The Flouting and Hedging of Grice’s Conversational Maxims in ”Nanny Mcphee and The Big Bang” movie

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how the utterances are flouted and hedged based on Grice’s theory of conversational maxim. Practically, people will apply the cooperative principle that is reflected in the four maxims of conversation to achieve effective communication. They are quantity maxim, quality maxim, relevance maxim, and the manner maxim. In fact, people sometimes deliberately disobey the maxims by flouting them, but it does not lead into miscommunication. It gives rise to conversational implicature, instead. In addition, people usually hedge the maxim as one of politeness strategies and methods to observe the maxims. Therefore, this study is conducted to investigate this phenomenon. Particularly, this study observes the manners of the characters in Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang movie in flouting and hedging conversational maxims.

This study is categorized as pragmatic study which uses descriptive qualitative approach. The data of this study is taken from the script of the film downloaded from the credible website. To collect the data, the writer watched the movie, read the script several times to get better understanding, looked for the utterances that flout and hedge the maxim, chose the appropriate dialog that will be presented in the paper, and recheck whether they reflect to flouting and hedging the maxims or no. Further, in analyzing the data, the writer uses Grice’s theory of conversational maxims.

The findings of this study show that the entire four maxims are flouted and hedged by the characters in the film. The most frequently flouted maxim is the same with the most frequently hedged maxim, it is quality maxim. The frequency of flouted and hedged maxims are 32% and 60% respectively. The findings illustrate that characters in the film flout the maxim of quantity by talking something less or more than the situation requires, exaggerating their statement, and doing repetition on their remarks. In addition, the quality maxim is flouted by saying untrue information, saying something which the characters lack of sufficient evidences, giving rhetorical question, and using metaphor. Further, the relevant maxim is flouted by being out of the topic and the manner maxim is flouted by making obscurity, ambiguity, prolixity, and incompleteness on their statement. On the other hand, the quantity maxim is hedged by giving information which is not as precise as the information is provided and when the knowledge about the information given is limited. The quality maxim then is hedged by quoting someone’s statement, being irresponsible completely to the truth of the statement, and expressing the assertion by using degree of probability. Afterward, the relevant maxim is hedged by giving a hint before changing into another topic. The last, manner maxim is hedged by avoiding obscurity and unnecessary prolixity of the utterance

It is suggested for the next researchers who want to conduct a study in the same field to use Leech theory of politeness maxim which consists of tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation maxim, modesty maxim, maxim of agreement, and maxim of sympathy. They can use different object of study.