An analysis of how tywin lannister used conversational implicature to make threats in tv series game of thrones

The framework relied on the violating and flouting of maxims in The Cooperative Principle Grice, 1975 to identify and analyze conversational implicature in speeches.. According to the st

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS & CULTURES OF ENGLISH SPEAKING

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

PHÂN TÍCH CÁCH NHÂN VẬT TYWIN LANNISTER

SỬ DỤNG HÀM Ý HỘI THOẠI ĐỂ ĐE DỌA

TRONG PHIM GAME OF THRONES

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Nguyễn Thị Linh Yên (Ph.D) Sinh viên: Phùng Minh Dương

Khóa: QH2016

HÀ NỘI - 2020

ACCEPTANCE PAGE

I hereby state that I: (Phùng Minh Dương, QH2016.E1), being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (programme) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper

Signature

Date

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to send my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Nguyễn Thị Linh Yên, for supporting me with my thesis

I am also thankful to George R.R Martin, the author of the novel series

A Song of Ice and Fire, who has written what I personally consider as one of the best literary masterpieces of all time

I also admire David Benioff and D.B Weiss, the script writers of the

TV series Game of Thrones, for having delivered an excellent adaptation of the novel series and provided me with materials to conduct this study

ABSTRACT

Walton (1992) reported that it was not uncommon for conversational implicature to be applied in the delivery of threats and warnings; nonetheless, there exists a lack of studies about the method in which conversational implicature is employed to threaten other parties The paper attempted to make contributions to this area by conducting investigations into the way Tywin Lannister, a character in the TV series Game of Thrones, used conversational implicature to convey messages of threats

The Gricean framework (Grice, 1975) was the major foundation for the conduction of this research The framework relied on the violating and flouting of maxims in The Cooperative Principle (Grice, 1975) to identify and analyze conversational implicature in speeches Based on The Gricean framework, accompanied by Off-record Politeness Strategy (Brown & Levinson, 1987), the paper studied the maxims that Tywin infringed, as well

as how he infringed them

The paper came to the conclusion that Tywin mostly infringed the Cooperative Principle by the means of flouting, in order for the message of threats to achieve immediate effects Tywin mainly used rhetorical questions

to infringe maxims of quality, aiming to express anger, expose the listener, or challenge them Regarding the infringement of maxims of relation, Tywin applied presupposition to showcase his control and social position, and employed association clues to reduce the outward aggressiveness of the threat With respect to the breaking of maxims of quantity, the usage of understatements was of similar purpose to that of association clues; in addition, Tywin also included overstatements to amplify the seriousness of the situations Lastly, the infringement of maxims of manner was conducted with the application of ambiguous wording and lengthy response, which is to increase the sense of fear and inferiority in the listeners

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Statement of problem and research questions 1

1.2 The purpose of the study 2

1.3 Scope of research 2

1.4 Significance 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 Implicature 4

2.1.1 Definition 4

2.1.2 Types of implicature 5

2.2 Conversational implicature 6

2.2.1 Definition 6

2.2.2 The contrast between conversational implicature and conventional implicature 8

2.3 Theoretical frameworks 9

2.3.1 The violating and flouting of maxim in The Cooperative Principle (The Gricean framework) (Grice, 1975) 9

2.3.2 Off-record Politeness Strategy (Brown & Levinson, 1987) 13

2.4 Threat 19

2.5 Existing research about conversational implicature in threats 21

2.6 Summary and conclusion 22

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 23

3.1 Sampling 23

3.2 Data collection 23

3.3 Data analysis 23

3.4 The backgrounds of Tywin Lannister 25

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 26

4.1 The flouting of maxims 28

4.1.1.The flouting of maxims of QUALITY 28

4.1.2 The flouting of maxim of RELATION 31

4.1.3 The flouting of maxims of QUANTITY 33

4.1.4 The flouting of maxims of MANNER 36

4.2 The violating of maxims 38

4.2.1 The violating of maxims of QUALITY, using rhetorical questions to make the listener lower her guard (3 cases) 38

4.2.2 The violating of maxims of QUALITY, using rhetorical questions to sugarcoat the threat (1 case) 38

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION – IMPLICATIONS - LIMITATIONS 40

5.1 Conclusion and implications 40

5.2 Limitations 41

REFERENCE 42

APPENDIX 49

LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 Recognitions of maxim infringements 24 Table 4.1 The frequency of maxim infringements in Tywin’s threats 26 Table 4.2 The frequency of signals in each maxim category, found in Tywin’s threats 27

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of problem and research questions

