A study on flouting and hedging Maxims used by the main characters on “Daddy Day Camp"

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on analyzing flouting and hedging maxims used by the main characters on “Daddy Day Camp”. The purposes of this study are to investigate and analyze how the maxims are flouted and hedged by the main characters on “Daddy Day Camp”. By investigating and analyzing how the maxims are flouted and hedged, it is helpful to know which utterances are produced by the main characters that indicate as breaking the rules of Cooperative Principle.

Qualitative method is used in this study because the data are in the form of words rather than that of numbers and statistics. The data are taken from the utterances spoken by the main characters on “Daddy Day Camp”. After the data are collected, they are classified and analyzed based on Grice’s Cooperative Principle theory.

This study finds many maxims of cooperative principle which are flouted and hedged by the main characters on “Daddy Day Camp”, especially the maxim of quality and quantity. In the form of violating the maxim of quality, the utterances spoken by the main characters almost use ironic statements, metaphor statements and rhetorical questions. Moreover, in the form of violating maxim of quantity; the utterances spoken by the main characters almost use understatement, overstatement and tautologies.

In addition, there are also some utterances spoken by the main characters that flout the maxim of relevance and manner. The main characters flout the maxim of relevance when they answer the question which is irrelevant with the topic or they change their topic which is being talked at the time to another topic. Besides, the main characters flout the maxim of manner when they produce less information which makes the utterances seem ambiguous and difficult to understand.

On the other hand, this study also finds that the utterances spoken by the main characters hedge the maxims of cooperative principle. There are some utterances which hedge the maxim of quality and relevance because the utterances which are spoken by the main characters are not totally accurate but seem informative, well founded and relevant.