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Grice's Cooperative Principle And Kinds Of Pragmatics Theory By George Yule

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This chapter explains an overview of related theories, which are the pragmatics theory by George Yule including the Grice’s cooperative principle and kinds of maxim according to Grice.
2.1 Pragmatics
According to Yule (1996), pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). “Pragmatics focuses more on how we achieve meaning in a particular context, by considering such factors as how, where and when something is said, who says it, what is the relationship between the speaker and the listener, and how we understand the use of ambiguous language” (Baker and Ellece, 2011, p.100). In other words, pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning. Therefore, from the …show more content…

The British philosopher, H. Paul Grice’s in Thomas (1995) said “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.” (p.61). From this expert’s explanation, Co-operative Principle is a basic underlying assumption that people make when they speak to one another is that they are trying to cooperate with one another to construct meaningful conversations. The principle should be followed by a speaker and a hearer so the conversation can run smoothly.
Littlejohn and Foss (2007) mentioned that cooperation here does not necessarily mean expression of agreement, but it does mean that one is willing to contribute something in line with the purpose of the conversation (p.165). Besides that, Trask (2007) contributed that essentially, this principle makes people in conversation normally cooperate each other, when people say something and someone responds it, people assume that the response is intended as a maximally cooperative one, and they interpret it accordingly. Dynel (2009) also affirmed that cooperative principle is proposed as a tacit mutual agreement. In other words, people as speakers try to contribute meaningful, productive utterances to further the conversation. As listeners, people assume that our conversational partners are doing the same. On the other words, the conversation could be understood as an intended meaning; …show more content…

67). In other words, flouting the maxim of quality occurs when a speaker says something which needs to be considered as blatantly untrue. For example: Mark : ‘Great, that’s really great! That’s made my Christmas!’

Mark is a speaker who says something which is considered as blatantly untrue, because at that time, he got accident on the day, and he wishes it will be happiness day. He became upset that made him say something which is blatantly untrue. So, the speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim in order to lead the hearer to look for implied meaning or in this situation the hearer already knows that Mark says the opposite.

2.1.2.3 Flouting Maxim of Relation

Thomas (1996) said that “the maxim of relation is exploited by making a response or observation which is very obviously irrelevant to the topic in hand” (p.70). So, the speaker flouts the maxim of relation if his/her contribution is not relevant. For

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