Phân tích sự hiện thực hóa nguyên tắc cộng tác hội thoại của grice

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* ĐINH THỊ PHƯỢNG AN ANALYSIS OF THE REALI

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*********************

ĐINH THỊ PHƯỢNG

AN ANALYSIS OF THE REALIZATION OF GRICE'S COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE IN PRESIDETIAL LIVE DEBATES BETWEEN

DONALD TRUMP AND HILLARY CLINTON

(Phân tích sự hiện thực hóa nguyên tắc cộng tác hội thoại của Grice trong các cuộc tranh luận trực tiếp giữa Donald Trump và Hillary Clinton)

MASTER THESIS (Type 1)

Field : English linguistics (applied programme) Code : 8220201.01

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*********************

ĐINH THỊ PHƯỢNG

AN ANALYSIS OF THE REALIZATION OF GRICE'S COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE IN PRESIDETIAL LIVE DEBATES BETWEEN

DONALD TRUMP AND HILLARY CLINTON

(Phân tích sự hiện thực hóa nguyên tắc cộng tác hội thoại của Grice trong các cuộc tranh luận trực tiếp giữa Donald Trump và Hillary Clinton)

MASTER THESIS (Type 1)

Field : English linguistics

Supervisor : NGUYỄN THU HẠNH Ph.D

HANOI – 2019

STATEMENT OF THESIS AUTHORSHIP

I declare that the thesis I wrote entitled " An Analysis of the Realization of

Grice's Cooperative Principle in Presidetial Live Debates Between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton" is truthfully my original work and did not incorporate to any

material previously written or published by another author or writer except those indicated in quotations, paraphrasing method and bibliography Due to this fact, I am

the only person responsible for the thesis if there is any objection or claim from others

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I owe deep and sincere gratitude to my kind supervisor, Dr Nguyen Thu Hanh I appreciate her constant encouragement, invaluable advice, and generous supervision which eventually help to improve the quality of this work

I am also grateful to all my friends who help during the preparation of this thesis Without their motivation, help and kind support I would never have started my M.A studies

Finally, my words will never be sufficient to express my thanks to my family members, my parents, my husband, and my children for their financial, and moral support

ABSTRACT

This study was aimed at identifying the non-observance of Grice's maxims and investigating the forces behind that breaching in the three American televised presidential debate in 2016 between Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, and Donald Trump, the nominee of the Republic Party The data were collected from three downloaded videos of the presidential debates in 2016 Qualitative method was employed in processing the transcription of the data The data were identified, classified, and then investigated based on Grice's Cooperative Principle proposed by Grice (1975) The findings show that Clinton and Trump violated and flouted all the maxims in which they committed more violation than flouting and Trump failed to observe the maxims more often than Clinton The most violated maxims were the maxim of quantity and relation while the most observed was maxim of manner The study reveals that Trump and Clinton violated the maxims to deceive or mislead the listeners They both employed this strategy to strengthen their image as well as weaken the opponent's preferability On the other side, they sometimes flouted the maxim of all kinds with the purpose of making their arguments more persuasive and convincing

In conclusion, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton repeatedly failed to observe Grice's conversational maxims in all the debates and they exploited this rhetoric to present themselves positively and other negatively to gain the listeners' approval

Key words: cooperative principle, conversational maxims, violating, flouting,

persuading, deceiving

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF THESIS AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES vi

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background of the Study 1

1.2 Rationale of the Study 2

1.3 Research Objectives 2

1.4 Research Questions 3

1.5 Research Scope and Limitation 3

1.6 Research Significance 3

1.7 Organization of the Thesis 3

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4

2.1.Concepts of Pragmatics 4

2.2 Pragmatics and Conversational Implicature 5

2.3 Pragmatics and Cooperative Principle 5

2.4 The Cooperative Principles and Grice's Maxim 6

2.4.1 Maxim of Quantity 6

2.4.2 Maxim of Quality 6

2.4.3 Maxim of Relevance: 7

2.4.4 Maxim of Manner 8

2.5 Non-Observance of Grice's Maxims 8

2.5.1 Maxim Violation 9

2.5.3 Maxim Opting out 14

2.5.4 Maxim Infringement 15

2.6 Language Power in Presidential Debates 15

2.6.1 Presidential Debates and Persuasive Function in the United States 15

2.6.2 Language Power in Presidential Debates 16

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 19

3.1 Research Design 19

3.2 Research Instrument 19

3.3 Data and Source of Data 20

3.4 Technique of Data Collection 22

3.5 Techniques of Data Analysis 22

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 24

4.1.Trump and Clinton's Violation of Grice's Maxims 24

4.1.1 Violation of Quantity Maxim 25

4.1.2 Violation of Relevance Maxim 30

4.1.3 Violation of Quality Maxim 37

4.1.4 Violation of manner maxim 42

4.2 Flouting Maxims 46

4.2.1.Flouting the Quantity Maxim 47

4.2.2 Flouting the Quality Maxim 49

4.2.3 Flouting the Relation Maxi 51

4.2.4 Flouting the Manner Maxim 53

4.3 The Forces of the Non-observance of Grice's Maxims 56

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS 62

5.1 Conclusion 62

5.2 Limitation 64

5.3 Suggestion 64

REFERENCES 66 APPENDIX I

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Clinton and Trump's Frequencies of Grice's maxims Violation 24 Table 2: Example of Trump's violation of the relation maxim 32 Table 3: Clinton and Trump's Flouting Grice's Maxims 49

