The Implicature Used by Selena Gomez In Zach Sang Show Related to Mental Health and Finding Happiness Issues
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https://ojs.unud.ac.id/index.php/linguistika/
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24843/ling.2023.v30.i01.p02
LINGUISTIKA, MARET 2023
p-ISSN: 0854-9613 e-ISSN: 2656-6419
Vol. 30 No.1
The Implicature Used by Selena Gomez In Zach Sang Show Related to Mental Health and Finding Happiness Issues
Ni Wayan Sunariasih1, Putu Lirishati Soetama2
English Department, Udayana University, Indonesia1, 2
e-mail: niwayansunariasih100@gmail.com1, lirishati_soethama@unud.ac.id2
Abstract—The objective of this research is to find out and analyze the types of conversational implicature and its function used by Selena Gomez in Zach Song Show’s interview on 2016 discussing about her new song and mental health issues. The method used to conduct this research is descriptive qualitative method. This study used the theory of cooperative principle by Grice and the function of implicature by Levinson. There are two types of conversational implicature occured in the interview; those are generalized conversational implicature and particularized conversational implicature. This study also found that Selena Gomez mostly use the implicature in order to obtain two functions namely ability to obtain a functional explanation that is important to language realization but is not covered by descriptive and providing a firm and explicit explanation about the possibility that language users can grasp messages even when what is spoken differs from what is meant.
Keywords: Implicature, function, maxim, cooperative principle, context.
Abstrak—Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui dan menganalisis jenis-jenis implikatur percakapan dan fungsinya yang digunakan oleh Selena Gomez dalam wawancara Zach Song Show tahun 2016 yang membahas tentang lagu barunya dan masalah kesehatan mental. Metode yang digunakan untuk melakukan penelitian ini adalah metode deskriptif kualitatif. Penelitian ini menggunakan teori prinsip kerja sama oleh Grice dan fungsi implikatur oleh Levinson. Ada dua jenis implikatur percakapan yang terjadi dalam wawancara; yaitu implikatur percakapan umum dan implikatur percakapan khusus. Penelitian ini juga menemukan bahwa Selena Gomez sebagian besar menggunakan implikatur untuk memperoleh dua fungsi yaitu kemampuan memperoleh penjelasan fungsional yang penting untuk realisasi bahasa tetapi tidak tercakup oleh deskriptif dan memberikan penjelasan yang tegas dan eksplisit tentang kemungkinan pengguna bahasa dapat menangkap pesan bahkan ketika apa yang diucapkan berbeda dari apa yang dimaksudkan.
Kata kunci: Implikatur, fungsi, maksim, prinsip kerja sama, konteks.
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Language has played important role in human life as the mean of communication. It is needed by all people in interacting to others within society. Chaer (2004:12) stated that language is a system such as phonological system, morphological system, syntactic system, and lexicon system. Along with that, Hadi (2011) with his study defined language as a system of such a unit that produced by human being to speak or convey information. Communication is one of the way people gain their social life, gather ideas, sharing stories, and also build social interaction. They cannot be separated from communication.
However, in certain situation it can be found some communicational misunderstanding. It depends on what topic people are discussing about or what context they engage to. This difficulty can be handled by the understanding of pragmatics. Pragmatic is a study that focused in understanding human communication and discourse. It has many aspects namely deixis, speech act, and also conversational implicature. "Pragmatic is concerned with the interpretation of language meaning in context,", according to Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2003. Pragmatics also obliterates implicature, or latent meaning.
In pragmatics and discourse, implication refers to something that is part of the dialogue. There are two sorts of Implicature, according to Grice: Conventional Implicature and Conversational Implicature. The implicature is a notion that is frequently hidden beneath the speech produced and is not a direct part of it (Parker, 1962: 21; Wijana, 1996: 37). What is expressed in this circumstance differs from what is implied. As a result, according to Wright (1975:379), what is meant is not the same as what is expressed.
Conversational implicature, according to Levinson (1992:97), is the single most significant concept in pragmatics. In an instance of conversational implicature, the listener must assume that the speaker is not breaking one of the conversational maxims, such as relevance,
formativeness, or clarity. In fact, in everyday language, this is a contradiction. It allows for additional development of the linguistic phenomenon through the use of implicature.