Regarded as one of the most widely used linguistic features in conversational situations (Romadhona, 2016), conversational implicature, in most cases, is applied in the aim of conveying information in a polite and implicit manner (Walker, 1975) This is either to maintain the public images of both the speaker and the hearer (Kedves, 2013), or to ensure that the speaker could conveniently deny the existence of the implied message in the case that unexpected issues arise (Thomas, 1995) Multiple researches have delved into the employment of conversational implicature within specific contexts, for instance, political speeches, daily dialogues, and literary works, exploring how the speakers and writers implicitly convey their ideas to the audience Recognized contributions to the study of conversational implicature could be refered to “Conversational implicatures in indirect replies” (Green & Carrberry, 1992); Pragmatics (Levinson, 1983); and especially “Logic and Conversation” by Grice (1975), in which the term “conversational implicature” made its first official appearance

According to Walton (1992), the implicitness in the nature of conversational implicature also leads to its common use in the delivery of sensitive information Hence, Walton (1992) concluded that there are occasions in which threats and warnings are conveyed through the application

of conversational implicature, due to the fact that it is sometimes deemed inappropriate to express these types of violent contents in a straightforward, unfiltered manner in public

Since threats are not always communicated explicitly, it is important that people understand how to decipher them, in order to protect themselves and prevent potential harms However, so far, it seems there has been a significant lack of insightful investigations into the use of conversational implicature in threats, aside from several papers that mentioned threats in

passing along with other Face threatening acts, such as “The Place of Emotion

in Argument” by Walton (1992) or “Introducing Sociolingustics” (Meyerhoff, 2006) For that reason, I wish to contribute more to this particular existing gap

by conducting this study, with the purpose of analyzing how one uses conversational implicature to convey the messages of threats

The TV series Game of Thrones, which revolved around political wars among Nine Houses in a fictional continent, is well praised for its realistic dialogue writing, as concluded by Ivory (2013), and has employed a considerable amount of conversational implicature in the dialogues between the characters, according to Ramadhan (2017) Consequentially, the series is deemed appropriate for the purpose of the study That being the case, I choose

to analyze the practice of conversational implicature in the threats uttered by Tywin Lannister, the Head of House Lannister, a feared figure in the series

1.2 The purpose of the study

The study was conducted in order to investigate the methods in which Tywin Lannister employed conversational implicature to make his threats The study aimed to answer the following questions:

1 Which maxim did Tywin Lannister infringe in order to make his threats?

2 How did Tywin Lannister infringe the maxim in order to make his threats?

1.3 Scope of research

The study focuses on the implied threats that were carried out by Tywin Lannister in the first four seasons (40 episodes) of the TV series, as the character made no appearance in the remaining seasons Within these utterances, the study analyzed the conversational maxim that Tywin Lannister infringed

1.4 Significance

It is to be hoped that the findings of this study would contribute to the current gap regarding the use of conversational implicature in utterances of threats The study would provoke, to an extent, an understanding of how to indirectly carry out a threat, so that people are able to either employ it in daily conversation or to avoid being negatively affected by threats from other speakers In addition, the study also would also provide resources for linguistics teaching, and might serve as a reference for research of larger scale revolving around similar topics in the future

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Implicature

2.1.1 Definition

Coined by Herbert Paul Grice (1975), the term “implicature” was defined as the act of implying or expressing something indirectly Likewise, Bach (1999) described implicature as an implied meaning that was not outwardly expressed in an utterance Davis (2005) offered another definition, referring to implicature as a phenomenon in which the speaker means one

thing by saying something else

Albeit the differences in terms of word choices, the three definitions seemed to agree upon the fact that the meaning carried in the implicature was hinted, or implied by the speaker, and not directly conveyed in the speech In this speech act, what is meant is not a part of what is said, and is far richer than what is said, according to Horn and Ward (2004) in “The Handbook of Pragmatics” “Implicature”, therefore, stands in contrast with “explicature”, a technical term introduced by Sperber and Wilson (1995), which points to meanings that are directly communicated in an utterance

Bach (2006) provided an example: when A said he had run out of eggs,

B responded “There is a store at the end of the street [You can buy more eggs there]” (Bach, 2006, p.492) “There is a store at the end of the street” is an utterance, and [You can buy more eggs there] is what the speaker wants the hearer to interpret from his speech In this case, that a store is at the end of the street is considered explicature, since this was what the speaker bluntly and straightforwardly conveyed to the audience Meanwhile, [You can buy more eggs there] was not explicitly a part of what was uttered; hence, it is referred

to as implicature

In another branch of linguistics, presupposition is a phenomenon that also involves an implicit assumption, as claimed by Karttunen, 1974; it is also

frequently mistaken with implicature (Kadmon, 2001) However, a major difference could be spotted between the two Implicature deals with the

meaning of the statement, while presupposition assumes the background knowledge of the statement, or more specifically, the event that took place or started before the event in the statement, as mentioned by Kadmon (2001) For instance, if one says: “John is being a night owl again!”, the implicature can

be identified in the phrase “John is being a night owl”, which implies that John usually stays up late Meanwhile, the presupposition lies in the word choice