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, the researcher briefly presents the background and rationale of

the study The research objective and research questions are also mentioned Next, the researcher limits the research scope corresponding to its significance as well as

presents the brief outline of the research

1.1 Background of the Study

In recent years, more and more studies have been conducted on pragmatics Pragmatics is defined as the study of the context-dependent fields of meaning which are systematically abstracted away from the construction of logical form (Horn & Ward, 2004) Within the field of pragmatics, there are various aspects which are worth investigating The cooperative principle is among the most interesting topics learned and analyzed The cooperative principle controls the way people interact one another effectively and sensitively In other words, to get a satisfying conversation, the speaker is assumed to be cooperative by saying truthfully, informatively, relevantly and appropriately There have been numerous pragmatics theories concerned the Cooperative Principle among which Grice's Theory of Conversational Implicatur e and Cooperative Principle has captured the attention and popularity the most The Cooperative Principle and its four maxims are very essential contribution to pragmatics Grice asserts that in a conversation the interlocutors are supposed to follow the rules of specific maxims, namely quantity, relation, quality, and manner maxim, to speak cooperatively with one another Grice also asserts that when interlocutors fail to follow the maxims in their exchange of talk, they break the cooperative principle for some purposes This, according to Grice, can occur in four ways: violating, flouting, infringing, and opting -out a maxim Apart from opting out and infringing a maxim, violation and flouting are divided into four types, corresponding to four kinds of maxims

Among discourses analyzed on pragmatics, presidential debates are more and more chosen as materials of many linguistic studies because of its interesting richness

in both politics and language Presidential debates are considered an institutional component of the presidential campaign process Compared to other campaigning genres, presidential debates give the electorates "a somehow less contrived

impression" (Benoit and Harthcock, 1999, p.341) American televised presidential debate is the most well-known political event It is the most followed, viewed, and intensively studied by numerous researchers in different aspects In terms of linguistic study, American presidential debates have drawn a lot of attention from popular linguistic theorists In a presidential debate, the candidates can realize their goals of gaining the voters' approval through different manipulations of which non-observance

of Grice's maxims is quite useful because it helps them establish their preferability In other words, non-observance of the conversational maxims can help the candidate to influence the audience's thinking and behavior respectively

1.2 Rationale of the Study

The 2016 presidential debates in the United States have drawn the attention not only from the Americans but from the audience all over the world because of it interesting features The topic discussed in the debates are those of public interest It

is challenging for the candidates to give talk in the debates because they do not know the questions in advance Therefore, their answers are more useful for the public to learn more about them Unlike previous presidential elections, this was the competition of a typical politician candidate and a typical businessman candidate The suitability of this case for analysis resulted from the observation that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, whether consciously or unconsciously, failed to follow the Cooperative Principle many times As can be seen, although there have been some studies on Cooperative Principle in political discourse, there is a lack of study on the realization of the conversational maxims and its functions in relation to candidates' purposes of persuasion Besides, it was the first time in the American history of presidential election when a nominee was not a typical politician and the other was a woman, so the study will be in high demand and draw large interest

1.3 Research Objectives

This study mainly rely on pragmatics field, especially in conversational maxims The cooperative conversational maxims by Grice (1975) is employed to analyze how the presidential nominees fail to follow the maxims in 2016 American televised presidential debates The researcher sets the focuses on the non-observance

of Grice's cooperative maxims because this can make the research analyzed more deeply and interestingly The researcher wants to have deeper understanding of the

candidates' realization of the Cooperative Principle in their exchanges of talk, which is purposely directed by their personal goals in the debates

1.4 Research Questions

This research is conducted to answer the following questions:

1 How did the two candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump fail to observe Grice's cooperative maxims?

2 What can be the pragmatic functions behind the nominees' non-observance of Grice's maxims?

1.5 Research Scope and Limitation

This study relies on pragmatics area especially in Conversational maxims The researcher uses Conversational maxim theory proposed by Grice to analyze hoe the

interlocutors of the televised American 2016 presidential debates violated and flouted Grice's conversational maxims The researcher focuses on the non-observance of Grice's conversational maxims in Trump and Clinton's answers in the three above- mentioned debates

1.6 Research Significance

The findings of this study are supposed to give contributions theoretically and

practically Theoretically, this research is expected to broaden the researcher's and reader's knowledge in the pragmatics which is particularly related to the cooperative principle and maxim breaching This study is also expected to be useful in helping linguistics students to get more resources about cooperative principles or maxim non- observance as well as inspire other researchers to develop further researchers on the topic, especially topics of violating and flouting in political discourses

