A comparative study on conversational implicatures used in political electronic english and vietnamese articles on vietnam china island disputes

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ******************** A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATU

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-

GRADUATE STUDIES ********************

A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES USED IN SOME POLITICAL ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ELECTRONIC NEWSPAPER ARTICLES ON THE EVENTS RELATED

TO VIETNAM-CHINA ISLAND DISPUTE

ệ Việt)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English linguistics Code: 60220201

HANOI - 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-

GRADUATE STUDIES ********************

A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES USED IN SOME POLITICAL ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ELECTRONIC NEWSPAPER ARTICLES ON THE EVENTS RELATED

TO VIETNAM-CHINA ISLAND DISPUTE

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

I certify that this minor thesis entitled “A comparative study onConversational Implicatures used in political electronic English and Vietnamesearticles on Vietnam - China island disputes” submitted in partial fulfillment of therequirements for the degree of Master of Arts is the result of my work, exceptotherwise acknowledge and that this minor thesis and any part of the same hasnot been submitted for a higher degree to any other university or institution

Hanoi, January 2017

Signature

V Thị Mai Ph ơng

i

After the past two years I have received the support and encouragementfrom many individuals to accomplish this research Therefore, I hereby wouldlike to express my profound gratitude to all of them

Above all, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to mysupervisor, Doctor Do Thi Thanh Ha for all of her invaluable inspiration,assistance, critique, sincere guidance and encouragement as I was working on mystudy

Besides, I am grateful to all lectures and staff of Faculty of PostgraduateStudies, University of Languages and International Studies for their valuablelessons and precious help Thanks to them, I could get the essential materials for

my paper

Finally, my sincere thanks go to my family and my friends who alwaysstand by me and support me when I was doing the research Without theirencouragement, I would not have been able to complete this thesis

The topic on politics has attracted many researchers in all fields andlinguistics is not an exception, specially, the announcements of official politiciansand commentary, judgments of the specialists informed on the media Nowadays,the political events of the global countries have been updated almost immediately

by the assistance of internet Electronic newspapers play a very important roleand grab much power in the modern life

In the world recently, the political movements in Asia especially betweenVietnam and China island disputes have wasted the inks and papers of worldwidenewspapers The study was conducted to compare the use maxim violation togenerate conversational implicature of English and Vietnamese electronicnewspapers on the coverage hottest events on Vietnam - China island disputes inthe period from 2011 to 2015 The analysis includes examining the methods ofgenerating implicature which consists of violating four conversational maximsbased on Relevance Theory of Grice Based on the findings, it is concluded thatboth English and Vietnamese newspapers showed their creativity in usingdifferent devices to violate the maxims to generate conversational implicatures

In addition, the two types of newspapers share a lot of similarities Specially, thequality maxim is violated the most frequency among four maxims Besides, thestudy assumes that the language of politics and journalism affect deeply on theapplying of maxim violation to generate conversational implicatures The studyalso contributes a new finding that conversational implicatures and Relevancetheory of Grice both work effectively in not only oral conversations but also inindirect conversation such as in written texts whose speakers/ hearers interactionare writers/ readers interaction to convey the meaning and messages

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

List of abbreviations vi

List of tables vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the studies 1

2 Research questions 1

3 Aims of study 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 2

6 Organization of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Theories on conversational implicature 4

1.1.1 Implicature and Co-operation 4

1.1.2 Conversational and Conventional Implicatures 5

1.1.3 Violating implicature 6

1.2 Review of related study 9

1.3 Review of Vietnam - China island disputes in the period of time from 2011 to 2015 11

CHAPTER 2: METHODS AND PROCEDURES 15

2.1 Data collection methods 15

2.2 Data source 16

2.3 Data analysis procedure 24

2.3.1 Data reduction 25

2.3.2 Data analysis 25

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 27

3.1 Conversational implicatures in Vietnamese electronic magazines 27

3.1.1 Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of quality in

English magazine articles 30

3.1.2 Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of quantity in English magazine articles 31