“again”, containing the assumption from the speaker that John was a “night owl” in the past as well

2.1.2 Types of implicature

Grice (1975), the inventor of the term “implicature”, classified the speech act into two groups, namely conversational implicature and conventional implicature The two terms made their first official appearances

in his lectures “Logic and Conversation” (Grice, 1975), which has been considered as “the most cited philosophy paper ever published” (Bach, 2012) and one of “the most groundbreaking contribution to philosophy and linguistics” (Igwedibia, 2017)

This categorization is agreed upon by multiple researchers, probably with some exception from Jary (2013), who posed against the theory of Grice

by dividing implicature into material implicature and behavioral implicature; and Culpeper (2011), who suggested politeness implicature and impoliteness implicature as two subgroups for the phenomenon As this study centers on conversational implicature, I thereby naturally choose to conform to the categorization proposed by Grice (1975)

2.2 Conversational implicature

2.2.1 Definition

According to Grice (1975), a conversational implicature takes place when the speaker is aware that his utterance p implies the message q, and expects the hearer to have the capability to deduce q from p Furthermore, Grice (1975) stated that the speaker is supposed to observe the maxim in The Cooperative Principle, a set of conversation principles that aim at effective cooperation among interlocutors (1975) Grice (1975, p.50) also claimed that,

in order to work out the implied meaning q basing on the statement p, the hearer needs to rely on several sources of data, which include the specific context of the speech shared between the speaker and the hearer Grice gave

an example: “You are the cream in my coffee” (Grice, 1975, p 53)

In the aforementioned example, Grice (1975, p 53) claimed that, it was essential that both the speaker and the hearer has mutual background knowledge related to the current status of their relationship, as well as an understanding of the correlation between the cream and the coffee The utterance was made in the supposition from the speaker that the hearer was able to grasp the message that he was attempting to get across

Since Grice never offered an actual definition for conversational implicature in any of his work (Haugh, 2012), researchers have sought to craft their own definitions of conversational implicature basing on his existing studies As an illustration, after analyzing the detailed description of conversational implicature provided above by Grice (1975), Walker (1975) defined conversational implicature basing on the fact that the speaker is conforming to the Cooperative Principle, while intending his message p to be understood as q in the expectation that the hearer has the ability to deduce q

In a similar fashion, Levinson (1983) proceeded to give the following definition:

S’s saying that p conversationally implicates q if

i S is presumed to be observing the maxim, or at least (in the case

of flouting) the cooperative principle

ii In order to maintain this assumption it must be supposed that S thinks that q

iii S thinks that both S and the addressee H mutually know that H can work out that to preserve the assumption in (i), q is in fact required (p 113)

However, according to Hirschberg (1985), these two definitions entirely disregarded the fact that background and contextual knowledge between the speaker and the hearer must be mutually known in order to create

a conversational implicature, which was discussed in “Logic and Conversation” by Grice (1975) In addition, the definition of Levinson (1983) failed to be explicit due to the employment of vague words such as “it must be supposed” or “presumed”, and did not pinpoint the exact differences between conversational implicature and other linguistics phenomena (Hirschberg, 1985)

For this reason, Hirschberg (1985) offered another definition:

Proposition q is a conversational implicature of utterance U by agent A in context C if, and only if:

i A believes that it is mutual, public knowledge of all the discourse participants in C that A is obeying the cooperative principle

ii A believes that, to maintain (i) given U and context C, the hearer will assume that A believes q

iii A believes that it is mutual, public knowledge of all the discourse participants that, to preserve (i), one must assume that A believes q

(as cited in Potts, 1996, p.179)

In the aforementioned expression, Hirschberg (1985) managed to identify three important factors of conversational implicature, all of which were emphasized by Grice (1975) First, the implicature is carried out in a

specific context (context C) and so requires mutually understood knowledge related to context C Second, the speaker is obeying The Cooperative Principle Third, the hearer is expected to get the intended message basing on his observation of the first two factors That being the case, I choose to take the definition of Hirschberg (1985) as a guide for my study

2.2.2 The contrast between conversational implicature and conventional implicature

Conversational implicature and conventional implicature are two subcategories of implicature, as stated by Grice (1975) To illustrate a case of

conventional implicature, Grice (1975) offered an utterance: “He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave” (p 44) In this scenario, it is implied that

his bravery is a consequence of his nationality as an Englishman The implicature lies in the linguistic meanings of the words (“therefore”), rather than in “special features of the context” (Grice, 1975, p 56) In other words, conventional implicature is context-independent, as the implied message would carry the same meaning despite the absence of specific circumstances (Grice, 1975) Background and contextual knowledge, therefore, is not required to comprehend the implication within the utterance