1.7 Organization of the Thesis

The study was divided into five chapters Following this brief introduction- Chapter 1, Chapter 2 discusses the Cooperative Principle by Grice and its maxims which are focused on the way they are observed or breached Besides, the researcher also gives outline of common features of language use in political debates Chapter 3 presents the method used in the study, the data to be analyzed and its context Chapter

4 is devoted to the analysis the candidates' non-observance of the maxims and find out its persuasion functions It tries to answer the research questions that motivated this study Chapter 5 presents conclusion of the study and its limitations as well as

suggestions for future research avenues in the field of political discourse analysis

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

In this chapter, the researcher presents the theoretical background of the study Conceptual frame work of the theories or concepts relating to the research work are mentioned as a direction of the analysis They include concepts of pragmatics, conversational implicature, Grice's conversational principle with its special maxims The researcher also presents Benoit's functional theory applied to explain the research result

In addition, the topic-related previous studies are mentioned in this chapter as well

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

2.1.Concepts of Pragmatics

Pragmatics is one of the fields that is devoted to examine the linguistic meaning Throughout history, pragmatics has appeared as an essential level in the study of language for its interdisciplinary feature linking the branches of philosophy, psychology and language studies Verschueren (1999) considers the study of linguistics developed from phonology to syntax; then, from syntax to semantics, and finally from semantics to pragmatics Yule defines pragmatics as the branch of linguistics that "is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or a reader)" (Yule, 2011, p.43) Leech (1983) sees pragmatics as the study of how an utterance gets its meaning in the situation Levinson (1983) defines pragmatics is the study of the relations between language and context that are basic to an account of language understanding Mey and Jacob (2001) refer to the context as the user and his or her conditions of production and consumption of language that in the final analysis determine the way his or her words are understood In other words, utterances cannot be understood in isolation but the text should be provided with context which plays a role to make the meaning of the utterances worthy

In conclusion, pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on structural and linguistic competence (grammar, lexicon, etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, any pre-existing knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other factors These can be called the facts of pragmatics dealing The facts are of various sorts of information First, it deals with the facts about the objective context information of the

interlocutors, time and place of the conservation Second, pragmatics concerns the speaker's intentions It also considers the shared beliefs between the interlocutors, and the conversation they are engaged in Last, pragmatics is related to facts about relevant social institutions, such as promising, marriage ceremonies, courtroom procedures, and the like, which affect what a person accomplishes in or by saying what she does

2.2 Pragmatics and Conversational Implicature

Implicature is one of the most important topics under pragmatic study In conversation, sometimes the speaker does not explicitly express what she/he means What she/he utters is not always the same as what she/he means There is an intended meaning called implicature behind her/his utterances Among the most influential pragmatic theories that has captured the attention of the famous linguistic researchers is Gricean Theory of Conversational Implicature The distinction between what the speaker literally says with used words and what the speaker means or intends

to communicate is emphasized by Grice The speaker's claim, conventional implicature, is determined by the conventional meaning of the sentence uttered and contextual processes of disambiguation and reference fixing; while her imply, conversational implicature, is associated with the existence of some rational principles and maxims governing conversation What is said has been widely identified with the literal content of the utterance; what is implicated, the implicature, with the non-literal meaning, which is intentionally communicated, but not said, by the speaker

In conclusion, conversational implicatures are the properties that convey additional meaning which is behind the semantic meaning of the words Interlocutors are able to derive implicature depending on drawing related inferences to the particular utterance

2.3 Pragmatics and Cooperative Principle

Levinson (1983) defines that pragmatics is the study of those relations between language and context that are grammaticalized, or encoded in the structure of a language It is the way the interlocutors accomplish goals as social actors who do not just need to get things done, but must pay attention to their interpersonal relationships with other participants at the same time (Leech, 1983) One of the ways to accomplish goals as social actors in a particular conversation is by following the cooperative principle The cooperative principle is one of the aspects that is solved in pragmatics It is dealt by Paul Grice in his paper Logic and Conversation By observing this principle, the conversation

is expected to develop smoothly The cooperative principle is defined as a set of rules in

an ordinary conversation It is formulated as follows: "make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged" (Grice, 1975, p.45) According to Grice, the cooperative principle can be elaborated in four sub-principles called maxims by Grice:

maxim of quantity, maxim of quality, maxim of relation and maxim of manner

2.4 The Cooperative Principles and Grice's Maxim

2.4.1 Maxim of Quantity

Super-maxim: be informative

Sub-maxim: 1 Make your contribution as informative as required (for the current

2 Do not make your contribution more informative than required

The maxim of quantity controls the amount of information shared between participants

in a conversation falls under the maxim of quantity (Grice, 1975) The speaker should try to deliver the message as informative as required (for the present goal of exchange) In other words, quantity maxim is about remaining a balance of contributed information that does not overwhelm the other person, but is not too vague Mc.Cornack et al (1992) argues that the manipulation of the maxim of quantity includes information that satisfy the other maxims of quality, relevance, and manner For example:

Husband: Where are the keys?

