texts, and typical patterns in conversational interactions, such as, the way

speakers open, close, and take turns in a conversation.

2 Flouting maxim: Unlike the violation of maxims, which take place to cause

misunderstanding on the part of the listener, the flouting of maxims takes

place individuals deliberately cease to apply the maxims to persuade their

Journal of International Conference on Languages, Literature and

Linguistic).

3 Conversational Maxims: General principles to underline the efficient use of

language, and which together identify general cooperative principles. (Cook.

1989:29).

4 Cooperative principle

A way of accounting for how people interpret discourse, in order to uphold

the effectiveness and efficiency of communication. The principle is expressed

in terms of four maxims. This was formulated by the linguistic philosopher

Paul Grice.

5 Implicature

Implicature is meaning versus speaker meaning or what said as compared to

what is intended. Implicature is all about the conversational meaning which is

understood beyond the conventional meaning of an utterance. (Grice in

journal of The Criterion An International Journal in English.2013,IV,2).

6 G.I.Joe film: An American action film directed by Stephen Sommers in 2009

and it was released on August 07, 2009 (worldwide). An elite military unit

comprised of special operatives known as G.I. Joe, operating out of The Pit,