In the demonstration of conversational implicature, Grice (1975) described a situation: A says “Mrs X is an old bag”, and after a few moments

of silence, B responds “The weather has been quite delightful this summer, hasn't it?” (p 54) The implicature in the reply from B is not entirely based on the linguistic meanings of the words, but rather on his refusal to acknowledge the statement of A (Grice, 1975) Therefore, it would be impossible to infer the intention of B if his statement is observed and analyzed in isolation In order to grasp the implicature, it is necessary that the response from B is investigated in the relationship with the utterance of A Conversational implicature, hence, is dependent on the conversational context and background information, which makes the phenomenon dissimilar to conventional implicature (Grice, 1975)

Grice (1975) presented the maxim of each category as followed:

QUALITY: Contribute only what you know to be true Do not say what you believe to be false Do not say things for which you lack evidence

QUANTITY: Make your contribution as informative as is required

Do not say more than is required

RELATION (Relevance): Make your contribution relevant

MANNER: (i) Avoid obscurity; (ii) avoid ambiguity; (iii) be brief; (iv) be orderly

(as cited in Potts, 1996, p 177)

According to the statements of Grice (1975), to conform to the maxims

of QUALITY, the speaker has to report what he genuinely and reasonably believes to be the truth; the maxims of QUANTITY involve the amount of information provided in a response, which should be neither less nor more than what the situation requires; the maxim of RELATION ensure that the reply is directly relevant to the topic of the conversation; while the maxim of MANNER entail that the statement should be carried in a clear, concrete and logical way

The highest form of co-operation occurs in the condition that the speaker complies to all four categories of conversational principles

Grice (1975) offered an example: “A: Where does Ann live? B: She lives in France I visited her there last month” (Grice, 1975, p 50)

In the given illustration, the speaker B obeyed the maxim of QUALITY

by reporting what he believed to be the truth and even providing evidence to support his claim He offered no less and no more information than what A required, conforming to maxim of QUANTITY The response was communicated in a comprehensible and unambiguous manner in the compliance with the maxim of MANNER And last but not least, what he said was directly in RELEVANCE to the statement of A in terms of topic, which revolves around the place where Ann currently lives

However, in certain situations, people do not obey all of the aforementioned maxim, though they still generally conform to The Cooperative Principle, in accordance with the statements of Grice (1975) Grice (1975) added that, in a conversational co-operation, if the speaker infringes at least one maxim on purpose, that means he is attempting to create

a conversational implicature The infringement in these cases can be conducted either by violating the maxim or by flouting the maxim

By violating the maxim, the speaker is trying to mislead his audiences and purposefully cause confusion, as characterized by Grice (1975) Khosravizadeh and Sadehvandi (2011) provided an example to illustrate a case

of violation:

Teacher: Why didn’t you do your homework?

Student: May I go and get some water? I’m so thirsty (p 123)

In his response to the inquiry from the teacher, the student has intentionally violated the Maxim of RELATION, in order to distract the teacher and avoid answering the question

Khosravizadeh and Sadehvandi offered another scenario related to the violating of maxim: “A: Did you enjoy the party? B: There was a lot of food, lots of flowers, and lots of people chatting around…” (Khosravizadeh & Sadehvandi, 2011, p 123) The response of B, by being unnecessarily lengthy and ambiguous, has violated both the maxim of MANNER and the maxim of QUANTITY Given that B did this on purpose, the implicature in this case attempted to lead to some misunderstanding in the part of the audiences, as two interpretations could be drawn from the utterance: B was either too disappointed, or too excited about the party, to the point that he had no idea where to start his description about the party, as concluded by Khosravizadeh

& Sadehvandi (2011)

Contrary to the violating of maxim, the flouting of maxim has no intention of causing distraction or confusion among the audiences Rather, in these situations, the speaker expects the hearers to disclose the intended meaning behind his utterance to the greatest extent, according to Levinson (1983) In his lectures “Logic and Conversation”, Grice (1975) presented different scenarios in which maxim of different categories were flouted to convey implied messages

To illustrate the flouting of maxim of QUANTITY, Grice (1975) offered a scenario, in which A was writing an assessment letter about a candidate for a philosophy job His letter read: “Dear Sir, Mr X's command of English is excellent, and his attendance at tutorials has been regular Yours,” (Grice, 1975, p 52) Mr X was applying for a philosophy job, so it is obvious that much more information was required to evaluate his capability to take the position However, in regards to how well Mr X was doing, A only discussed his command of English and his frequency of attendances The lack of information provided by A, therefore, was probably an implication that Mr X was not good enough for the job