Wife: They are on the table in the hall (Thomas,1995, p.64)

In the above dialogue, the wife is observing maxim of quantity by giving right amount of information that is required by her husband She says precisely what she means There is no additional conveyed meaning in the wife's answer

2.4.2 Maxim of Quality

Super-maxim: Be truthful

Sub-maxims: 1 Do not say what you believe to be false;

Telling the truth and ensuring shared information is accurate is governed by the maxim of quality Cutting (2002) explains that the speakers fulfill maxim of quality if they are sincere The speakers are expected to give information that they believe

corresponds to reality and do not say something that they believe to be false or lack evidence Grice (1975, p.47) briefly gives example of observance of maxim of quality

as follows: " I expect your contribution to be genuine and not spurious If I need sugar as an ingredient in the cake you are assisting me to make, I do not expect you to hand me salt; If I need a spoon, I do not expect a trick spoon made of rubber" Yule (1996, p.38) explains that in observance of quality maxim if we are unsure of what we want to say, or want to avoid inferring we has evidence for what we say, we can use

hedges such as "As far as I know ", "I guess ", to indicate that we are aware of

cooperative principle and that what we are saying may not be totally true For example:

A: When will Tom get married?

B: As far as I know, he will hold a wedding party on next Sunday

B says "as far as I know" means that B can't be completely sure if this is true,

so that if A finds that Tom will not get married on that day, B is protected from being accused of lying because B did state that she was unsure of the possibility

2.4.3 Maxim of Relevance:

Super-maxim: be relevant

Sub-maxim: 1 Say only what relate to the topic;

2 Don't give more information than needed

According to Grice (1975, p.46), the way to observe maxim of relevance is being relevant The maxim of relation can be influenced by quantity because it relates to the relevancy of the information being shared Grice (1975, p.47) defines it as follows: "I expect a partner‘s contribution to be appropriate to immediate needs at each stage of the transaction" Cutting (2002, p.35) claims that observing maxim of relation means that the contribution of the speakers should be relevant to what has been said before

Grice (1975) says that if the speaker sets aim to establish a relation to preceding talk, the maxim of relevance cannot easily be flouted In the same line with Grice, Levinson (1983) asserts that when a speaker tries to be as cooperative as possible, the maxim of relevance seems to be the most difficult to violate Besides, a great number

of conventional implicatures can be generated by this maxim which accounts for the way interlocutors make relevant contributions to a particular exchange In many cases the relevance of an answer needs to be inferred on the basis of information from the

A: Where is my box of chocolates?

B: It’s in your room

can be compared to

A: Where is my box of chocolates?

B: The children were in your room this morning

B‘s contribution in the first example observes the maxim of relevance, giving a direct and appropriate answer to the question B‘s answer in the second example appears not

to be relevant to the question at first sight However, the second example could still be relevant to the speaker A will assume that B is observing the maxim of relevance and the cooperative principle and will therefore infer that specific implied meanings are being conveyed In the example given, such implicatures could be that the children may have eaten the chocolate, or that the children may know where the chocolate is, since they were in A‘s room

2.4.4 Maxim of Manner

Super- maxim: Be perspicuous

Sub-maxims: 1 Avoid obscurity of expression;

2 Avoid unnecessary ambiguity;

3 Be brief;

4 Be orderly

The maxim does not refer to what is said, but how the information is expressed Organization of information is considered to be key rule in the maxim of manner Grice (1975) claims that for the maxim of manner to be satisfied, the speaker has to ensure the information is shared with order, brevity, and clarity Cutting (2002, p.35) explains that to fulfill maxim of manner, the speakers are required to be brief and orderly Moreover, they should avoid obscurity and ambiguity An elaboration of the Gricean maxim of manner was proposed by Leech (1983, p.100), who distinguishes two kinds of clarity: the first is the speakers make unambiguous use of syntax and phonology of the language to produce a clear text The other consists of forming a clear message which is perspicuous or intelligible in the sense of expressing the intended illocutionary goal to the hearers

2.5 Non-Observance of Grice's Maxims

Adherence to the cooperative principle and its correlative maxims is a

communicative competence (Grice, 1975, p.48) Despite Grice's claims of ideal exchange, he explains that there are situations when these rules may be violated The condition when the maxims are not followed is called non-observance of maxims There are four possibilities of non -observance of maxims, namely, maxim violation, maxim flouting, maxim opt out and maxim infringement

2.5.1 Maxim Violation

Maxim violation is the unostentatious and quiet non-observance of a maxim Cutting (2002, p.40) defines that a speaker can be said to violate a maxim when she/he knows that the hearer will not know the truth and will only understand the surface meanings of the words Maxim violation happens when a speaker has an intention to mislead or deceive the listener Grice asserts that the speaker in violating a maxim will

be liable to mislead The speakers are not implying anything They are intending to fulfill a certain aim

a) Violation of Quantity Maxim

The maxim of quantity focuses on the importance of the information amount

shared, which has a key impact on the perception of the receiver Not giving enough

information or offering too much more information in talk exchange of a conversation than what the hearer is expecting to get is labeled as violating the quantity maxim