3.1.3 Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of relation in English magazine articles 33

3.1.4 Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of manner in English magazine articles 34

3.2 Conversational implicatures in English electronic magazines 34

3.2.1 Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of quality in English magazine articles 36

3.2.2 Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of quantity in English magazine articles 37

3.2.3Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of relation in English magazine articles 38

3.2.4Conversational implicatures generated by violating the maxim of manner in English magazine articles 39

3.3 Comparison between English and Vietnamese electronic newspaper articles in English magazine articles 39

3.3.1 Similarities 40

3.3.2 Differences 43

PART C: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION 44

1 Summary of findings 44

2 Implications 46

3 Limitations of the study 46

4 Suggestions 47

REFERENCES 48

APPENDIX I

v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CP: Cooperative Principle

CNOOC: China National Offshore Oil Corp

CDA: Critical Discourse Analysis

US: United States

USA: United States of America

ASEAN: Association of South East Asian Nation

CI: Conversational Implicature

VN: Vietnam

CN: China

WEF: World Economic Forum

SCS: South China Sea

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.2 Vietnam - China island dispute timeline 9

Table 2.2 Data source 17

Table 2.3.2 Coding scheme 25

Table 3.1 Frequency of maxim violation in Vietnamese articles 28

Table 3.2 Frequency of maxim violation in English articles 35

Table 3.3 Data comparative 40

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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Nowadays, online newspapers have indisputably become one of the mostuseful and convenient source of information Along with the spread of internet,online news is increasingly popular due to the availability and convenience theyprovide With internet and computer, the readers have a chance to get a great deal

of diverse online newspapers Political news is always the hot area of informationthat attracts readers‟ attention Due to the fact that news are posted and updatedsimultaneously to assure the accurate of the news, especially the news related topolitics Such news need to express the truth They are also governed by the statepower for the political purposes Therefore, the writers have to use some kinds ofpragmatic devices that implicatures are the most common one To reach to theunderstanding between the writer and the receivers or readers, using implicatures

as a useful linguistic resource is a useful way Realizing the importance andsignificant of implicatures in newspaper article, this study is carried out toinvestigate the use of implicature in transferring the information to in thelanguage of Vietnamese and English newspaper articles

2) What are the conversational maxims that are violated in the Englishelectronic newspaper articles on Vietnam- China island disputes to generateconversational implicatures?

3) What are the similarities and differences on adopting conversationalmaxim violation to generate conversational implicatures between English andVietnamese electronic newspaper articles on Vietnam - China island disputes?

3 Aims of the study

The study deals with the exploitation of conversational implicatures in theVietnamese and English political newspaper articles Therefore, the study isaimed specifically:

- To identify the conversational implicatures which are generated and theconversational maxims which are violated in the political Vietnamese electronicnewspaper article on Vietnam- China island disputes

- To identify the conversational implicature which are generated and theconversational maxims which are violated in the political English electronicnewspaper article on Vietnam- China island disputes

- To compare the similarity and differences of adopting implicatures inEnglish and Vietnamese electronic newspapers on Vietnam - China islanddisputes

4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on analyzing political articles in the press, not ontelevision or radio or any other media The Vietnam-China island disputes lastedfrom a long time before However, due to the limit of time, this research is onlyconcerned with the main events in the time from 2011 to 2014 The newspapersselected are doisongphapluat.com, vietnamnet.vn, vnexpress.net, dantri.com andthree other English popular and reputed ones - cnn.com, reuters.com andbbc.com Those newspapers are chosen for the reason that they update andannounce the official information from the government Moreover, they are thevoice of the national law with high reliability and accuracy Therefore, the datacollected are reliable to all readers

5 Methods of the study

The study is an attempt to carry out an analysis of English and Vietnamesenewspaper articles on some of the most important events of Vietnam-China islanddisputes in terms of implicatures Specially, it focuses on how implicatures isformed to convey the information about the island disputes between the two

2

countries The research applies the theory of implicatures and cooperativeprinciple which are proposed by Grice to identify the forming process ofconversational implicatures.