According to Levinson, the problem of conversational implicature is the most important in pragmatics research. It occurs because the issue of conversational implicature is intimately linked to the actual use of language, both verbal and nonverbal (Edmondson, 1981: 38). Every statement is usually assumed to have a definite meaning. Grice (1975: 44) refers to this meaning of the speech as implicatum, which is subsequently articulated with the phrase non-natural meaning. While implicature is the term used to describe the symptoms. In terms of meaning, this term is related to the word implication, which denotes intention, comprehension, or involvement (Echols and Hassan, 1999: 313).
Conversational implicature is implicature that occurs with non-temporary common words or common knowledge. Conversational Implicitature is implicature that occurs in a transitory discussion. In general, everyone knows and understands what a case means or implies. In order to comprehend the implications, the listener or reader must have prior experience and knowledge. There is a set of assumptions that cover and control the actions of conversation as a speech act, according to Grice (1975: 45). Cooperative principles, according to Grice's study, are a collection of assumptions that guide someone in dialogue. Each speaker must follow the four maxims of conversation in order to carry out cooperative principles in the conversation: (1) maxim of quantity, (2) maxim of quality, (3) maxim of relevance, and (4) maxim of manner (Parker, 1986: 23).
Implicature can be applied both written and spoken language. However, it can be initiated directly from someone’s speech. Thus, implicature is used in some speeches as somehow people want listener to catch their intention or the meaning they want to interpret in another way. Hence, implicature can also be used by famous figure in entertainment such as Selena Gomez.
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Selena Marie Gomez, an American singer, actress, and producer, was born on July 22, 1992. Media publications have described her as a "triple threat." Gomez supports a variety of causes. She is noted for frequently advocating mental health awareness and for her support of the LGBT community. She was one of several celebrities who participated in Billboard's 30 Days of Pride in June 2016, writing a "love letter" to the LGBTQ community. Therefore, she also appeared in Zach Sang Show in the topic entitled “Selena Gomez talks about new music, mental health, and finding happiness”. Thus, her interview in this platform gained a lot of attention due to its discussion and Gomez’s message to the people. In it, she also used some implicature.
There’s also other study that previously analyze the use of implicatures by public figure. It was Fhitri and friends (2020) in their article entitled “Implicature in Barrack Obama’s Presidential Candidacy Announcement Speech” that found there are forty-two implicatures in Barack Obama's campaign speech's thirty-eight teachings. Furthermore, each implicature serves a distinct role and purpose. Their study employed the listening method and strategy of listening to the free and speaking properly at the basic stage of the material. The pragmatic matching method was employed by the researcher during the analysis.
In recent cases, there were a lot of studies also investigate the use of implicature by famous figure. First, the study done by Khairumas and friends (2020) entitled “Conversational Implicature in Beauty and Beast Movie directed by Bill Condon” where they discussed types of conversational implicature and maxim violation in the movie. Their study had found that most common types of conversational implicature used in the movie was generalized implicature. It also investigated that the maxim violated in the movie
were maxim of quality, relation, and manner where maxim of quantity is the most violated. To support their study, the theory proposed by P.H Grice was used in this study.
Moreover, Amrullah (2015) also studied deeper about the use and intention of implicature in a discourse. He had found that implicature is a mean of communication that cannot be separated from human life. He also concluded from several documentation investigation that Conventional implicature is not well explored by pragmatics experts since it is not particularly intriguing (Brown and Yule, 1983: 31 cited in Amrullah, 2015). He also wrote in her analysis that implicature has four major function according to levinson. According to Levinson (1991: 97-100), implicature serves at least four purposes in pragmatics research: (1) the ability to obtain a functional explanation that is important to language realization but is not covered by descriptive linguistics theory, (2) providing a firm and explicit explanation about the possibility that language users can grasp messages even when what is spoken differs from what is meant, (3) the ability to simplify the semantic explanation from the difference relations among clauses despite the clauses being associated with the same words structure, and (4) the ability to simplify the semantic explanation from the difference relations among clauses despite the clauses being associated with the same words structure.