Grice considers this problem as "such over informativeness may be confusing in that it

is liable to raise side issue; and there may be also be an indirect effect, in that the hearers may be misled as a result of thinking that there is some particular POINT in the provision of the excess of information" (Grice, 1975, p.46) To put it in other

words, when the hearer is overwhelmed by an unnecessary amount of information, he/she may be confused about the main idea of the message and, consequently, may pay attention to some other little related points Here is an example:

HOLT: our institutions are under cyber attack, and our secrets are being

stolen how do we fight it?

CLINTON: We will defend the citizens of this country I was so, I was so

shocked when Donald publicly invited Putin to hack into Americans

(Clinton, Debate 1, 2016)

In the conversation, Clinton's answer was not satisfactory and violated the

issue but at the same time she also gave too much unnecessary information The listeners wanted to know her plan in detail but she only offered a too general promise

"will defend the citizens" Besides, she also talked about her feeling and accused

Trump of the attack, which was little relating to the question By doing this strategy, Clinton not only could avoid difficult question but put an attack on Trump as well

b) Violation of Quality Maxim

The maxim of quality controls the rule of telling the truth and ensuring exchanged information is accurate Grice (1975) admits that violating the maxim of quality is related to the act of lying or deceiving For instance, we often avoid saying

to a shop assistant, when we hand back a dress, like following: "This looks awful on; I

don't want it at all", but we would prefer to say "I'll go away and think about it and maybe come back later" In this case, we certainly has no intention of buying the dress,

yet we don't want to hurt the shop assistant so we are telling a lie

Carson (2010, p.25) claims quality violation causes more deceptive influence than the violation of other maxims When violating the maxim of quality, the speaker does not tell the truth by conveying a lie or giving the information for which she/he lacks adequate evidence This act of language manipulation is called fabrication or a willful perversion of fact, a deliberate act of deviating from the truth (Leech, 1983) In political context, especially in presidential debates, this phenomenon appears to be common To get a good picture of oneself and to prove one's preferability, political candidates often use linguistically rhetorical strategies to avoid unfavourable topic, and at the same time, direct the hearers to the beneficial topic They might choose the way of striking around or being vague about the truth Politicians can violate the quality maxim when they often give ostensible promises Offering an ostensible promise is labeled as quality maxim violation because the speaker lack adequate evidence to prove the truth at the present time of the utterance Here is an example

Trump talked proudly about the future of job market under his plan: "Under my plan,

I'll be reducing taxes tremendously, from 35 percent to 15 percent for companies, small and big businesses That's going to be a job creator like we haven't seen since

Ronald Reagan It's going to be a beautiful thing to watch." (Trump, Debate 1, 2016)

c) Violation of relevance maxim

Grice (1975) claims that the maxim of relation can be affected by quantity

maxim for it has the relation with the relevancy of the information being exchanged In

other words, relevance maxim violation can be concerned with the amount of shared

information When the speaker violates the maxim of quantity, it means that she may

give too much more information than required This can risk the speaker of giving

unnecessary contribution, which leads to the violation of the relevance maxim The

speaker can even change the topic suddenly since she/he does not want the hearer to

continue focusing on what can bring unexpected consequences on her/his

For example, in the first American presidential debate 2016, when asked about

Obama's birth certificate, Trump violated the relation maxim:

HOLT: Mr Trump, for five years you perpetuated a false claim of the nation's

first black president was not a natural born citizen You questioned his

legitimacy In the last couple weeks, you acknowledged what most Americans

have accepted for years, the president was born in the United States Can you

tell us what took you so long?

TRUMP: I got him to give the birth certificate I'm satisfied with it I want to

get on to defeating ISIS, to creating jobs I want to get on to having a strong

border I want to get on to things that are very important to me, and that are

very important to the country (Debate 1, 2016)

Trump violated the manner maxim here because his answer had no concern to

the question The question was about birth certificate while his answer was about ISIS

He abruptly changed the topic for he wanted to avoiding the questioned topic which

d) Violation of Manner Maxim

Maxim of manner concerns the way information is exchanged between the

participants of a conversation Following manner maxim is important to maintain the

cooperative principle since the hearer expects the information to be offered orderly and

clearly so that the receiver can interpret the true message When this condition is not

met, the violation of manner maxim appears In the violation of maxim of manner, the

speaker can use an ambiguous way of expressing something which is not clear and

precise enough to the raised question The maxim of manner can be fulfilled by

appearing perspicuous, which means organizing the delivered message with clarity This can be done by making unambiguous use of syntax of language to build a clear text The other choice is try to frame a clear message with a clear reference, a message that is intelligible and perspicuous in the sense of conveying the aimed illocutionary purpose to the hearers

In presidential debates, candidates can intentionally violate manner maxim in their contribution of talk to gain a certain purpose such as persuading or avoiding an unfavorable question For example, in the first debate in 2016 between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, when the moderator, Holt, asked Clinton about her plan to save the American from cyber attack, she gave an ambiguous answer which violated the manner maxim:

HOLT: our institutions are under cyber attack, and our secrets are

being stolen So my question is, who's behind it, and how do we fight it?

