Analysis of the Non-Observance of the Maxims that Builds the Conflict in Devious Maids TV Series Season 1.

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Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Dalam tugas akhir ini saya menganalisis konflik dari sebuah film seri drama

yang berjudul Devious Maids Musim Pertama. Konflik tersebut terjadi karena

adanya pelanggaran oleh penutur terhadap bidal.

Dalam tugas akhir ini, saya menggunakan teori H. P. Grice. Di dalam teori

Grice disebutkan bahwa penutur dapat menyampaikan pesan yang benar kepada

peserta tutur, apabila komunikasi yang terjadi didasarkan dengan

mempertimbangkan Prinsip Kerjasama Grice yang terdiri dari empat bidal yaitu

bidal kualitas, kuantitas, relevansi dan pelaksanaan.

Setelah saya menganalisis bidal berdasarkan teori Grice, saya menemukan

tokoh tokoh utama, yaitu pembantu rumah tangga Zoila, Valentina dan Carmen,

serta tuan atau nyonya yang kaya raya, yaitu Allison, Henri, Phillipe dan

Alejandro, seringkali melanggar bidal tertentu ketika berkomunikasi satu sama

lain. Pelanggaran bidal ini menyebabkan konflik terjadi di antara mereka. Mereka

melanggar bidal bidal tertentu karena mereka mempunyai implikatur yang

seharusnya dimengerti oleh lawan bicara mereka.

Pelanggaran bidal yang sering terjadi di dalam serial Devious Maids Season

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CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION ... 34

BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 39

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1Background of the Study

Communication is a really important thing fora human being, because people

always need others throughout their life. The easiest way for people to

communicate is usually by talking. However, in many cases, people cannot

convey their real intention in their utterances. This may create a misunderstanding

among people. Something that will be revealed from that misunderstanding is

conflict. In this thesis I would like to analyse the misinterpretation of utterances

between people which finally leads to conflict.

In this thesis I use the pragmatic approach to do my analysis. Pragmatics is

“the study of the aspects of meaning and language use that are dependent on the

speaker, the addressee and the other features of the context of utterance” (“What

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something unsaid must be recognized as apart of communication. He also states

that the study of pragmatics is “the study of what gets communicated than is said”

(3). Therefore from all the meanings above, the study of pragmatics involves the

interpretation of what people actually mean in a particular context.

According to H. P. Grice, there are two kinds of implicature, namely

conventional implicature and conversational implicature (Thomas 57).

Tounderstand conversational implicature, Grice suggests using a Cooperative

Principle, which states that speakers “make (their) contribution such as is required

at the stage at what it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk

exchange in which (they) are engaged” (Thomas 62).

When the speaker fails to abide by this Cooperative Principles, his/her

utterance will not be considered informative, truthful, relevant, or brief (Thomas

63). In other words, the speaker performs a non-observance of the Gricean

maxims (Thomas 64). There are four maxims or rules of speaking, according to

Grice, which we need to use. They are: quantity, quality, relation, and manner.

This theory is the basic principle that is used to analyse all misinterpreted and

sarcastic utterances and criticism by the speaker in the data.

The topic of my thesis is “Analysis of the Non-Observance of Maxims that

Builds the Conflict in Devious Maids TV Series Season 1.” I intend to analyse

conflicts which happen because the characters often use implicatures to convey

what creates conflict.

The data source that I use in this thesis is Devious Maids TV Series Season 1.

The genre of this TV series is comedy-drama. Devious Maids TV series is a story

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families in Beverly Hills. They are Zoila, Valentina, Rosie and Carmen Luna. All

of them are important maids for their boss. When one of their Latina friends was

murdered, a man called Eddie, who works for the same boss, is accused as the

murderer. Marisol, Eddie’s mother,does not believe her son has committed the

murder. So she goes to Beverly Hills disguisedas a maid. She makes friends with

the four Latina maids in the neighbourhood to find out the truth(“Devious

Maids”).

Devious Maids TV series is a great material for my research because this TV

Series provides many examples of non-observance of the maxims (flouting a

maxim, violating a maxim, and other ways of failing to observe the maxims). The

characters in this TV Series often fail to observe the maxims and this

consequently produces implicature that lead to many conflicts in the characters’

friendships, work and families. All utterances that I take for this thesis are those

involving the maids: Marisol, Zoila, Valentina, Rosie and Carmen Luna.

This studyis significant because people will be aware that indaily

conversation, people are inclined to say something different from what they

intend, which creates an implicature in their utterance. This leads to conflicts

because the utterance is not clearly understood by the hearer. The other function

of this study is to make people realizethe impact of the implicature,namely

conflict. This analysis makes all readersmore critical in using an utterance to

others and also in perceiving other’s utterances.

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Maranatha Christian University 1.2 Statement of the Problem

In this thesis, I would like to analyze the following problems:

1. What types of non-observance of maxims are found in the utterances of

Devious Maids TV Series Season 1?

2. What is the implicature of each utterance?

3. How does the non-observance of the maxims lead to conflict(s)?

1.3 Purpose of the Study

In this thesis I intend:

1. To explain the types of the non-observance of maxims in Devious Maids

TV Series Season 1.

2. To reveal the implicatures of each utterance.

3. To describe how the non-observance of maxims leads to conflict(s).

1.4 Method of Research

Firstly, I begin the research by finding the theories to analyse the data.

Secondly, I watch several episodes of Devious Maids TV Series Season 1, and

then I select the utterances as the data. I research all data, focusing on the maxims

that the speaker fails to observe.

