Analysis of the Non-Observance of the Gricean Maxims in Buliding the Conflict in Brothers & Sisters Drama Series Season 3.

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ABSTRACT

Dalam skripsi ini, saya membahas pelanggaran terhadap bidal yang terjadi dalam sebuah percakapan dan menimbulkan konflik. Sumber data yang digunakan adalah serial TV Amerika yang berjudul Brothers & Sisters musim 3. Saya menganalisis pelanggaran yang diciptakan oleh para pemeran dalam serial TV ini dan mencari implikasi yang terkandung di dalamnya dengan menggunakan teori dari Paul Grice.

Teori Grice ini menjelaskan aturan-aturan yang harus dilakukan oleh seseorang agar percakapan yang dilakukan berjalan dengan lancar dan baik. Analisis yang saya lakukan adalah mengenai pelanggaran terhadap bidal, implikasi dari ucapan, dan bagaimana pelanggaran tersebut menyebabkan konflik di antara para pemeran.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Human beings are not just biological creatures; we are also social creatures. In our lives, human beings need other people to socialize and communicate with. Conversation is the easiest way to communicate with other people. Of course we have conversations with other people every day.

In a conversation, there should be a hearer and a speaker. When we are having a conversation, sometimes it does not go well. This can create some conflicts. This happens because what the speakers wants is not fulfilled. This may happen because the speaker can not deliver her/his intention well to the speaker. There are some factors that affect the conversation, such as ambiguous meanings, too little or too much information, the fact that the speaker says something untrue, or gives irrelevant answers.

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I also want to know deeper the speaker’s implication from their utterance. The conflicts between people in this drama series is caused when the speaker fails to observe a maxim proposed by Paul Grice, and it caused the hearer to misunderstand the speaker’s utterance meaning. I also choose to analyze the conflict between two people in the conversation. Therefore, it is not difficult to find which utterance that breaks Gricean maxims.

I take the data by watching the drama series Brothers & Sisters season 3. I choose this film because it is a drama series that has a lot of conflicts between the characters, so I can get varieties of conflicts from the film. And non-observance of the maxims mostly occur in the conflict of this TV series. I also choose the conflict between major characters who have a lot of conflict, so the conflict I am going to analyze will be more significant.

The area of linguistics that my topic belongs to is Pragmatics. Pragmatics is the study how people use language (Channell). Pragmatics itself is “the study of the aspects of meaning and language use that are dependent on the speaker, the addresee and other features of the context of utterance” (Martinovski). I use non-observance of Gricean Maxims as the specific theory.

Paul Grice says that conversation is a cooperative activity. According to him, when we communicate we assume, without releasing it, that we and the people we are talking to, will be conversationally cooperative- we will cooperate to achieve mutual conversational ends (“Task A – What is Grice’s Cooperative

Principle in Conversation”).

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non-observance, which are violating a maxim, infringing a maxim, opting out of a maxim, and suspending a maxim. Through this theory, I can analyze how the speaker in the film does the non-observance of Gricean Maxims. So, I use this theory to analyze the conflict in the film. It helps me to get the point that a speaker wants or intends to say.

The significance of my thesis is that people will be able to realize that the non-observance of the maxims can cause conflict in the conversation. Sometimes people do not always say what they mean directly. Through this thesis, I want to make people more understand that sometimes in daily conversation or formal conversation, we have to get what the speaker actually means or intends from their utterance. People are expected to know the actual meaning of those particular words and not be misled.

This thesis can help people to notice that the speaker sometimes tries to mislead or tries to lie to the listener on purpose. Sometimes the speaker utters ambiguous statements so that the hearer must search for the meaning. Thus, I hope people who read this will be able to understand how to make the conversation ends well. The speaker should say what he or she means directly, so there will not be ambiguous meaning and cause misunderstanding between the speaker and the hearer. As well as the hearer should search for the meaning of what the speaker means. So, there will not be the conflict or misunderstanding.

(Word Count : 727 words)

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Based on the topic that I choose, I would lie to discuss the following problems:

1. Which type of non-observance of the Gricean Maxim is found in Brothers & Sisters?

2. Which type of maxim is unobserved in Brothers & Sisters? 3. What is the implicature of the utterance?

4. How does the non-observance of Gricean maxim create and heighten conflict in the film?

1.3 Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is:

1. To find out which type of Grice non-observance of maxim found in Brothers & Sisters.

2. To find out which type of the maxim is unobserved in Brothers & Sisters.

3. To find out what is the implicature of the speaker’s utterance.

4. To find out how the non-observance of Gricean maxim create and heighten conflict.

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There are three steps that I used in writing this thesis. First, I learned the theory of the non-observance of Gricean maxims and searched for the data. Second, I chose some TV series in DVD stores and I chose Brothers & Sisters as my data. Third, I watched and found the conversation related to conflict and analyzed it. Finally, I wrote the research report.

