The Occurrence of Conflicts due to the Non-Observance of the Gricean maxims in the TV Series Prison Break Seasons 1-3.

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Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Skripsi ini memaparkan hasil analisis terhadap pelanggaran bidal

percakapan yang mengakibatkan konflik dalam serial televisi Prison Break musim

1-3. Menurut Grice, ada empat bidal penting dalam percakapan yang perlu

dipatuhi yaitu bidal quality, quantity, relation, dan manner. Apabila salah satu

atau lebih dari keempat bidal tersebut diabaikan maka akan terjadi pelanggaran

bidal. Grice menyatakan bahwa ada lima jenis pelanggaran bidal yaitu flouting,

violating, infringing, opting out, dan suspending.

Berdasarkan analisis yang dilakukan, didapatkan bahwa pelanggaran bidal

yang paling banyak muncul adalah flouting. Hasil analisis juga menunjukkan

bahwa dalam serial tersebut pelanggaran bidal yang terjadi telah mengakibatkan

konflik diantara para karakter.

Kesimpulannya, konflik yang terjadi akibat pelanggaran bidal percakapan

dalam serial tersebut membuat ceritanya menjadi semakin menarik karena

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Maranatha Christian University

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1Background of the Study

A misunderstanding may cause conflicts between people. One of the

causes of a misunderstanding may happen when people are having a conversation.

The speaker may make a mistake when he tries to convey something to the hearer;

as a result, the hearer gets a different understanding of the speaker’s intention.

Conflicts caused by conversational misunderstanding occur in our daily

life and also in TV series. The TV series that I have chosen to be analyzed is

Prison Break Seasons 1-3. When conversational misunderstanding happens, an

implicature will also occur.

Implicature means “any meaning which is conveyed indirectly or through

hints, and understood implicitly without ever being explicitly stated”

(Wood-Wallace). A linguist named H.P. Grice developed a theory called conversational

implicature (cited in Thomas 57). According to Grice (in Thomas 57), in

conversational implicature, the implied meaning may vary depending on the

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maxim of quantity, quality, relation, and manner (Thomas 63-64).

To create a conversation which observes those four maxims, a

cooperation is needed between the speaker and the hearer. Grice realized that a

speaker or a hearer will not always follow the four conversational maxims. In

certain situations, a hearer may refuse to cooperate with the speaker and thus, one

or several conversational maxims are not fulfilled. Furthermore, a hearer may also

fail in observing the maxims because of his or her inability to speak clearly.

Therefore, Grice also provides a theory about non-observance of the maxims. He

divides the non-observance of maxims into five categories: flouting, violating,

infringing, opting out of, and suspending a maxim. The non-observance of

maxims may lead to the occurrence of among others conflicts, suspense, or

humor. Thus, to create a good conversation, the cooperation of the speaker and the

hearer must be good.

My thesis topic is the occurrence of conflicts due to the non-observance of

Gricean maxims in the TV series Prison Break Seasons 1-3. I choose this topic

because conversation through words becomes an important way to convey our

meaning, whether literally or figuratively. When people converse with each other,

they very often fail to observe the four conversational maxims and thus, conflicts,

suspense, or humor may occur. This failure is interesting to be analyzed as people

usually do not notice that non-observance of those maxims may cause speakers

and hearers to have an unsuccessful conversation. This topic is significant as it

will help people realize that the four conversational maxims should be observed

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The area of linguistics that my topic belongs to is Pragmatics. Pragmatics

in a simple way is defined as “the study of speaker meaning” (Yule 3). The

specific Pragmatic theory that I use to analyze my thesis is the conversational

maxims proposed by H.P. Grice (quoted in Thomas 57). In analyzing the conflict,

I use Perrine’s theory of conflict (Perrine 44).

The source of data that I use for my thesis is an American TV series

entitled Prison Break. It has four seasons and I use the first three seasons as my

thesis source.