The study used descriptive qualitative approach and content analysis asthe research design One can undertake qualitative in a natural phenomena wherethe writer works as the primary instrument of data collection that compileswords, analyzes then inductively, concerns with the meaning of participants, anddescribes an expressive language processes (Creswell, 1998) In this case, thewriter collected the whole data related to sentences in electronic newspaperarticles For a further description of the methods of the study, see chapter 3

6 Organization of the study

This study consists of three main parts: Introduction, Development andConclusion

Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, scope, aims and methods of the studyPart B: Development: in this part, three chapters are present

Chapter 1: Literature Review deals with the theoretical framework relevant to thetopic

Chapter 2: Methods and Procedure gives detailed description of data collectionmethod and analysis procedure

Chapter 3: Results and Discussion of the results constitutes the main part of thestudy This part represents the results from the analysis on the utilization onconversational implicatures in the English and Vietnamese newspaper articles anddiscusses the findings

Part C: Conclusion and Suggestion summarizes the findings of the study withregard to the results of conversational implicature investigated some limitations,implications and suggestions for further research

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

\ 1.1 Theories on conversational implicatures

1.1.1 Implicatures and Co-operation

Up to now, there are some definitions of implicatures proposed by scholarsand linguists Amongst them was Grice, who may be said to introduce the term offirst time in his William James lectures in 1967 He defined implicatures as “anotion which is not explicitly stated but inferable from the conventional meaning

of some linguistic unit in an utterance and taken to be communicated” According

to Thomas (1995), Grice‟s theory is “an attempt at explaining how a hearer getsfrom what is said to what is meant, from the level of what you expressed meaning

to the level of implied meaning.” To help the readers understand implicaturesmore, he gave an example of implicatures as stated below:

“We must remember your telephone bill”, she said, hinting that Louis has talkedlong enough “Good bye”, said Louis ringing off It takes the rich to remind one

of the bills, she though

In the example, we can see that when the speaker utters the words “Wemust remember your telephone bill”, she is implying that she wants to close theconversation It is necessary to distinguish between implying and inferring, orimplicature and inference Implicatures are generated intentionally by the speakerand may be understood by the hearer whereas inference is produced by the hearerdeducing something from evidence

Levinson (1983:97) mentions that the projection of the concept ofimplicatures in recent work in pragmatics is due to a number of sources First,implicatures stand as a paradigmatic example of the nature and power ofpragmatic explanations of linguistic phenomena Second, implicatures providesome explicit account of how it is possible to mean more than what is actually

4

said, i.e more than what is literally expressed by the conventional senses of thelinguistic expression uttered.

Therefore, in the conversation, the speaker and the hearer co-operate witheach other, in other words, they follow the cooperative principles that Grice hasdescribed in term of four categories of special cases, which is called “Maxims”.These maxims can briefly be characterized in modified forms below:

1) Maxim of Quantity: Be brief Make your contribution as informative as required and no more

2) Maxim of Quality: Be true Do not say what you believe to be false and do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

3)Maxim of Relation: Be relevant

4)Maxim of Manner: Be clear Avoid obscurity and ambiguity

It is suggested that the inferences arise based on the observation of fourmentioned conversation maxims With the implicatures in which speakersdeliberately choose to flout one of the maxims, we call them floutingimplicatures

1.1.2 Conversational and Conventional Implicatures

Thomas (1995:58) stated “To imply is to hint, suggest or convey somemeaning indirectly by means of language” (Thomas 1995: 58) He indicates thatGrice distinguishes between two kinds of implicatures: conversationalimplicatures and conventional implicatures

Conventional implicatures which convey the same extra meaningregardless of context and is always lexicalized Conventional implicatures arecarried by a restricted number of words: but, even, therefore, yet Grice gives thefollowing convincing examples:

He is poor but honest.