On the other hand, Hadi (2018) had found that implicature can also be used in newspaper column. His study entitled ‘A Pragmatic Analysis of Implicatures Used in the Sport Column of the Jakarta Post Newspaper” found that the most commonly used implicatures in the Jakarta Post headlines from June 2013 are conventional, conversational, and figurative implicatures. Conventional implicature tells the non-truth conditional in The Jakarta Post newspaper's sport column which inferences are not drawn from superordinate pragmatic principles such as
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maxims, but are merely connected by convention of particular lexical pieces or expressions. Conversational implicature can also be used to express a situation in a specific or unique context.
There are a few other reasons for the researcher to investigate implicature. First, implicature is critical in many elements of life, including political, social, and cultural dimensions, as well as in the process of daily interaction, because the user will be safe and will not lose his face if he uses it. Second, implicature is critical in communication, particularly in the news media, because without it, the commentator or writer would be without protection. Third, implicature is a tool for maintaining a positive interaction between reader and writer or speaker and listener. Finally, implicature, which is a component of language, can be found in both spoken and written language.
In this research, the data were found online in YouTube online platform of Zach Sang Show available in https://youtu.be/E11KmdkyGeo released and published on October, 2016. The interview entitled “Selena Gomez talks new music, mental health, and finding happiness” has 41:17 minutes duration. The interview was conducted with two persons namely Zach as the presenter and also interviewer also Don Zolot with Selena Gomez as the guest.
The method that used in this study was qualitative method. This method was used as it helped to analyze the interview in a systematic and critical way. In collecting the data, this study used transcribing method using note-taking technique. Transcribing method was use because the data in this study is in form of spoken direct communication which needs to be transcribe into written form first. In doing so, note-taking technique was used to highlight and point out the implicature expression used by Selena Gomez.
Moreover, to analyze the data, this study used descriptive qualitative method. Because this study does not involve percentages, averages, chisquare, or other statistical computations, the writer becomes the primary instrument in the study. Afterward, the analysis of this study was elaborated in form of description using informal method of presenting analysis.
Therefore, the theory used in this research proposed by Levinson and Grice. First, Grice theory of cooperative principle. Grice (1975) uses the term implicature to describe what a speaker can indicate, suggest, or mean in addition to what the speaker actually says. The concept of conversation implicature, which is formed from a general principle of conversational plus a set of maxims that speakers generally follow, is of far greater importance to discourse analysis. The basic concepts are known as the Cooperative Principle. According to his observations. According to this view, a language's sender must adhere to four maxims: quantity, quality, relation, and method.
Second, the theory of Function of Implicature by Levinson also used in this study. As mentioned previously, according to Levinson (1991: 97-100), implicature serves at least four purposes in pragmatics research: (1) the ability to obtain a functional explanation that is important to language realization but is not covered by descriptive linguistics theory, (2) providing a firm and explicit explanation about the possibility that language users can grasp messages even when what is spoken differs from what is meant, (3) the ability to simplify the semantic explanation from the difference relations among clauses despite the clauses being associated with the same words structure, and (4) the ability to simplify the semantic explanation from the difference relations among clauses despite the clauses being associated with the same words structure.
In this section, the analysis was presented in form of description divided into two parts namely the conversational and conventional implicatures used by Selena Gomez and its
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function when she talks about mental health and finding happiness.
Data 1
(01:39-02.00)
Zach : First question, did you really shoot
video on an iPhone?
Selena : Yeah
Zach : ‘Cause it looks amazing
Selena : Thank you, is that wild?
Zach : What kind of iPhone do you use?
Cause I never get it right
Selena : No, it’s the new on and it actually ended up being something cool. We just got a relationship with Apple and they thought that it would be fun to try. It was honestly just an experiment safe at work and we got to shoot both music videos with the iPhone. It was weird but it was cool like you, we taped an iphone to the ground and you walk over it then we had them kind of taped around.
In this conversation, Zach mentioned how amazed he was about the making and result of Selena’s new music video song ‘lose you to love me’. In doing so, he also asked about the iPhone Selena used to record that wonderful scene tone mv because he was not sure what iPhone type it was. However, in answering the question, Selena violate maxim of quantity by answering more than what it is required. She added her opinion that disagreeing Zach on how amazing the music video is.