1.5 Organization of the Thesis

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I will conclude the result of my data analysis in Chapter 3. Grice stated that the speaker must fulfill a number of principles ensuring that conversation is a cooperative activity (Spector). After watching Brothers & Sisters season 3, I find that there are some violation of the principle that causes the conflict between major characters.

In total, I analyze thirteen data which come from four scenes. There are only three out of five types of non-observance of the Gricean maxims that can be found in the data. They are flouting the maxim, opting out of the maxim, and violating the maxim. The other two types, infringing the maxim and suspending

the maxim, are not found in the data analysis.

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the maxim of relation also found in 1 data or 9% of the data involve this. There is also flouting the maxim of quantity in 1 data or 9% involve this.

The flouting of maxim happens when a speaker deliberately fails to observe a maxim and the speaker wants the hearer to look for an other meaning within the utterance. A speaker deliberately fails to observe a maxim without any intention to mislead others. This can be seen in data 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, and 13 which are mostly found in conversations that are about the problems in the company.

A person or speaker may flout the maxim in order to hide his own mistake or because he/she does not want to be blamed by others. In addition, he/she wants to show that he/she is better than the hearer or he/she wants to humiliate the hearer. Here, a speaker often fails to observe a maxim without any intention to mislead the hearer. By flouting the maxim, a speaker generates an implicature and wants the hearer to look for the meaning within his/her utterance.

The dominant use of flouting of the maxims in this TV series gives the story line significant contribution. It makes the TV series full of conflicts between the major characters. This, as a result, makes the audience more interested to watch the TV series. Therefore, the data analysis of flouting the maxims in this TV series is to make the audience to know the context in order to understand the implicature of the utterances. The audience also need to have the ability to know the implied meaning within the utterance in most of the dialogue.

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done. However, it does not work as well as the speaker has expected. Instead, the hearer thinks the speaker really does something.

The other type of non-observance of the maxim which is opting out of the maxim, happens one time or 8% of the whole data. It can be seen in data 12. The speaker’s main reason for opting out of the maxim is to prevent the details of his

plans from being revealed. However, it does not work as well as the speaker has expected. Instead, the hearer is made to believe that the speaker really does something bad.

There is no case of infringing of the maxim in the data. A maxim is infringed due to the speaker’s imperfect linguistic performance. It can happen

because the speaker is a young child or foreign language learner. It can also happen because of the speaker’s nervousness, drunkenness, or excitement. Since

the characters in Brothers & Sisters are native speakers and mostly are adults, there is no imperfect linguistic performance. In addition, they are not heavy drinkers.

Suspending the maxim cannot be find in the data, either. A maxim is suspended because the circumstances and some cultural values or beliefs allow the suspension to happen. There are no events in the story that require the characters to suspend the maxim. Mostly, the characters are not the type of introvert people, so when they want to say anything they want, they will say it directly.

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speakers want to make an aliby. In addition, it is because the speaker wants to avoid being critized. It may also be done to avoid disagreement of the hearer.

In Brothers & Sisters drama series, especially season 3, I find the use of the non-observance of the maxims mostly heighten the conflict in the film. I find that one of the ways to make the conflict in a drama series is by using the non-observance of the maxims. For the researchers who are interested in analyzing the non-observance of the maxims, I would like to suggest that they analyze the other seasons of Brothers & Sisters.

As the writer of this thesis, I am fully aware that this research is far from perfection. Therefore, some suggestions are welcome to make this thesis better. I hope this research will give the readers more understanding about the Pragmatics, especially conversational implicature. Hopefully, this study can be a helpful reference for those who want to analyze a similar topic.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Text

Field, Sally. Brothers & Sisters Season 3. Dir. Greg Berlanti. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008. DVD

References

Channell, Joanna. “Pragmatics”. MED Magazine. n.p., August 2009. Web. 10

December 2014.

Martinovski, Biljana. “Pragmatics and Cognitive Semantics.” Introduction to

Pragmatics. n.p., n.d. Web. 26 November 2014.

Spector, Benjamin. “Maxims of Conversation.” Oxford Bibliographies. 28 May

2013. Web. 16 October 2015.

“Task A – What is Grice’s Cooperative Principle in Conversation”. Grice’s

Cooperative Principle. Ling 131: Language & Style. Web. 26 November

2014.