This is an utterance stating that honesty appears contrary to expectations inrelation to financial under privileges

John is an Englishman therefore he is brave.

And this is an utterance which triggers entailment built on theargumentative of reaching a conclusion based on a set of premises:

Premise 1: All Englishmen are brave.

Premise 2: John is an Englishman,

Conclusion: John is brave

Conversational implicatures, which convey different meanings according

to different contexts, i.e are calculated afresh each time the Speaker and theHearer interacts Take the following example:

A: Is that scotch over there?

unwilling to abide by the CP

b) The speaker is deliberately and secretly subverting the maxim and the CP,usually for some self-serving purpose This constitutes an instance of maximviolation

c) The speaker means to observe the CP, but fails to fulfill a particular maximthrough ineptitude For example, he may ineptly use words too technical for theaudience and occasion, thus inadvertently non-observing the Maxim of Manner.This is an instance of maxim infringement

d)The speaker presumably means to observe the CP, and yet s/he is blatantly notobserving a maxim; if he is not inept, s/he must mean something additional towhat s/he is saying

6

For example, when asked what she thinks of a new restaurant, a womanwho replied: „They have handsome carpets.‟ would appear to be flouting the firstMaxim of Quality If there is no reason that she means not to be observing the CPand that she is not inept either, then her remark must mean something other thanwhat it literally asserts - for example, that the food they serve is not the best intown When non-observance of a maxim is deliberate and intended to berecognized as deliberate, this is a case of Maxim Flouting (Hancher, 1978).

Paradoxically enough, more often than not, people fail to observe themaxims, be it deliberately or accidentally There are five major ways of failing toobserve a maxim: flouting, violating, infringing, opting out and suspending

Violation is defined as the unostentatious or „quiet‟ non-observance of amaxim A speaker who violates a maxim „will be liable to mislead‟ (Grice, 1975:49)

Violating a maxim is quite the opposite of flouting a maxim Violating amaxim rather prevents or at least discourages the Hearer from seeking forimplicatures and rather encourages their taking utterances at face value Thesefollowing examples were cited from Arif Suryo Priyatmojo; in his article namelyIndonesia Political Language (page 4-6)

Violation of the Maxim of Quantity

Politicians often violate this maxim by giving too much information as thefollowing political language discourses

“Of course, we will discuss over some topics,” (Megawati, Jakarta post 30April 2009)

This utterance does not give sufficient information since there is noinformation that readers can get from it

Violation of the Maxim of Quality

"The electricity crisis is a consequence of the rapid growth, but I thinkthat's not a valid excuse” (Kalla, Jakarta Post, 28 April 2009)

The utterance does not give sufficient information because the first and thesecond clause are not related The second clause did not support the first clausefor he was not quite sure about his information It is posibble that he was lack ofevidence.

Violation of the maxim of relation

“Golkar has been providing high quality entertainment in every generalelection since the reform era,” (Jeffri Winter, The Jakarta Post 29 April 2009)

The utterance violates the maxim of relevance because the addresserdidn‟t give the relevant information The utterance also failed to address the goal

of the utterances The readers were confused in analyzing it because it didn‟thave any relation with the topic discussed

1.2 Review of related studies

Conversational implicatures (C.I) is a type of indirect communication, firstdescribed by the English language philosopher Herberb Paul Grice He proposesthat in a normal conversation, speakers and listeners share a cooperativeprinciple When a speaker appears not to follow the maxims, he implies afunction different the literal meaning of form The speakers assume that thehearers know that their words should not be taken at face value and that they caninfer the implicit meaning In the electronic newspapers and other politicaleditors, conversational implicatures are used to get the understanding between thewriter and the readers By using CI, the writer can express their own viewpoint aswell as their feeling on the discussed issues Grice‟ theory has been thefoundation of many studies about implicatures in linguistics In a study of