Prison Break is an American TV series created by Paul Scheuring

(Adelstein, par. 1). The set for each season is different but the main story of this

TV series is the same for each season. The main characters are two brothers,

Lincoln Burrows and Michael Scoffield. Their father left their family when

Lincoln’s and Michael’s mother was pregnant with Michael. This causes their

mother to divorce their father while she is pregnant with Michael. After Michael

is born, he uses her mother’s maiden name as his surname instead of his father’s

surname. Hence, the brothers have different surnames. For a political reason,

Lincoln is set up and thrown into jail and the story revolves around how Michael

tries to save his brother to escape from prison and his willingness to do anything

for his brother’s freedom.

I have chosen this particular TV series as my data because it contains

many actions and therefore, many conflicts are likely to happen in it. The storyline

is also good as it shows the unconditional love of a pair of siblings.

Hopefully, after reading my thesis, the reader will gain knowledge about

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non-observance of the maxims. By reading this, people may also know how important

it is to observe the conversational maxims in their conversations so that they will

avoid the occurrence of conflicts.

(Words: 747)

1.2 Statement of the Problem

There are four problems that I am going to analyze in my thesis, namely:

1. Which utterances in Prison Break Seasons 1-3 do not observe the Gricean

maxims?

2. What types of non-observance of maxims do those utterances belong to?

3. What implicature is generated?

4. How does the failure to observe the maxims result in the occurrence of

conflict in Prison Break Seasons 1-3?

1.3 Purpose of the Study

The purposes for analyzing the problems are:

1. To show the utterances in Prison Break Seasons 1-3 that do not observe

the Gricean maxims.

2. To show the types of non-observance of maxims that those utterances

belong to.

3. To show the generated implicature.

4. To show how a failure in observing the maxims can cause a conflict to

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1.4 Method of Research

I started my research after watching the TV series Prison Break as it

reminds me of the theories that I have studied in class. I used the TV series as my

data after I downloaded the series from the Internet. I reread the theory of

Pragmatics, Grice’s four conversational maxims, Grice’s non-observance maxims,

and also Perrine’s theory of conflict. After studying the theories, I watched the TV

series again. Then I collected the speech event in which a non-observance of

maxims occurred. Lastly, I analyzed the speech event and wrote my thesis.

1.5 Organization of the Thesis

My thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter, Introduction,

consists of Background of the Study, Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the

Study, Method of Research, and Organization of the Thesis. The second chapter is

Theoretical Framework, in which I explain the theories that I use in the analysis.

The third chapter contains the analysis of the data that I use for my thesis. The last

chapter is Conclusion, in which I conclude the results of analysis that reveal how a

conflict occurs because of failure in observing Grice’s conversational maxims.

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter I will explain the result of my analysis regarding the

non-observance of Grice’s four conversational maxims which lead to conflicts

between the characters of the TV series Prison Break Seasons 1-3.

Based on my analysis in the previous chapter, flouting a maxim has the

most occurrences among all the types of non-observance. I find that flouting a

maxim occurs twenty-seven times while opting out of a maxim occurs twice.

Violating, infringing and suspending a maxim do not occur at all in my analysis.

In my opinion, the storyline of the TV series has many secrets. Those

secrets deal with three things: the plan to escape the prison, the identity of The

Company, which is the enemy of the two lead characters, and the many traps that

are set by The Company for Lincoln and Michael, the two brothers. As a result,

the characters tend to keep the secrets so that they become uncooperative during

their conversations in order not to reveal their plan.

Their uncooperative attitude is shown through their non-observance of the

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flout a maxim as sarcasm and sometimes they use it by changing the topic or

answering a question with a statement or with another question.

Flouting a maxim happens when the speaker wants the hearer to look for

another meaning. In other words, it happens as the speaker does not say his

intention explicitly but rather implicitly, which causes the hearer to look for

another meaning. In this TV series, the characters have the same reason for

flouting a maxim during their conversations. The characters opt out of a maxim

for the reason that they will be in danger if they give the required information or

answer. In this case the danger is their secret will be revealed. Because of the

non-observance of maxims in a conversation, conflicts occur between the characters.

Flouting a maxim has four types, which are flouting the maxim of quality,

quantity, manner, and relation. Out of those four, the one which occurs the most is

flouting the maxim of manner (15 data). It is followed by the maxim of relation (7

data), quantity (7 data), and quality (4 data).

