Flouting and Hedging Maxims found in The King’s Speech

ABSTRACT

Cooperative principle which is proposed by Grice will be applied by people to achieve effective communication. This cooperative principle is reflected in the four maxims; those are maxim of quantity, maxim of quality, maxim of relevance and maxim of manner. In fact, sometimes people deliberately disobey the maxims by flouting them, but is does not mean the speakers lead the hearer miscommunication. It creates a conversational implicature, instead. In addition, people usually try to adhere and elaborate the maxims by hedging their statement and hedging itself is sometimes used as politeness strategies in a social interaction. Here, the researcher observes The King’s Speech movie as the subject because the characters in this movie are indicated to flout and hedge their remark. Therefore, this research is conducted to investigate this phenomenon and how the utterances are flouted and hedged based on Grice’s theory.

This research is categorized as pragmatic study which uses descriptive qualitative approach. The source of the data in this research is an original CD (Compact Disc). In collecting the data, the researcher watches the movie to get general picture of data, identifies the potential data, determines and chooses the appropriate dialogue, identifies and organizes the data by underlining and highlighting, and arranges the selected data then lists which ones are frequently flouted and hedged. Further, the researcher uses Grice’s theory of conversational maxims in analyzing the data.

The results of this research show that the entire four maxims are flouted, but only three maxims are hedged by the characters in the movie. The most frequently flouted is the same with the most frequently hedged, it is quality maxim. The findings illustrate that the characters in the movie flout the maxim of quantity by uttering less or more informative than it is required, and exaggerating their remark. The quality maxim is flouted by saying something which has no adequate evidences, giving rhetorical question, using metaphor, and conveying untrue information. Further, the maxim of relevance is flouted by talking irrelevant topic which being discussed on. Then, the maxim of manner is flouted by making prolixity, obscurity, and ambiguity. Meanwhile, the speaker hedges the maxim of quantity when the information given is limited. The quality maxim is hedged by quoting someone’s statement and using degree of probability. Afterward, the maxim of relevance is hedged by giving a hint before changing one topic to another.

This research explores flouting and hedging maxims based on Grice’s theory and The King’s Speech movie as the subject. Therefore, it is suggested for the next researchers who want to conduct research in the same field to use Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory, because that theory is more elaborate in implicature. The next researchers can analyze different subject of research, such as a conversation in daily life which is not conducted by a script.