Wakhana Putri namely An analysis of implicatures as found in transcript of

interview between Barack Obama and Hisyam Melhem from Al-Arabiya TV, the

author has found that, implicatures may mostly occur in political conversationsand speeches In addition, most of political utterances imply meaning Politicianstend to break the rules of cooperative principles and create conversationalimplicatures As in an interview, the politician may perform interestingly in front

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of the audience and the interviewer because he or she wants to catch the people‟sinterest about what he or she talks In this study, by studying the implicaturesused in the interview of the two presidents, the author assumed that during theprocess of interview Hisyam Melhem as the interviewer expects the neededresponse from Obama It fulfils the cooperative principle The result of analysisshows that Obama violates all of the maxims and this causes the occurrence ofimplicature and precisely, he violates Grice‟s cooperative principle Moreover,Obama‟s reasons using implicature during the interview is that he wants to showthe power of the United State However, the statements are bias to one side only.Nevertheless, he wants to be careful with what he says in commending the point

of view about the track between Palestinians and Israeli

The multidimensionality of political discourse has attracted a great deal ofattention from discourse analysis Studies vary from the role of evasion inpolitical talk (Harris, 1991), the relationship between politics, the government,and the media (Fairclough, 1998, 2000; van Dijk, 1998), ideology and politicaldiscourse (Hudson, 1978), political language in general (Wodak, 1989) have allbeen given some attention In addition, many studies take CDA‟s perspective toanalyze textual data made by different political leaders from different politicalbackground, ages, gender, etc, in order to undertake a detailed investigation of theway political speakers negotiate and maintain face work, show their nationalpower when interacting with each other in such contexts In the studies aboutpolitical discourse in diplomatic relationship such as speeches of presidentObama (Jurai), political press conferences (Aditi, 2006, Critical discourseanalysis and political press conference), political editors (Hussain), politicalinterviews (Dr Eba‟, Analyzing Political Discourse: Towards a PragmaticApproach), researchers found that politicians mostly rely on pragmatic strategies

to grapple with the conflict between being uncooperative and truthful It isapparent that political discourse revolves around being manipulative and hedgy,giving less information about the truth of things A politician actually hides

himself behind these skills so as not to attach himself to any kind of commitment.

He may use certain pragmatic skills to attack other rival politician's face in order

to improve his; or simply to simulate the feelings of the population and get them

to believe in him or drive them to follow his beliefs According to Wodak (2007:203) such pragmatic devices as implicatures can be analyzed in their multiple functions in political discourse where they frequently serve certain goals

The applying implicatures in political text has proved a fact that there is astrict relationship between language, political ideology and power relations.Aditi‟s study gave a closer look at diplomatic talk to communicate politicaldifferences in a positive way to smooth out socio-political and ideologicaldiscrepancies that often divide prominent political figures Taking a criticaldiscourse analysis (CDA) perspective, this article analyses textual data from pressconferences involving the former Chinese President Jiang Zemin and the USPresident George W Bush, who come from different ideological backgrounds,also sharing differences in other dimensions such as age, experience, economicstatus, socio-political influence and political objectives The findings reveal threemajor themes: positivity for the reinforcement of mutual trust, respect andprogress; influence and power for subtle persuasion; and evasion to hedge oravoid responses to probing and inconvenient questions from the media

Mostly, the studies on politics collect data from politician speeches,interviews, conferences and on different media channels This work uses internetnewspapers as a source of information The articles are collected from popularand reputed electronic newspapers From the studying, the writer targets onexploiting the use of conversational implicatures in the studied articles The studyhopes to draw out the reasons how and why implicatures are used so often inpolitical texts The analyzing process focuses on the utilization of conversationalimplicatures, the features and hidden ideology of each newspaper on the events

of Vietnam - China island disputes

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1.3 Review of Vietnam - China island disputes in the period of time from