CLINTON:We will defend the citizens of this country, and the Russians need

to understand that I think they've been treating it as almost a

probing, how far would we go? How much would we do? And that's

why I was so, I was so shocked when Donald publicly invited Putin to hack into Americans (Clinton Debate 1, 2016)

Obviously, Clinton violated the manner maxim here because she did not offer a clear answer She did not explain her future plan of fighting against cyber attack She just answered a question by giving two questions, which made the listeners confused and unsatisfied

2.5.2 Maxim Flouting

Flouting a maxim is the case in which a speaker blatantly and intentionally fails

to obey the maxim without any intention to deceive or to mislead the hearer Grice claims this blatancy is overt, that is, it is designed to be recognized by the speaker's interlocutors and is therefore designed to generate a conversational implicature (Grice,

1975, p.47) According to Cutting (2002, p.37), maxim flouting happens when a speaker appears not to observe a maxim but expects a hearer to understand the implied meaning The followings are the main types of maxim flouting

a) Flouting Maxim of Quantity

Flouting of quantity maxim when a speaker blatantly makes his or her contribution in the conversation more or less information than the situation requires Following is an example of this case:

Charlene: I hope you brought the bread and the cheese

Dexter : Ah, I brought the bread (Yule, 1996, p.40)

In the dialogue, Charlene wants Dexter to give information about whether he has bought bread and cheese However, Dexter confirms only information related to bread and ignore cheese He has flouted maxim of quantity intentionally He wants Charlene to infer that what is not mentioned is not brought

b) Flouting Maxim of Quality

Flouting maxim of quality occurs when a speaker says something which is blatantly untrue or for which he or she lacks adequate evidence (Thomas, 1995, p.42)

It may be claimed that the speaker is stating a lie, misrepresenting his thought in order

to make the listener appreciate the intended meaning This maxim can be flouted by such different strategies as irony, metaphor, understatement, overstatement, or rhetoric question The following example introduces this phenomenon: Late on Christmas Eve

1993 an ambulance is sent to pick up a man who has collapsed in Newcastle city center The man is drunk and vomits all over the ambulance man who goes to help

him The ambulance man say: 'Great, that's really great! That's made my Christmas!'

(Thomas, 1995, p.53) In this example, the ambulance man expects the hearer to infer

a conversational implicature or an additional conveyed meaning from his utterance, not the literal meaning What he says is untrue or not corresponding with what he actually thinks in his mind Therefore, he exploits the maxim of quality to be polite while still conveying the intended meaning

c) Flouting Maxim of Relevance

Flouting maxim of relevance takes place when a speaker expresses information which is not relevant with the situation of the context at the present stage of the conversation Thomas (1995, p.70) asserts that speakers exploit this maxim by making

a contribution of information which is clearly irrelevant to the topic in hand e.g by abruptly changing the subject or by overtly failing to address the person's goal in

asking question However, this does not always mean the speaker is uncooperative and irrelevant Sometimes, he or she just wants to hide something or imply something

A: Can you tell me the time?

B: Well, the milkman has come (Levinson, 1983, p.107)

In the dialogue, one can realize that B is flouting the maxim of relevance because his answer is not relevant with A's question However, there is one way by which A can interpret B's answer that A assumes B is observing the maxim of relevance and the cooperative principle in accordance with the current exchange so that A can realize B's implicature Therefore A can draw that B intends to communicate the time which is at least after whenever the milkman normally comes

d) Flouting Maxim of Manner

The speaker who flouts the maxim of manner appears to be obscure, the information the offer is not brief or orderly In other words, his or her contribution of talk exchange is constructed in an ambiguous way For example:

Wife: Where are you off to?

Husband: I was thinking of going out to get some of that funny

white stuff for somebody

Wife: Ok, but don't be long- dinner's nearly ready (Cutting 2002, p.39)

In the above situation, the husband flouts the maxim of manner since he respond the wife's question in an ambiguous way Instead of saying " ice-cream" directly, he says "that funny white stuff" In addition, he uses "somebody" to replace the name of his daughter so that his daughter will not become excited and ask for the ice-cream before the dinner The wife, assuming her husband observes cooperative principle as well as depending on the context, understands his intended message and replies " Ok " This means that she can recover the husband's implicature

2.5.3 Maxim Opting out

Opting out a maxim happens when the speaker expresses unwillingness to cooperate in a conversation in which the maxims require However, she or he does not want to appear uncooperative The speaker cannot talk as the way she is expected because of a certain reason Black (2006, p.24) defines that opting out a maxim means that one is aware of the maxim but s/he is discouraged from observing it for some reason An example for this kind of phenomenon is as follows

Interviewer : Are there any of the current candidates who you would not

consider as a vice presidential candidate?

