Flouting Maxim in Chris Watts’s Interrogation: Pragmatics Study

International Journal of English Linguistics, Literature, and Education (IJELLE) Vol. 5, No. 2, December 2023, pp. 126-137 ISSN 2686-0120 (print), 2686-5106 (online) 126 http://journal.univetbantara.ac.id/index.php/ijelle/index Flouting Maxim in Chris Watts’s Interrogation: Pragmatics Study Vannya Choirunnisa a,1,*, Ervina CM Simatupang b,2 a English Department, Faculty of Humanities Widyatama University *; 2 * Corresponding Author 1 Received 20 November 2023; accepted 9 December 2023; published 24 January 2024 ABSTRACT This research aims at analyzing the flouting of maxims and its reasons during Chris Watts’s interrogation. Descriptive qualitative method was used as a research design, and video entitled "FBI Interrogation of Chris Watts (BEST AUDIO)" on "True Psych Ward" YouTube channel was used as a source of data of this research. The transcript text of the interrogator's and Chris Watts' utterances was used as the research instrument. Results revealed twenty-five (25) data containing all the types of flouting maxims due to Grice's Cooperative Principles. On one hand, the results showed that there are 8 utterances containing flouting maxim of quality (32%), 6 flouting maxim of quantity (24%), 8 flouting maxim of relevance (32%), and 3 maxim of manner (12%). The most dominant types were flouting maxim of relevance and quality, indicating Chris often provided irrelevant information from the topic, and was not in accordance with facts and data. On the other hand, some reasons appeared to be Chris Watts’s reason to flout the maxims, which are 10 data of hiding the truth (40%), 6 data of saving face (24%), 4 data of building one’s believe (16%), 3 data of satisfying the hearer (12%), and 2 data of convincing the hearer (8%). KEYWORDS Pragmatics Cooperative Principles Flouting Maxim Interrogation This is an openaccess article under the CC–BY-SA license 1. Introduction Language is an instrument of communication that is used to transfer information, express opinions, feelings, and emotions. Moreover, with language people also can share ideas, imagination, and thoughts. According to Dianita & Sofyan (2023), language can also be referred to as rules that result from all aspects of a situation, such as who the speaker and listener are, where the language is used or occurs, and the speaker's intentions and mood. Dealing with that, Marlisa & Hidayat (2020) also stated, “language is an essential tool for both written and spoken communication”. Therefore, language cannot be separated from humans because of its function to communicate. Communication can be successful and effective if the speaker expresses what the speaker wants to convey well, the hearer can interpret it correctly, and there is the same understanding between the speaker and the hearer. That way, Simatupang & Fathonah (2020) said that it means that the speaker has ability to convey his or her thought and the listener can understand what the message of the speaker’s utterance. Due to this, people should know the context of what they are talking about. In linguistics, there is pragmatics. Pragmatics examines the relationship between language and its context. “Pragmatics help participants of speech acts to avoid ambiguity because the meaning of utterances relies on how the utterances are spoken” (Simatupang et al., 2021). Ibrahim et al., (2018) also state that "Pragmatics as a concern with the research of meaning as communicated by a speaker or writer and interpreted by a listener or reader.” There are limitations of pragmatics according to Yule; Pragmatics is the research of speaker intentions, contextual meaning, how to convey more than is said, and the expression of a distance relationship (January & Ellidia, 2021) doi :10.32585/ijelle.v5i02.4892 127 International Journal of English Linguistics, Literature, and Education (IJELLE) Vol. 5, No. 2, December 2023, pp. 126-137 ISSN 2686-0120 (print), 2686-5106 (online) In connection with that, Hendar & Anshari (2021) said that “A communication may run very well when there is mutual understanding for both participantsinvolved in the communication process.” To achieve good communication, there must be good cooperation between the speaker and the hearer. In Pragmatics, this is included in the principle of cooperation, also known as the Cooperative Principle (CP). Grice as cited by Nur (2022), states that the Cooperative Principle says, "make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of talk exchange in which you are engaged." Thus, the cooperative principle requires speech partners to convey something that is informative and can be easily understood, and is in accordance with the topic being discussed along with existing evidence. In line with the Cooperative Principle, Grice completed his theory with the theory of Conversational Maxim to make communication more effective. Grice divides conversational maxims into four groups, including maxims of quantity, quality, relevance, and manner. The first is maxim of quantity. As stated by Cutting in Nuzulia (2020) the rule of maxim of quantity is ‘speakers should be as informative as it required, that they should give neither too little information nor too much.’ Thus, it is important to provide information that is factual, adequate, not exaggerated, and as informative as possible. The second maxim is that the speaker is not allowed to say anything that contradicts facts and data, which is maxim of quality. Two rules that support the maxim of quality are; don't say what you believe is wrong, and don't say things that lack evidence. In other words, maxim quality occurs when a speaker says something that is true based on evidence and would not say anything that he or she believes to be false (Sidabutar & Johan, 2022). Next is maxim of relevance, it requires the participants to say something that is relevant or related to the topic being discussed or what has been said before. According to Grice in Nuzulia (2020), “maxim of relevance is the rule of these types that to give relevant answers or information we should pay attention to the relation in the topic involved, this is ‘be relevant.” Last is maxim of manner, it is a kind of maxim that does not allow the speaker to convey something in a long way, use words that have multiple meanings, or speak vaguely or irregularly. In relation with this, Grice describes the maxim of manner into four specific rules. Those are; avoid obscurity of expression, avoid ambiguity, be brief, be orderly (Clarisa & Susylowati, 2021). Since conversational maxims exist, communication will run smoothly and there will be mutual understanding among the speaker and the listener. In order to achieve the purpose of communication, the speaker will try to abide by the principle of cooperation, but in some occasions, for a certain purpose, the speaker will say something against the principle of cooperation, which also (...truncated)