2011 to 2015

The East Sea is a semi-enclosed sea in the Pacific Ocean, covering an area

of over 3.5 million sq km It is bordered by nine coastal countries, namelyVietnam, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Thailand,Cambodia and Singapore It is abundant in natural resources, especially oil, gasand marine resources Recently, data suggest that the sea has huge reserves ofnatural hydrate

The sea is the second busiest maritime route in the world after theMediterranean route, with 150 - 200 large-tonnage ships passing through itswaters every day Imports and exports essential for such major economies asChina, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Chinese Taiwan and Hong Kong, dependlargely on this shipping route Militarily, the East Sea is where naval fleets frommany countries both inside and outside the region operate

All these factors have led to an inevitable and obvious situation that in theEast Sea the interests of many countries are closely intertwined at differentlevels Peace and stability in the East Sea directly affect peace and stability in theregion and the world China‟s recent aggressive acts in the East Sea has pushedescalation of tensions in the area and sparked concern that the area is becoming aflashpoint with global consequences

The Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagos consist of aseries of tiny coral reefs and banks in the middle of the East Sea At present, thesetwo archipelagos are at the center of complicated disputes between severalcountries bordering the East Sea The dispute between Vietnam and China is adispute over territory and sovereignty over these two islands China‟s claims onU-shaped line were the first case mentioned China claims by far the largestportion of territory - an area defined by the so-called "nine-dash line" whichstretches hundreds of miles south and east from its most southerly province of

Hainan In the next step, China did illegal and aggressive acts in the East Sea.

After implementing the closed door policy for a long time, this country began

eyeing and encroaching into the East Sea The process has happened as in the

table below:

Table 1.2 Vietnam - China island dispute timeline

nation continued its unruly hostility by drawing the U-shaped line in

1946, which covers around 80 percent of the East Sea Howeveruntil May 2009 this line was public as China occupied easternislands in Hoang Sa Archipelago and Ba Binh Island in Truong Sa(Spratly) Archipelago

Sa while Taiwan held Ba Binh Island in Truong Sa

Two years later, the whole globe shocked with the official claim ofChina on its sovereignty over Hoang Sa and Truong Sa

islands in Truong Sa were gradually occupied in 1988, remarkablyVanh Khan Island of Truong Sa in 1995

territorial waters of its Hainan province

groundless and illegal U-shape line map when this map officiallysubmitted to the United Nations China claims sovereignty over thewhole Hoang Sa Archipelago Hoang Sa and the adjacent waterswere considered as its natural territory It also claims sovereigntyover the entire Truong Sa Archipelago and its adjacent waters, butadmits to have disputes

East Sea, including encroaching Vietnam‟s territories and cut thecables of Vietnam‟s sea surveillance and oil exploration shipsnamed Viking 2 and Binh Minh 2 This country also issued ban onfishing in the East Sea, covering the traditional fishing ground ofVietnam.

6- 2012 The information about China‟s establishment of the so-called

"Sansha" city, which includes the island district of Truong Sa(Spratly) of Khanh Hoa province, Vietnam and the Hoang Sa(Paracels) island district of Da Nang, Vietnam was released Chinaannounced the opening of international bids for 9 oil and gas lotwithin Vietnam‟s exclusive economic zone and Vietnam‟scontinental shelf

8/2012 China again opened international bid for the oil and gas block

65/12, seriously violating Vietnam's sovereignty over the ParacelIslands The nine oil and gas lots that the CNOOC openedinternational bids for are entirely in the exclusive economic zone of

200 nautical miles and the continental shelf of Vietnam

10/2012 China held a flag raising ceremony to mark its National Day on Phu

Lam Island in the Hoang Sa archipelago

the Chinese navy‟s Nanhai Fleet held an exercise in the waters ofthe Hoang Sa archipelago and five days later, China set up ameteorological station in the so-called Sansha City

11/2012 China published a map of "Sansha," which includes the Hoang Sa

and Truong Sa archipelagos and the exclusive economic zone andcontinental shelf of Vietnam

3/2013 While Vietnam's Binh Minh 02 ship was conducting normal seismic

exploration in the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf ofVietnam, two Chinese fishing vessels deliberately obstructed andcut the ship‟s cable, regardless of the warning signal of functional

forces of Vietnam.