Flouting the maxim of manner occurs in different forms. Sometimes it

happens as the hearer gives a long-winded or convoluted answer instead of a

straight one but sometimes it also happens when a hearer replies to the speaker’s

question with another question. One of the examples of the occurrence of flouting

the maxim of manner in the form of a long-winded answer can be found in the

conversation between Norman “Lechero” St. John, the leader in Sona, and

Theodore “T-Bag” Bagwell, the new man of Lechero (Speech event 5). In this

situation T-Bag answers Lechero’s question with a convoluted answer instead of

saying directly that he wants to quit being Lechero’s henchman. He thinks his

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quitting. Instead of getting the response that he wants, T-Bag gets the opposite as

Lechero gets angry and grabs T-Bag. In my opinion, an indirect answer can be

one of the good ways to avoid saying something directly that can hurt the other

party in the conversation; however, it may result in the occurrence of conflict.

The other form of flouting the maxim of manner, which is answering a

question with another question, can be found in the conversation between Michael

Scofield and John Abruzzi (Speech event 1). In this situation, Michael tries to get

Abruzzi to reveal whether he has people to help him if he is able to successfully

get out of the prison or not. Abruzzi answers Michael’s question with another

question so that he can avoid giving Michael an answer and reveal his plan if he

can escape the prison. This, in my opinion, is something clever.

Based on my analysis, I think that the characters flout the maxim of

manner so that they can avoid giving a straight answer and therefore can hide their

true plan as a secret. By flouting the maxim of manner, the characters are able to

keep their secret safe but as a result, conflicts usually occur between the

characters.

After analyzing the TV series, I think the target audience of this TV series

is young adults or adults who are quite competent in the English language. I think

this TV series is not suitable for children as it contains many violent scenes and

also it has dark ambience as it revolves around prisoners and their prison’s life. It

also has a tense atmosphere as the prisoners often fight with one another;

moreover, conflicts happen a lot among them. These conflicts are mostly physical

rather than verbal. The physical conflicts that happen in this TV series are also

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shear, etc. The verbal one may include many curse words and therefore it is more

suitable for young adults or adults, who generally know that violent acts and curse

words are not the right way to apply in daily life.

In addition to the reasons above, I think that the audience has to master the

English language and the background knowledge quite well so as to understand

the implicatures that have been made during the conversation between the

characters. If the audience does not understand the language well enough, then

there is a chance that the audience may not catch the implicature that has been

made by the characters.

There are some suggestions that can be given to future researchers. The

first one is that it is better if they can find a TV series with actions showing

physical conflicts between the characters. It is also better to find a TV series

which has many episodes so that the data for the analysis will be more than

enough.

There are also some benefits of analyzing the non-observance of the

maxim in a thesis. The first one is observing the conversation in a TV series is fun

as we can have both entertainment and our research data at the same time. Yet, it

is not good if we focus more on the entertainment side as we can be carried away

in the story and forget to find the data to be analyzed. The second one is that by

knowing the four conversational maxims, we can observe and apply them in our

daily conversation so as to make good conversations and also avoid

misunderstanding. If we can have good conversations, a conflict can be avoided

and thus there can be a good relationship between the speaker and hearer.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Source

Adelstein, Marty, Neal H. Moritz, Dawn Parouse, Brett Ratner, Paul Scheuring,

Matt Olmstead, Kevin Hooks, and Michael Pavone, prods. Prison Break.

Fox. 29 Aug. 2005. Television.

References

Korta, Kepa, and John Perry. "Pragmatics." The Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, CSLI, Stanford University, 28

Nov. 2006. Web. 4 Oct. 2013.

Perrine, Laurence. Story and Structure. 4th ed. N.p.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,

1974. 1-552. Print.

Thomas, Jenny. Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. 1st ed.

New York: Longman, 1995. 1-224. Print.

Wood-Wallace, Danielle. "Entailment, Implicature, Semantics and Pragmatics."

Academia.edu. Web. 15 May 2014.