A case of flouting the maxim of QUALITY could be spotted in the following example, in which A has been betrayed by his closest friend X, and

both A and the audience know this A said: “X is a fine friend” (Grice, 1975 p 53) One could claim that A was trying to lie to the audience However, the audience already knew the truth beforehand, so there was no point of lying in this scenario A stated what both he and the audience believed to be not true,

in order to be sarcastic about the loyalty of his friend X

The maxim of RELEVANCE was flouted in the following given dialogue between A and B (Grice, 1975), in which A asked “Will she go to the party?” and B replied with an irrelevant question: “Is the Pope catholic?” (Grice, 1975, p 60) Since the Pope is clearly and obviously catholic, the question from B was not an actual question, but a rhetorical one, to imply that she would definitely go to the party

As an illustration for the flouting of maxim of MANNER, a conversation was provided by Grice (1975), in which A inquired: “Where’s John?” and B responded: “There’s a pair of Volkswagen shoes outside Anne’s house” (Grice, 1975, p 59) B could have just answered “I think he’s at Anne’s house”, but he intentionally chose to be ambiguous by mentioning a pair of Volkswagen shoes As B used “a pair” instead of “John’s pair”, A could interpret that B was not certain whether the shoes belonged to John or not In this case, B probably flouted the maxim of MANNER in order to avoid breaking the maxim of QUALITY (Do not say things for which you lack evidence) Overall, Grice (1975) drew the conclusion that, the flouting of maxim here might reveal an implication that B thought John was at Anne’s house, but did not have enough evidence to support his assumption

Like any other existing framework in the field of linguistics, The Violating and Flouting of Maxim in The Cooperative Principle, or the Gricean framework, did encounter some criticism from other researchers, specifically neo-Gricean philosophers such as Horn (1984), Levinson (2000) and Huang (2014) They posed the argument that not all interlocutors try to be conversationally co-operative, and that the Gricean framework failed to

consider the “cancellability” of the implicature, in which the hearer could outright ignore the implication from the speaker and carry on the conversation

Regardless, to this day, the Gricean framework (1975) remained irreplaceable and indispensible, according to Carston (2005), Dynel (2013) and Haugh (2014) So far, there has been no other framework that is independent of the Gricean theory, or able to thoroughly fix the “problems” pointed out by neo-Gricean philosophers, as claimed by Huang (2012) and Kedves (2013) Furthermore, considering that the definition of conversational implicature itself is based on the observation of The Cooperative Principle, it

is, therefore, natural that I will choose The Violating and Flouting of Maxim

in The Cooperative Principle by Grice (1975) as the central framework for my study

2.3.2 Off-record Politeness Strategy (Brown & Levinson, 1987)

of a person is approved, appreciated and well-respected by other people, in accordance with the works of Kedves (2013)

For instance, Threats or orders are labeled as Negative face threating acts, since they propose to violate the freedom of action by pressuring someone to do or not to do certain tasks, according to Kedves (2013) Meanwhile, complaints, criticism or insults express a lack of care and appreciation to the positive face of the hearer

In some cases, the speaker can even pose damage to his own face By ways of illustration, when the speaker agrees to do things that he does not want to do, he is threatening his own negative face Apology is also employed often in these cases, in which the speaker taints his public self- image by admitting he is wrong and therefore, threatens his own positive face, as Brown

& Levinson (1987) mentioned

In relation to Face threatening acts, Brown and Levinson (1987) established Politeness strategies The Politeness strategies show tolerance towards the positive face of the hearers by reducing the imposition of threats

on them, in order to save them from awkwardness or embarrassment Four types of politeness strategies were mentioned by Brown and Levinson (1987), which include Bald-on record strategy, Positive politeness strategy, Negative politeness strategy and Off-record strategy The latter, Off-record strategy, is different from the rest, since it heavily replies upon the use of conversational implicature, as Brown & Levinson (1987) stated

In other words, according to Thomas (1995), Off-record Politeness strategy is employed to carry out Face threatening acts to the hearer in an implicit manner The strategy not only expresses tolerance towards the hearer, but also saves the speaker himself from potential embarrassment In case something unexpected takes place, the speaker can conveniently deny having performed Face threatening acts, or deny the existence of the implicature, by retreating behind the literal meaning of the utterance, as claimed by Thomas (1995)

To identify the employment of Off-record Politeness Strategy in an utterance, Brown & Levinson (1987) also took The Violating and Flouting of Maxim in The Cooperative Principle by Grice (1975) as the basis