Thus, while explaining the music video, Selena confest contradiction. She said ‘it was weird but it was cool like you, we taped an iPhone to the ground and you walk over it’. The adjective weird is actually relate to how uncommon that people create a music video by just using an iPhone instead of proper camera. Moreover, it is also along with her statement saying taped an iPhone to the ground and walk over it. It was the weirdest thing people usually to to an iPhone. However, she contradicted the statement by also saying that it was cool. Weird and cool have opposite meaning. They don’t even collocate or having similar
interpretation semantically. But Selena violate the maxim instead by saying it weird but cool.
Selena, instead of saying it was weird and cool, she just giving contradiction to her statement. The word 'but' is used as a conjunction. Grice proposed this in relation to the core statement in a phrase, which can include conjunctions like: additionally, but, therefor, on the other hand, or so. As a result, conventional is characterized in general by its content, which is descriptive (only affects the value of truth) and indicative (produces implicature) (Carston, 2002: 107-108). Hence, it can be say that Selena use conventional implicature to emphasis her feeling about her mv song.
Data 2
(02.43-02.48)
Selena : That’s cool. I mean hey I had a lot of help so I’m not trying to sit here and say I recorded this on an iPhone. No.
Zach : No, it was Connor
Selen : It was Connor
In this situation, Selena was still talking about how amazing her song’s production which only using iPhone to record all the entire music video. However, without any question that relate, Selena just stated that ‘it’s cool, I mean hey I had a lot of helps so I’m not trying to sit here and say I recorded this on an iPhone, that was Connor.
Connor is the director of her music video and here Selena violating maxim of relevance. Instead of talking back to Zach about how the process of the recording that just use iPhone, Selena chose first to state that she is not there to say it’s all made by iPhone but rather she mentioned the name of the person behind the production, -Connor.
Hence, it can be identified that Selena violate maxim of quality and relevance. But, she did it in purpose to express and added that there is a lot of people engage in the making process of her music video. She wanted to emphasised that she worked not by herself but by the help of people that she adore and appreciate so much.
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Moreover, this implicature was arised without even Zach leading any specific topic given to Selena. It was likely Selena that add some additional information. That’s why this can be recognize as part of generalized conversational implicature. Generalized conversational
implicature is the implicature that arise without any particular context and it does not contain special knowledge to calculate additional meaning.
Data 3
(03.02-03.34)
Zach : Who are you talking to in that song? Are-
Selena : We talking to every girl that’s felt what I felt. You know that moment when you just kind of reach that point and you just wanna be like ‘I’m actually, I’m actually good’ and I feel good. And that’s what it felt like for me because we wrote ‘lose you to love me’ first and then I mean I thought we’ve had probably 20 songs or so that I had collected over the years. And then I think something happened this year that just really special it just started pouring out of me and I got to work with this amazing writers I always work with. (mentioning names)
In this conversation, it is clearly seen that Selena is using a conversational implicature. In general, everyone knows and understands what a case means or implies. In order to comprehend the implications, the listener or reader must have prior experience and knowledge. Consider the following conversation when Zach asking the person that Selena talked about in her song, she cut Zach question and directly answer it is for every girl who felt the same as she was.
Unfortunately, it’s been broadly known that Selena released the song right after the announcement of her ex’s married and the lyric of the song also close to the story of her relationship previously. People in the world knew that this song
is a part of her own feeling that might be felt by other girls.
Moreover, there Selena also mentioned that she actually had more than 20 songs but ended up releasing ‘love you to love me’ because in that year something she considered special had happened. It was a basic statement for a promotion but actually it has a contradiction. Her song is about heartbreak but she called it a special moment in life rather than saying it’s a sad or bad or even experimental. She used to obey the cooperative principle.
First in term of maxim quantity, Zach was only asking her about the addresser of the song but Selena’s explanation can be seen way too much than the information needed for Zach. However, the flow of her speech and reasons can be seemingly following the maxim of relevance in which she added the information that related to the addresser of the question, who are you talking to and why.