Donald Trump: Well I don't want to say because I will tell you when it's all

over, win, lose or draw, I'll tell you who I respect, who I don't respect

(Trump's interview by Time Editor, Nancy, 2015) Trump is opting out the maxim of quantity by indicating unwillingness to cooperate in the conversation and giving too much information He avoids the answer that is needed by the interviewer It is because he has some personal reasons not to inform the public about which candidate whom he will not consider to be his vice president before he wins the election

2.5.4 Maxim Infringement

Maxim infringement occurs when a speaker fails to observe a maxim because

of his or her imperfect linguistic performance The speaker can either has an inadequate command of the language (such as a child or a foreigner learner) or is in state of nervousness, drunkenness therefore his/her cognitive linguistic ability is incompetent As a consequence, the speaker can't make a sufficient contribution at the current stage of transaction

A: which color would you prefer: blue or green ? B: Yes, please

In this dialogue, A wants B to confirm his choice between coffee and tea, but, instead of giving the option, he asserts an agreement, which is not suitable with the question This can result from B's incompetence of fully understanding A's question

2.6 Language Power in Presidential Debates

2.6.1 Presidential Debates and Persuasive Function in the United States

It is generally accepted that presidential election is one of the most anticipated and high-profiled events in many countries, including in the United States Every four years, presidential candidates try their best to present themselves in a positive way to earn the public vote They participate in different forms of campaign, take advantages

of every opportunities, ranging from political speeches( prepared monologic discourse)

to dialogues in debates for distinguishing themselves from one another The genuine purpose of this participation is, rather than information or entertainment, persuasion as well as making a fundamental influence on the voters' decisions Politicians, therefore,

try their best to deliver directive messages to voters, making an important influence on the electorate's perception of the preferability

Televised debates are considered to be an extremely importance occasion for presidential candidates due to their various advantages compared to other campaign message forms (Benoit and Hanson, 2007) Compared to, for example, a televisioned spot or an advertisement broadcast on radio channels, it is certain that televised debates provide the candidates far more room to prove themselves and to establish their own superiority to the opponent The topics mentioned in the debate are often controversial issues or the public's most attentions such as jobs, tax, foreign policies, and crime the main purpose of the debate is to help the audience to learn more about the party representatives with their political ideologies and their future goals and polices to lead the country The politicians jointly construct the debate, which means they take turns to give respond to the questions and make defense to other's comments Their contribution of talk exchange is a main collaborative effort to maintain the discussion This offers the public a chance to observe a more spontaneous and natural story of the party representatives

Benoit and Hanson (2007) claim that voting is an act of comparison Therefore, presidential candidates intentionally employ all of possible strategies to influence voters' perceptions, persuading the electorate of preferability to their opponents Candidates have to set themselves as the most preferable either by highlighting their own strengths and pointing out their opponents' weakness They focus on the two important subjects : policy and characteristic (stance and personality) which are of decisive roles in winning the race Policy here means the candidates' proposed general goals and future plans, or even his or her past deeds Character can focus on personal qualities, leadership abilities, and ideals of the participants (Benoit and Harthcock, 1999) This can be done by acclaiming, attacking and defending with skill of adopting various linguistic devices to cajole the electorate to vote for them and their parties

2.6.2 Language Power in Presidential Debates

Van Dijk (1997) claims that a discourse is regarded as a political one when the discourse itself functions a directive role to form a political action in the politics process The main goal of a political discourse is to suppress in argumentation This target emphasizes the goal-oriented nature of political conversational language in the way that affect the public's reality, perception decision-making, and voting action

In order to fulfill influential and directive goals in their campaigns, presidential candidates always exploit their rhetorical skills to gain more positive responses from the audience Both persuasive and argumentative linguistic rhetoric are exploited as decisive strategies in order to attract and influence large audiences or the electorate Politicians must make their best efforts to answer the questions or respond comments

in a way that shows their intelligence, political standpoints, and ideological opinions

At the same time, they should try to construct their convincing messages into all micro structure of their speeches so that they can encourage and direct the listeners to appreciate their political policies and to offer them votes Their language use should be carefully chosen to appear as the most potentially persuasive factor First, they should express their "moral credibility" by using the language which shows their "practical intelligence, a virtuous character, and goodwill" (Rapp, 2009, p.5) Second, besides appearing as a virtuous person, it is important for the speaker to engage such language that has an emotional effect on the listener because "emotions have the power to modify our judgments'' (Rapp, 2009, p.5) and we can realize "persuasion through the arousal of emotions" Finally, their arguments should be reasonable and logical to

"persuade the audience to accept the speaker's understanding of reality and to support his/her ideologically biased views and policies" (Dontcheva, 2012, p.136)

B PREVIOUS STUDIES

There have been many researches conducted under pragmatics The research

about conversational breaching which is one scope of pragmatics also has been conducted by several researchers Some of the researchers can be read to strengthen the theories used in this research