2.3.2.2 The violating and flouting of maxim of RELEVANCE

According to Brown & Levinson (1987), to carry out Off-record Politeness Strategy by violating or flouting the maxim of RELEVANCE, a speaker will use hints, association clue or presupposition

When a speaker gives hints, it means he offers a seemingly irrelevant utterance, beckoning the hearer to seek the implication behind it Hints could

be given either by (1) stating the motives for the desired action, or (2) by questioning the condition of the desired action As an illustration for (1), if A says to B: “It’s so hot in here”, he is providing a motive for B to open the window, rather than explicitly ordering B: “Open the window” Or when A says: “We have run out of milk”, he is offering a reason for B to buy more milk for him

To give an example for (2), Brown & Levinson (1987) used the same scenario, in which A wanted B to open to window This time, A could observe the current condition of the desired action: “The window isn’t open” or “You didn’t open the window when you came in” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 215)

Association clues are considered another type of hints, albeit more remote (Brown & Levinson, 1987) In this case, the speaker only mentions something that is distantly associated with the desired act For instance, A wants B to visit him If A wishes to employ hints, he might state the motives:

“I miss you a lot these days”, “Don’t you miss me?” or observe the condition

of the desired act: “We haven’t met each other for months” However, this time, A only wants to use association clues, and so he mentions his house:

“My house isn’t very far from yours, you know” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 216)

Presupposition is another tool to infringe the maxim of RELEVANCE

To give an instance, A and B agreed to share the task of washing the car in two months However, B kept forgetting to do the task when it was his turn, so

one day, A said “I washed the car again today” The presupposition in the word “again”, meaning A has done this in the past, inquired B to deduce the message behind the mention of this presupposed event (Brown & Levinson,

1987, p 217)

Brown and Levinson (1987) also introduced contrastive stress as another way of using presupposition in conversational implicature If A said “I washed the car today” (p 217) and put the stress on the word “I”, that means

he presupposes that someone else did not wash the car Placed within the context of this specific situation, the utterance therefore implied that B did not wash the car

2.3.2.3 The violating and flouting of maxims of QUANTITY

In terms of infringing the maxim of QUANTITY to perform Off-record Politeness strategy, Brown & Levinson (1987) claimed that in these situations, the speaker will either employ understatement, overstatement or tautologies

Understatement is an utterance that contains an expression far weaker than what the actual situation demonstrates (Brown & Levinson, 1987) By ways of illustration, when A described an obese person “He is not too thin” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 220), this utterance would be an understatement

In another scenario, if there had been a heavy downfall during the week and B said “It rained a bit more than last week” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 220), his statement would also be considered as an understatement

Contrary to understatement, overstatement encompasses expression far stronger than the actual situation Examples could be found in sentences such

as “There are a billion people in this city” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 220)

Another means of infringing maxim of QUANTITY is tautologies Tautologies, in the simplest definition, mean “saying the same thing twice” (Fowler, 1983) Utterances such as “Boys will always be boys” or “Love is love, war is war” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 221) are regarded as

tautologies Brown & Levinson (1987) said that, by offering a non-informative statement, the speaker pushes the hearer to search for the informative message behind the utterance

2.3.2.4 The violating and flouting of maxims of QUALITY

According to Brown & Levinson (1987), in the demonstration of the Off-record Politeness strategy, one could infringe Maxim of QUALITY by using metaphors, contradictions, irony or rhetorical questions

Using metaphors, the speaker refers to another phenomenon of similar characteristics in order to imply about the situation at hand, according to Whittock, (1992) Whittock (1992) offered an illustration that, when A said

“He’s such a fish” (Whittock, 1992, p 51) when observing B swim in the river, he was flouting the maxim of QUALITY since B is obviously not a fish

in regards to the literal meaning of the word “fish” Rather, A was implying that B swims as well as a fish

Irony occurs when the speaker states what he and the hearer believes not to be true, in order to be sarcastic and ironic, as mentioned by Colebrook (2004) If A stated “Wow, a genius!” to describe a person with the lowest grade in the class, he was using irony

Rhetorical questions are used when the speaker voices an inquiry without actually seeking a literal answer from the hearer, according to Brown

& Levinson (1987) When A asked “How many times do I have to tell you I’m busy?” he did not anticipate the hearer to reply him with “two times” or “three times” In this case, A was trying to imply that he was tired of having to say it too many times

Contradictions, which involve the statement of two things that contradict each other, encourage the hearer to seek for an appropriate interpretation that can somehow connect the two ideas, as claimed by Brown

& Levinson (1987) Brown & Levinson (1987) provided a situation in which

A talked about his drunk friend John He used contradictions to describe John:

