Flouting of Grice’s Maxims in The Age of Adaline Movie
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ISSN: 2302-920X
Jurnal Humanis, Fakultas Ilmu Budaya Unud
Vol 18.2 Pebruari 2017: 278-285
Flouting of Grice’s Maxims in The Age of Adaline Movie
Gusti Ayu Indah Lestari1*, I Gusti Ayu Gde Sosiowati2, Ni Putu Ayu Asty Senja Pratiwi3
[123]English Department, Faculty of Arts, Udayana University 1[e-mail: [email protected]] 2[e-mail: [email protected]] 3[e-mail: [email protected]]
*Corresponding Author
Abstrak
Tujuan Penelitian ini adalah untuk mengidentifikasi jenis-jenis pelanggaran maksim dan untuk menganalisis makna yang tersirat dari pelanggaran maksim tersebut di film yang berjudul “The Age of Adaline”. Sumber data diambil dari sebuah film yang bejudul “The Age of Adaline” dimana banyak terdapat ujaran yang melanggar maksim didalamnya. Metode deskritif kualitatif digunakan untuk menganalisa data. Teori yang digunakan untuk mengidentifikasi jenis-jenis pelanggaran maksim dan makna yang tersirat disalamnya dikemukakan oleh Grice (1975). Hasil penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa terjadi pelanggaran semua jenis maksim di film ini. Terdapat sembilan percakapan yang melanggar maksim. Secara umum, ada lima alasan para tokoh pemain di film ini melanggar aturan maksim. Diantaranya; Tokoh ingin menjelaskan sesuatu dengan lebih lengkap, tokoh mengharapkan sesuatu dari lawan bicaranya, tokoh mencoba menyembunyikan sesuatu, tokoh ingin bercanda, atau tokoh ingin menghindari pertanyaan ataupun hanya ingin mengakhiri percakapan.
Kata kunci: pelanggaran, maksim grice, makna tersirat, film
Theoretically, in communication, people should apply the cooperative principle reflected in the maxims of conversation by Grice (1975). In his book entitled Logic and Conversation, he proposed four Conversational Maxims; they are Maxims of Quality, Maxim of Quantity, Maxim of Relation, and Maxim of Manner. Grice argues that our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks. Thus, the Conversational Maxims are important as a Cooperative Principle in conversation, which will make the speakers talk adequately, truthfully, relevantly, and orderly and also make the conversation go on smoothly.
Moreover, speakers do not always abide the four maxims mentioned above.
People do not always say what they mean. Sometimes they mean more than they
actually say and sometimes they mean something different from what they actually say. In other words, they often flout the maxims. Flouting the maxims, according to Grice (1975:30), means that speaker blatantly and deliberately fails to fulfill the certain maxims because the speaker wants to express the implicit meaning hidden behind the literal meaning. The implicit meaning hidden behind the flouting is called implicature which refers to what a speaker can imply, suggest or mean differently from what is literally said.
Nowadays, movies become huge reference either for entertainment or education. Movie is a type of visual communications using moving pictures and sound to tell stories or inform (help people to learn). A movie entitled “The Age of Adaline” was analyzed by exploring the flouting maxims which focus on the conversation among the characters of the movie. It is interesting to use “The Age of Adaline” movie as the object of analysis because linguistically, the uniqueness of the utterances of this movie contains many flouting maxim. This movie causes the audience to become mature in thinking. Since Grice’s work can be used to analyze and understand conversational interaction, there is an interesting idea to see how flouting of maxims is used in romantic movie and how the character tries to hide their secret and feeling by flouting the maxims. Moreover, the present research has different context and object. This study investigated the flouting maxims in movie entitled “The Age of Adaline” that contains conversation, and the data were taken from the utterance of the characters in the movie. Furthermore, most people usually pay more attention to the sentence structure in speech or spoken language because it will give the direct response from the hearers. The aims of this study are to find out the flouting maxims and to analyze the implicit meaning of flouting maxims produced by the character in The Age of Adaline movie.
Based on the explanation given above, the problems are formulated as follows:
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1. What maxims are flouted in The Age of Adaline movie?
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2. What is the implicit meaning of flouting maxims produced by the character in The Age of Adaline movie?