5/ 2014 China deployed the mobile HD-981 drilling rig in the exclusive

economic zone and continental shelf of Vietnam The drilling rig isescorted by many ships of the coast guard, the naval and fisherysurveillance forces of China Chinese ships attacked vessels of thelaw enforcement forces of Vietnam in Vietnam‟s waters They alsorammed fishing ships of Vietnam These acts have been stronglyobjected by Vietnam and the international community

This study focuses on the events in the period of time from 2011 to 2015

In fact, this is the significant period in the timeline of arguments For this reason,the witer decided to study all the events related to Vietnam- China island disputes

in this period of time

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CHAPTER 2: METHODS AND PROCEDURE 2.1 Data collection methods

In conducting this research, the researcher employs the descriptivequalitative method and content analysis The researcher focuses on the activitiessuch as collecting data, classifying, analyzing, and drawing the conclusion.Sutrisno Hadi (1983:30) states about descriptive method as a type of research,which only collects, analyzes, and concludes the data without concluding themcommonly Meanwhile, qualitative method is a research procedure, whichproduces descriptive data in the form of written or oral words of people andbehavior, which can be observed (Bogdan & Taylor, in Moleong (2006: 5).Theresearch design was content analysis dealt with written texts According to Ary et

al (2002) content analysis deals with analyzing and interpreting recorded materialwithin its own context such as public records and textbooks

This study based on some following criteria for data selection:

First, news discourse is chosen specifically for analysis, thereby, televisionnews and radio news are not in the investigation The data are collected fromofficial, reliable, popular and high-quality electronic newspaper They areincluded phapluatdoisong.com, dantri.com, nld.com.vn, vietnamnet.vn,vnexpress.net, reuter.com, cnn.com, bbc.com Such newspaper asphapluatdoisong.com, vietnamnet.vn are either the official daily newspapers inVietnam or the voice of Vietnamese law and political power of Vietnam‟sgovernment Whereas, reuter.com, cnn.com are trustworthy internationalnewspaper with high global edition published in 180 countries

Second, all chosen articles from the newspapers have to containconversational maxim violation to generate implicature

Third, researcher focuses merely on the articles related to the importantevents in the Vietnam-China island disputes in the period of time from 2011 -2015

Forth, researcher must sort out the sentences or phrases holdconversational implicatures and put them in the context The researchers shouldextract some neighbouring sentences if possible.

2.2 Data source

The sources of the data in this study are the articles covered the China island disputes in both Vietnamese and English On this issue, there aresuch a considerable number of articles written in these electronic newspapers.However, with the aim of the study to investigate the conversational implicatures,the study examines 60 articles which are believed to contain implicatures on themajor events of Vietnam - China Island disputes focuses on the certain period oftime from 2012 to 2015

Vietnam-The frequency of the articles about Vietnam - China island disputes in thefour newspapers are different To assure an exactly finding for the similarity anddifferences of Vietnamese and English newspaper articles, the number of chosenarticles are equal with 30 articles for each language

Population is all of individuals to whom the facts which being got will begeneralized (Hadi, 1983) The population of this research was conversationalimplicature found in the articles related to the subject of the study There are a lot

of sentences that conversationally imply a meaning to the readers found in everyarticle However, the researcher chooses them in random The number ofconversational implicates chosen in the whole 60 articles in both language was

60, so the population was 60 The samples of this research are all theconversational implicatures in the investigated articles