“John is here and John is not here.” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 221) The audience had to connect these two contradicting statements, which led to an interpretation that John was here physically but not mentally (his mind was not

in the right state) From this logic, the audience would be able to grasp the intended message from A that John was drunk

2.3.2.5 The violating and flouting of maxims of MANNER

In a similar fashion with Grice (1975), Brown & Levinson (1987) agreed that Maxim of MANNER can be infringed when the speaker (1) tries to

be vague, (2) organizes the information illogically, or (3) gives an unnecessarily lengthy answer The characteristics of (2) and (3) are varied and dependent on specific conversational contexts, so it is difficult to overgeneralize the signals for these cases, in accordance with the conclusions

of Brown & Levinson (1987) However, for the case in (1), Brown & Levinson (1987) suggested that one could appear vague by the employment of words like “someone”, “somewhere”, “something”, “a”, or WH-question words (what, when, why, where, who, how, which) Illustrations could be found in statements such as “I am heading to you know where” or “Someone

is going to cry tonight” In some occasions, metaphors could also be applied to enhance the sense of ambiguousness

2.3.2.6 Summary and conclusion

To sum up, according to Brown & Levinson (1987), in order to carry out Off-record Politeness Strategy – or in other words, to carry out Face threatening acts to the hearer implicitly – the speaker can do at least one of the following First, he can use hints, association clue or presupposition to infringe maxim of RELATION Second, the maxim of QUANTITY are violated or flouted due to the usage of understatement, overstatement and tautologies Third, by the means of metaphors, contradictions, irony or rhetorical questions, the speaker will break maxim of QUALITY Lastly, the speaker can

infringe maxim of MANNER by giving lengthy, disorganized response, or trying to appear ambiguous with the employment of metaphors (in some cases) and words such as WH-question words, “someone”, “something”, somewhere”, “a”

The framework of Brown & Levinson (1987) managed to utilize the Gricean theory by laying out recognizable signals to identify the use of conversational implicature, as assessed by Carston (2005), Huang (2012) and Bach (2012) Hence, I choose to use Off-record Politeness Strategy as a supporting feature for The Violating and Flouting of Maxim in The Cooperative Principle by Grice (1975)

2.4 Threat

Goldin et al (2008) established that Threat is an act of coercion to manipulate, or to seek the compliance of the other party despite their unwillingness; to receive the sought-after response, a person violates the free will of the other party by indicating to perform acts that might bring about harms or disadvantages to them For instance, “Give me your money or I will tell your mother what you did yesterday” (Goldin et al., 2008, p 179)

Two types of threats were acknowledged by Goldin et al (2008) and Ward and Berno (2011), which are physical threats and social threats Physical threats, as the name suggests, pose the idea of physical suffering, which include bodily damages, injuries, torture, imprisonment, or death Physical threats can be implemented either by the use of non-verbal languages (for instance, pointing a gun or a knife to the other person), or by linguistic tools such as written texts or utterances (Goldin et al, 2008) Examples for the latter could be identified in the following statements: “I am going to place a bomb in this school” or “Give me your money or I will beat you” (Gruenewald et al.,

2004, p 918)

Social threats, meanwhile, suggest harm or loss to the social image of a party, as stated by Goldin et al (2008) Kedves (2013) claimed that the loss

might either damage their relationship with other people, or pose attack to their positive face, leading to feelings of low social worth such as shame, humiliation or guilt Blackmailing is considered a popular type of social threats Similar to physical threats, social threats can also be conducted either

by non-verbal or verbal languages, in accordance with Kedves (2013)

In another definition established by Croucher (2013), threat is what is perceived by one person as a source that poses danger to his status, social position, morals, identity, or physical condition As an illustration, A has been the best student in the class in terms of grade, and according to his observation, the newcomer X seems to take over the spot soon In this case, A might view X as a threat to his position in the class, according to Campbell (1965)

Kedves (2013) pointed out the distinction between the two definitions, which lies in the fact that the threats introduced by Goldin et al (2008) observed the case from the perspective of the person who poses the threat, while Croucher (2013) considered the phenomenon from the viewpoint of the person who is threatened As an illustration, in the aforementioned scenario about A and newcomer X, the fact that X is about to take the top spot would only be regarded as a threat if A himself feels that it is a threat Should A never care about the top spot right from the beginning, X would not be perceived as a danger to him

Contrary to Croucher (2013), Goldin et al (2008) regarded an act as a threat if the performer of the act has the intention of threatening the other party For instance, “Give me your money or I will beat you” would be an utterance of threat since the speaker intends to manipulate the hearer Whether the hearer is affected by the threat or not is not taken into consideration