In accordance to the problems above, the aims of this study are:
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1. To find out the flouting maxims in The Age of Adaline movie.
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2. To analyze the implicit meaning of flouting maxims produced by the character in The Age of Adaline movie
There are three aspects of research method applied; they are data source, method and technique of collecting data, and method and technique of analyzing data.
Data source was chosen in order to support the validity of the study. The data were taken from a movie entitled The Age of Adaline. This movie was chosen as an object of this study because it contains a lot of Flouting maxims. Moreover, it was never discussed previously in any undergraduate theses as the object of the study. Ultimately, the complexity of the meaning of the utterances uttered by the speaker were very worth analyzing especially in a movie with Drama-romantic genre.
In conducting this study, the method used in collecting the data was observation since the data were obtained from the spoken source like film. There were three steps taken in collecting the data. There were some steps to collect the data. The first step was watching the movie to observe the conversation between characters in “The Age of Adaline” movie. The second step was seeing the transcription or written form of the utterances in the movie by downloading the subtitle of the movies from internet. The third step, the utterance in conversation related to flouting Maxims was noted down and listed systematically to be easily analyzed.
The method used in this study is the descriptive qualitative method. After collecting the relevant data, there were several steps of analyzing data. The analysis of the data in this study was started by identifying which conversations were classified as flouting maxims. The next step was describing the context of situation of the conversation in the movie. Then, this study was analyzing why the data were classified into flouting maxims based on Grice’s theory (1975). The last step was analyzing the implicit meaning of flouting maxims or analyzing what actually wanted to be conveyed by the characters through the flouting maxims that they produced in the movie.
The finding included Flouting Maxim of Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner. The findings were shown first then followed by analysis and the implicit meaning of the Maxims flouted by the characters.
In this analysis, there arenine conversations regarded as Flouting of Grice’s Maxims found in the movie ‘The Age of Adaline”.
Adaline : “What is it that you’re cooking?”
Ellis Jones : “Well, it’s a delicacy which, to be honest, is not for everyone. So…
[Looking at Adaline] I hope you like it.”
In data 1, it was found that Ellis clearly flouts maxims of Quantity. Adaline asks a simple question to Ellis about what he is cooking at that time. But Ellis says a statement that is too much informative than is required by saying “to be honest, is not for everyone. So, I hope you like it”. In the conversation, the response “To be honest” is in fact not needed. Obviously, the speaker should be honest or informative enough when giving a response. In addition, he adds additional information by saying that his cooking is not for everyone and a hope that Adaline would like it. She does not actually need information about it. By flouting the maxims, Ellis says more words to show something, which means that he wants to show her feeling, expecting that Adaline knows his feeling from his saying that. He also hopes to make a romantic ambience.
Ellis Jones : How is she?
Doctor : We've just run a series of tests and don't see any long term damage.
It's quite remarkable, in fact.1
Ellis Jones : Is she awake? Can I go see her?
Doctor : She's exhausted but you might be able to get in a few words.2
Ellis Jones : Okay. Thank you
It is clearly visible that the doctor flouts maxims of Quantity twice. The answers provided by the doctor seem to flout the maxim of quantity, since more information than required is given. The reasons of giving much information here is that the doctor tries to explain about Adaline’s condition completely. She is also expecting that Ellis will understand and relief because Adaline’s condition is fine.
: What's up pussycat?
: Need a ride?
: What's it look like?
In the conversation, Kikki flouts at least three maxims; there are Maxims of Quantity, Quality and Relation. If it is carefully investigated, what is said by Kikki is classified as rhetorical question.Based on Grice (1995), when someone says a rhetorical question, automatically she/he flouts the maxim of Quality. She flouts the maxims because she just wants to tease her brother.
Ellis : You should have told me you were taking the bus. We would have picked
you up at the station.
Kikki : I stopped using telephones two months ago.
Ellis : Any particular reason?
Kikki : To protest the involvement of telecom firms in the development of high-
tech weapon systems.
Ellis : Oh. [to Adaline] Kikki graduated from Berkeley.
Adaline : Ah.
Kikki : [to Ellis] So this is the new one, huh?