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Table 2.2 Data source

Trung Quốc vẫnkhẳng định chủquyền

ngangcáp khảo sát củaViệt Nam

cáp thăm dò dầukhí của Việt Nam

Trungtrận ở Trường Sa

của Việt Nam,Trung Quốc nói làbình thường

Trung Quốc làmđứt cáp tàu BìnhMinh 02

thế giới mối đe dọaTQ

Dương-981 - toantính và hệ quả trênBiển Đông

sai chiến lược

18

tàu Việt Nam đâm

tàu Trung Quốc

17 Truyền

Trung Quốc đang

bôi đen Việt Nam

18 Nội bộ Trung Quốc

20/12/2013

25 “ Ân họa” từ cảnhsát biển Tung Quốc

30 Phản

Quốc lập HĐNDTam Sa

31 Vietnam and Chinaships

South China Sea

32 Vietnam condemnsChina's

as

20

33 Wrecks,

roaches standoff inthe

Sea

34 A

dance:

Vietnam posture inthe

39 Vietnam

military

face China

40 China and Vietnam

52 Vietnam boat sinks

after collision with

55 VietnamChinaFactories burnt

56 Vietnamsubmarine-launchedattackdeter China

57 Boatsbrinksmanshipclose in

China Sea

58 Chinesereachextract

of citizensdeadly attacks

59 Vietnamesespeaksshipincidentdisputed waters

60 Chinese

in the South ChinaSea

2.3 Data analysis procedure

There were also some stages on how to analyze the data, Miles andHuberman (1994) reveal three current flows of data analysis, namely data reduction,

24

data display, and conclusion drawing/verification Data reduction is the process ofselecting, focusing, simplifying, abstracting, and transforming data that exists in thereal transcriptions Data display is organized information including the finalconclusion Conclusion drawing is meant to state a temporal result of the study.

2.3.1 Data reduction

In this step, the writer reread the whole articles from the newspaper found.The writer only focused on the sentences which violate the conversational maxims.Therefore, the writer reduced the data which do not violate the conversationalmaxims since the data would give no contribution and result to implicature analysis

2.3.2 Data analysis

The writer then classified these sentences based on the type of conversationalmaxim that being violated, the type of conversational implicature The data will beclassified based on the type of conversational maxim that being violated as follows:

Table 2.3.2 Coding scheme

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CHAPTER 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter presents the research findings and discussion In this chapter,the analysis of the data is in line with the formulated research questions In findings,there are four stages to analyze the data, namely data reduction, data display, dataanalysis and conclusion drawing However, the data analysis is written in separateway which then investigates the implicatures that raises as the result of violatedmaxim and the types of conversational implicature The discussion part willglobally be explained after presenting the data analysis based on the theoreticalframeworks and the previous studies

The author illustrates the findings derived from the research problems inwhich the first question concerns on the forming of conversational implicature andthe violation of conversational maxims based on Grice‟s theory of implicature(1975) in Vietnamese electronic newspaper articles, the second one questions thesame matter as the first one in English electronic newspaper articles and the thirdone concerns the similarities and differences between English and Vietnameseelectronic newspapers in adopting conversational implicature

Since there are three stages of finding the result used in this study, the writerstarts reducing some sentences that violate the cooperative principle maxim whichresult conversational implicature After that, the real data are displayed using tableand particular The whole data are finally analyzed based on the types oflconversational implicature in English and Vietnamese electronic newspapers

The writer only took the sentences that containing implicature or violating theGricean maxim Because conversational implicature can be calculable by maxim ofconversation, the writer found 60 sentences containing conversational implicatures

or sentences which are indicated to violate maxim of conversation After that allstudied sentences are categorized following the table 3 in appendix

3.1 Conversational implicature in Vietnamese electronic magazine articles

After obtaining the data, the writer discusses the findings in order to clarifythe answer of research questions In this part, the writer presents the results from