1.5 Organization of the Thesis

The first chapter is Introduction,which consists of Background of the Study,

Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the Study, Method of Research, and

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Three contains the analysis of Devious Maids TV series and Chapter Four is the

last chapter in my research, which will be the conclusion of the analysis. Finally

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter I would like to give my concluding points based on my

analysis in the previous chapter. I find many types of non-observance of Gricean

maxims which lead to conflict in Devious Maids TV series season one. There are

twenty two utterances in four scenesthat I analyse in this thesis. In twenty two

utterances, there arethirty four instances of non-observance of the Gricean

maxims. They are: one data of flouting the maxim of quality, seven data of

flouting the maxim of quantity, eight data of flouting the maxim of relation,

fourteen dataof flouting the maxim of manner and four dataof violating the

maxim.

The most dominant type of non-observance of the Gricean maxim that I find

in this thesis is flouting the maxim. In my opinion, the reason why the speakers

flout the maxims are because the information they give are not clear and not in the

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characters in this analysis, like to give long-winded utterances, not being straight

to the point. They also often give irrelevant utterances. The same things also

happen in the utterances of their boss (Allison, Phillipe, Henri and Alejandro).

However, some of these rich boss sometimes like to make a lie to mislead others.

Flouting the maxim of manner is found in certain situations. The intention to

criticize or satirize others is the first situation that makes someone flout the

maxim of manner. The other thing is because the speaker tries to avoid being

criticized by the other characters, or in other words, the speaker refuses to hear the

hearer’s judgement, opinion or statement. Besides, hoping that the hearer will

fulfill what the speaker needs is the situation which leads the speaker to flout the

maxim of manner. An example is when Henri is not straight to the point, he wants

to invite Zoila to have sex with him. Moreover, expecting the hearer to tell the

truth is the last situation that makes the speaker flouts the maxim of manner.

Accordingly, there are situations that lead someone to be likely to flout the maxim

of manner and generate implicature.

Flouting the maxim of quantity is committed by some characters with an

intention to show a disagreement to another character’s utterances. Specifically,

this happens when the speaker gives more information for particular reasons, such

as the need to force or urge the other party to do something.The example of

forcing is in the conversation of Allison and Valentina in scene 1. However, it is

different when Zoila and Phillipe’s conflict in scene 3.Flouting a maxim of

quantity is used to criticize the other speaker.Thus, there are various motives

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There are seven utterances which flout the maxim of relation.Those

utterances happen on three occasions. The first occasion is about refusal to give a

response that the hearer asks and wants. This thing often happen because there are

great expectations from the hearer to the speaker. The hearer wants the speaker do

something that is really hard for the speaker to do. Therefore, that is speakersgive

an implicature of their disagreement bychanging the topic or giving an irrelevant

response. The second occasionis because the speaker wants to defend themselves

from someone’s judgement, opinion or statement. Both the first and the second

occasions happen because there is disagreement between the characters. The last

occasion is to express the true intention, which cannot be explained directly

because it is a sensitive matter. The speaker deliberately gives an irrelevant

response to make the hearer knowabout the speaker’s true intention. Thus, there

are many occasions that make the speaker flout the maxim of relation and produce

implicature.

The only type of non-observance of the Gricean maxim in this thesis is

flouting a maxim of quality. It is shown that most of the conflicts in Devious

Maidsdo not happen because the character usually says something untrue with an

intention to mislead another character. The flouting a maxim of quality happens

because the speaker hints at something indirectly which contains a negative

meaning to the hearer, such as an insult.

There are four violations of the maxims in the data that I have discussed. The

first intention to make this violation happens because the speaker is afraid to

admit a mistake. This is because he wants to keep her own image in front of other

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the speaker’s wants. Thereby, there are two different situations that can lead

someone to commit a violation of a maxim.

In the data, infringing a maxim is not found because there is no child or

foreign language. Moreover, there is no speaker who is nervous, drunk or had a

disability to speak clearly that is possible to lead to conflict. Opting out of a

maxim can not be found because there is no ethical obligation which should not

be stated by characters. It is also the same with suspending a maxim. There is no

data involving suspending a maxim because Devious Maids TV series does not

show any cultural beliefs which prohibit the speakers from mentioning something

taboo in a certain community.

It can be concluded that theconflict in Devious Maids TV series season one

which arise from non-observance of the Gricean maxim are mostly concerned

with four main purposes: first, the intention to criticize; secondly, avoiding or

defending themselves from anothercriticism; thirdly, refusal torespond to

someone’s opinion, statement or judgement; andlastly is about hoping that the

hearer wouldknow or fulfil what the speaker’s true intention is. There are also

four purposes which rarely happen. Those purposes are being afraid to admit a

mistake, expressing the true intention which cannot be explained directly, forcing

the hearer to do what the speaker wants and an intention to insult.

As the end of my conclusion, I hope this thesis will be helpful for everyone to

be more sensitive or aware when using the maxims so as to avoid conflicts. For

those who take the same topic, I advise choosing comedy-drama because it is very

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has many episodes, because that kind of series can provide us with many data that

are suitable to analyse with the theory of non-observance of the Gricean maxims.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Text

Devious Maids,. Dir. David Warren, Tawnia McKiernan, John Scott, Tara-Nicole

and Wyr. Life Time, 2013. DVD.

Printed and Online References

“Conflict.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online, 2010.

Web. 16 Sept. 2014.

“Devious Maids.” IMDB, 2013. Web 6 June 2015.

Grice, Paul. Logic and Conversation. Berkeley: University of California, 2004.