Kikki : Have you done him yet?
Adaline : [pause] yes, ten minutes ago, right where you're sitting.
In data 4, Kikki flouts the maxims of Quantity. She just wants to be brief by directly providing information about the condition which makes it impossible to tell Ellis to pick her up on the bus station. On the other hand, Adaline flouts the maxims of Quantity and Quality. She just wants to tease Kikki because Ellis’ sister asks a very
personal question, so she is trying to make her shocked or just tease her by saying something bizarre.
Ellis Jones : Wait!
Adaline : There you go again. Putting your hand in places it doesn’t belong
Ellis Jones : How do we get in touch?
Adaline : Happy New Year, Ellis.
Adaline flouts the Maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner. The implicit meaning of her response is that she does not wish to answer his question and wants to end the conversation.
Adaline : The civic archives, please.
Cab Driver : May take a while, Market is jammed.
Adaline : Okay then, please take California to Hyde.
Cab Driver : There's construction on Hyde.
Adaline : Why don't you stay on this, take this to Gough, Gough to Bush, Bush to
Polk, Polk to Grove, and then just leave me on the corner of Market.
Cab Driver : [turns to look at Adaline] you want my job?
Adaline : [smile] you never know.
Based on the conversation above, the cab driver flouts maxims of relation, quantity and quality. Because of being amazed at Adaline’s knowledge about route, he is offering his job to Adaline which is meant to tease Adaline. Moreover, Adaline flouts the maxims of Quantity and Relation. She knows that the driver only wants to tease her. So she tries to hide the fact by giving a response that the driver will never know who Adaline actually is.
William Jones : Shouldn't they be here by now?
Kathy Jones : You clear the table. [Leaving William]
Kathy’s contribution fails to answer William’s question, and thus seems to flout at least the maxims of Quantity, Quality and Relation. She does it to avoid the next possible questions and just to end the conversation or to avoid talking about a particular topic.
William : Come on, want something to eat?
Kathy : Yeah, yeah, I made cheesecake.
Ellis : We're kinda tired actually. I think we'll head up, if that's okay with you? Kikki : Me too
Kathy : Really? All right.
In the conversation above, Ellis’ utterance is not relevant to the previous question.It means he flouts the Maxims of Relation. He also flouts the maxims of Quantity, because his answer is more informative than required.The implicit meaning why Ellis flouts the maxim is because he wants to keep his parents feeling and being polite. It is not because he does not want to have dinner with them, but he just wants to have a time together with Adaline after the trip.
Adaline : Why did you name your Comet after my mother?
William : If my calculations were correct, that turned out to be wrong, it would've been the closest approach to Earth of any comet in 200 years. In other words, like your mother, a near miss.
In the conversation above, William flouts maxims of Quantity and Manner. It is because his utterance is not as informative as required and too long-winded that causes the message to become blurring and hard to be understood by Adaline.In this case, the implicit meaning of flouting maxims here is thathe just wants to emphasize his close relationship with Adaline, but he is unable to make it clear and brief because there is a painful story behind it.
All maxims proposed by Grice (1975) are flouted in this movie. The data collected in this study show that Maxim of Quantity is flouted the most and Maxim of Manner as the most rarely flouted maxim in this movie. it can be seen that some of the character's utterance in the conversation contains more that one kind of Flouting of Grice’s Maxims.
Generally, there are some reasons why they flout the maxims such as: (1) the speakers try to explain about something by giving much information and expecting that the hearer will understand more about the topic; (2) the speakers want to expect something; (3) the speakers want to convince the addressee; (4) the speakers desire to cover or to hide something; and (5) the speakers want to avoid talking about something that is embarrassing or just to end the conversation. By knowing the cooperativeness, the addressee including the audience is capable of knowing the implicit meaning of given utterances which flout certain maxims.
Hymes, Dell. 1972. Toward Ethnography of Communication: The Analysis of Communication Events. In Giglioli 1972: 22-24.
Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. UK: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, John R. 1996. Ch. 10. A Taxonomy of Illocutionaru Acts. A. P Martinich (Ed).
The Philosophy of Language (pp. 141-155). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yule, George. 1996. Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press.
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