Since the central figure in my study is Tywin Lannister - the person who posed the threats - and the intended use of conversational implicature in his speeches, I thereby choose to investigate the cases from his point of view

Hence, I decide not to include the definition by Croucher (2013) in my research The definition proposed by Goldin et al (2008) is taken as a guide for

my study, with the omission of aspects related to non-verbal threats In the research, I only investigate verbal threats that employ conversational implicature

2.5 Existing research about conversational implicature in threats

The Gricean framework for conversational implicature has been recognized as one of the most vital frameworks for conversation, which “can

be applied to all forms of human communication” (Dynel, 2013, p.55) Hence, multiple investigations into the employment of conversational implicature basing on the Gricean framework have been recognized The phenomenon has been frequently analyzed within the context of daily conversations, movies, classic literature works, political speeches and media outlets Outstanding contributions related to the usage and characteristics of conversational implicature could be found in research papers such as “Conversational implicatures in indirect replies (Green & Carberry, 1992); “What is said and what is meant: Conversational implicatures in natural conversations, research settings, media and advertising” (Wanke, 2007); and “Implicature during real time conversation: A view from language processing research” (Sedivy, 2007)

Additionally, the application of conversational implicature in the creation of humors has been among the popular topics in the field (Hu, 2012), spotted in exemplary works such as “A Gricean analysis of a situation comedy” (Taberski, 1998); “There Is Method in the Humorous Speaker's Madness: Humour and Grice's Model” (Dynel, 2008) and “An analysis of humor in The Big Bang Theory from pragmatic perspectives” (Hu, 2012)

In regards to the usage of conversational implicature in Face threatening acts (FTAs), attempts have been made to analyze conversational implicature in FTAs, which include “Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests,

complaints, and apologies” (Trosborg, 1995) and An Analysis of mockery in Conversational Implicature (Wen & Chen, 2017) These papers investigated the purposes and strategies of the FTAs in regards to the context

Self-of the conversation and the infringements Self-of conversational maxim To give an instance, the purpose of conversational implicature in self-mockery is to decline requests, cover up embarrassment or counterattack (Wen & Chen, 2017) Meanwhile, implied complaints are to express annoyance, show disapproval, and give warning signs, employed implicitly through strategies such as accusations, requests for repair, and blaming (Trosborg, 1995)

However, few have ventured thoroughly into usages of conversational implicature in the making of threats, despite this being mentioned by Brown & Levinson (1987) and Dynel (2014) as one of the basic applications of conversational implicature In fact, conversational implicature in threats has only been mentioned in passing along with other FTAs, such as in “The Place

of Emotion in Argument” by Walton (1992), “Indirectness in Discourse: What does it do in conversation?” by Tsuda (1993) and “Introducing Sociolinguistics” (Meyerhoff, 2006) Although all of these works collectively agreed that conversational implicature is adapted to make implied threats in many occasions, it seems little effort has been made to extensively explore this aspect

2.6 Summary and conclusion

In terms of frameworks related to the recognition of conversational implicature, I take The Violating and Flouting of Maxim in The Cooperative Principles by Grice (1975) as the central framework, while employing Off-record Politeness Strategy established by Brown & Levinson (1987) as a supporting feature for The Cooperative Principles With respect to threats, I only analyze verbal acts of threats that contain the use of conversational implicature, and choose not to include non-verbal threats in my study

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Sampling

In the study, I choose to employ Total Population Sampling This means I will analyze the maxim infringements in all of the implied threats uttered by Tywin Lannister in the TV series Game of Thrones

3.2 Data collection

The data collection was conducted in 2019, from December 14th to December 30th First, I watched the TV series in order to grasp a thorough understanding of the settings of the story and the backgrounds, motives and personalities of the characters While doing so, I paid close attention to all the utterances produced by Tywin Lannister When there was an utterance in which conversational maxim are infringed to convey the messages of threats, I proceeded to write down the conversation that contains this utterance for further use and analysis

3.3 Data analysis

The analysis was carried out in 2020, from January 1st to February 26th The first research question is “Which maxim did Tywin Lannister infringe in order to make his threats?” To identify the maxim infringements in the threats,

I relied on The Cooperative Principles by Grice (1975) and the signals of maxim infringements in Off-record Politeness Strategies by Brown & Levinsion (1987) The recognition of signals would assist me identify the maxim that Tywin broke The complete list is presented as below:

Maxim category Signals of Maxim Infringements

(The information) unnecessarily lengthy

(The information) not logically ordered

Table 3.1 Recognitions of maxim infringements

In addition, I applied the IBM SPSS software to produce a frequency distribution table for all of the maxim infringements Basing on the table, I proceeded to find out which are the most and least frequently infringed maxim