However, ideals are not always to be followed. As a result, transgressions of such cooperative ideals are discovered during a dialogue. Violation of these criteria does not imply that the conversation has failed. These infractions may be intended by the speaker to achieve the speech implicature impact of what was said, such as to lie, have fun, or make a joke. And in Selena’s conversation here, she use it to change the direction of Zach’s question about her truly feeling for the song which is about her ex.
Therefore, it can be said that the function of this implicature by Selena is providing a firm and explicit explanation about the possibility that language users can grasp messages even when what is spoken differs from what is meant.
Data 4
(13.07-14.00)
Zach : How does therapy help your music because I feel they are there are different forms of maybe the same thing, right? You trust Justin and Julia, I mean to come out to this room and record
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Selena : I know, then they started with good for you
Zach : I all the way back to 2013 by the way Julie was on stars dance
Selena : That’s right, slow down. Yes, my girl yeah no. We have something magical, it’s the coolest feeling to be able to feel so save and talk about the thing that you’re wanting to talk about. But, yeah therapy helps big-times. I’m able to dissect things and alright go back in time. Alright this is family this is this this is that. I didn’t just,- I start having a better understanding of why I react a certain way and why do things and you know maybe I shouldn’t you know do certain things as well and then it helps me write it all out. So I think it’s all important. And sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t.
In this conversation, Selena was talking about her experience to have some mental health problem. Selena shared her ideas on how important the education about mental illness from primary school. Then, it led Zach to ask the relation between the therapy she took with her present life. Selena then added that the therapy is helpful in many ways even sometimes people can find still difficulty of mental problem even though they did take therapy.
In this way, Selena did not violate any maxims but she follow maxim of relevance. She answer as close and as suitable as possible to the question given by Zach. By doing so, Selena in this conversation shared an implicit meaning by stated “sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t” which imply the problematic way to have therapy.
Even though she stated that therapy is helpful, mental illness is not a simple thing that can be simply end and recover by therapy only. She wanted to shared that it can work sometimes but in certain condition they can face a difficulties that even therapy cannot handle. That’s how worst and danger mental illness is, Selena wanted to add. In doing so, she used conversational implicature.
Data 5
(20.42-21.29)
Selena : So, If we were living in…in..today, I don’t even think I’d be here probably not because that’s my dad you know so it’s something that I felt like I needed to be a part of and I think that it allowed people to see the humanity behind what’s going on. All you’re seeing is news and just then we’re actually just calling this people names that not even human. We’re calling people aliens and all the stuff and it and it’s just for me is confusing because I get it okay I get all that world actually don’t so but it’s more just about making people understand that these are kids that these are people who actually contributed to our country.
In this conversation, Selena Gomez were talking about her life and her story having mental health. She explained in a calm tone that it hard but she can handle it. She also talked about why it is important to start shared and educate people from very young age about mental problem. She shared her ideas that people started to learn emotion from primary school but then when they go to middle school, no one bravely talk about they are in pain and it leads to worst condition of mental health problem.
However, in explaining this situation, Selena Gomez used to violate maxim of quality by stating a conditional sentence if she is not in today’s life but the fact is she is there. Even though it is relate to the function on why people use conditional sentence, the context of her utterances seemed unrelated to the actual topic they were talking about.
Moreover, Selena also shared that ideas about how people being judgmental and like to underestimate someone else in today’s society. In doing so, Selena Gomez used particularized implicature where she shared ideas with context.
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This study is aimed to identify the types of maxim used by Selena Gomez in Zach Song Show’s interview and its function also implicit meaning. According to Grice, there are two kinds of implicature namely generalized implicature and particularized implicature. Generalized
conversational implicature is the implicature that arise without any particular context and it does not contain special knowledge to calculate additional meaning, while Particularized conversational implicature is implicature that emerges in a specific context and necessitates the use of specialized knowledge to calculate additional meaning.
In the analysis, it had found that Selena Gomez tended to violate maxim of quantity as she used to add more and more additional information than it needed but she maintained herself to keep in track with maxim of relevance. Moreover, she mostly used implicature to archieve two functions namely, the ability to obtain a functional explanation that is important to language realization but is not covered by descriptive and providing a firm and explicit explanation about the possibility that language users can grasp messages even when what is spoken differs from what is meant.
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