One of the researches related to maxim flouting was conducted by Lindblom

(2015) entitled The Realization of Grice's Cooperative Principle in some Interviews

with Obama President The objective of the research was to identify the flouting of

Grice's maxims and investigating the forces of that flouting in three interviews with Obama The research revealed that Obama flouted all the maxims and he performed the strategies to decrease the degree of face-threatening acts that came under the interviews' questions

Another research related to maxim breaching that has been conducted was

entitled Pragmatics: Grice's Conversational Maxims Violations in the Responses of

some Western Politicians The research was conducted by Hamid M Al in 2009 It

was aimed at investigating the application of Grice's four maxims of conversational implicatures to some political interviews In the research, cases of violation were given considerable importance, especially the violation of the maxim of quality was considered the core of truthfulness of any conversation The research found out that when the maxim of quality was violated, all other maxims were difficult to adhere to

Li (2008) studied "A Performative Perspective of Flouting and Politeness in Political Interview‖ He conducted the perspectives of performance of how politicians in political interviews rely on linguistic rhetorics to deal with the conflict between being cooperative and being polite For the debate discourse, there have been some studies focusing on the topic Kartika (2009) studied maxims in

"Clinton-Obama Democratic Presidential Debate" She studied the debate to learn how the candidates used linguistic rhetorical strategies in political settings to gain their goal

of persuasion

However, those researches only focused on interviews and linguistic strategies

in general, while the research that investigate televised presidential debates in terms of Grice's conversational maxims are rarely found Therefore, the present study investigates the research on pragmatic field under the concept of Grice's Cooperative Principle and explains this from the base of forces and Benoit's functional theory Grice's Cooperative Principle was used to analyze the types of maxims and how were the maxims breached Benoit's functional theory was used to explain the non- observation

Chapter Summary

In conclusion, Grice claims that in a conversation, the interlocutors are expected to cooperate each other to make the conversation develop smoothly This means that they observe the conversational maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner When they fail to follow these maxims, they may be violating, flouting, opting out, or infringing one or more maxims This can lead to some linguistic results such as deceiving, misleading or creating persuasive effects for the arguments

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the researcher explains the research design used for analyzing the data of the research The research instrument as well as source of data are also mentioned Besides, the researcher also presents the techniques applied in collecting and analyzing the data

3.1 Research Design

Descriptive- qualitative method is applied to conduct this method Bryman (1994) asserts that qualitative research is research that can often be used to concern with the developing of an explanation of social phenomenon Lincoln(2000) defines qualitative method as a kind of study which includes no circulation In other words, qualitative approach is a study procedure which generates descriptive data in the form

of written or oral words of agents or behaviors observed In addition , in a descriptive- qualitative method, not only is data collected but also the conclusion is analyzed by the researcher The aim of qualitative descriptive approach is to gain a comprehensive understanding of certain social events or phenomenon experienced by individuals or groups of agents This kind of research often involves an inductive exploration of the data through which the themes, patterns, or concepts are identified, described and interpreted In qualitative method, the data can also be analyzed quantitatively when the researcher intend to explore the data thoroughly to make sense the relevant themes and opinions to put them into numerical data for the purpose of further comparison and evaluation

By using a descriptive-qualitative approach, the researcher makes attempts to describe, classify, interpret, and analyze the realization of Grice's Cooperative Principle in conversations between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 presidential televised debates in the United States The purpose of the research is to get

a comprehensive understanding of how they show nonobservance of Grice's maxims Then, of course, the researcher will try to find out the explanation and draw a conclusion Nevertheless, it is admitted that the conclusion should only be applied for the collected data, not generalizable to other data

3.2 Research Instrument

In qualitative research, it is the researcher himself who play a primary instrument role Vanderstoep and Johnson (2009) consider the researcher himself work

as the interpreter of the collected texts To put it in other words, since the research deals with interpretation, the human conductor has his roles in all the processes, ranging from designing the research, selecting the data, analyzing, interpreting it, and drawing conclusion In addition, the data sheet also makes a considerable contribution

as a secondary instrument The researcher can use it as the logical guidance in the identification and analysis procedure

3.3 Data and Source of Data

The data analyzed in this master thesis involves the three presidential debates

between the representatives of the two major political parties in The United States: Clinton the Democrats and Trump the Republicans The televised debates took place

in September and October 2016 The new president of the United States would be decided on November 8th, so the debates were considered the last and fundamental opportunity for the candidates to persuade the electorate vote for them, not for their opponent

The mission of the research is to concern the level of following Grice's cooperative principle in the three televised debates of presidential campaign in the United States in 2016 The participants of this campaign were Donald Trump, a Republican candidate, and Hillary Clinton, a Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was the first female nominee of a major party taking part in the run for the United States president With the experience of serving as a United States Senator for eight years, from 2001 to 2009, Clinton has an important advantage for competing the president position She participated in the presidential campaign in 2008 and was later chosen as Secretary of States by the Obama administration from 2009 to 2013 In

2015, she made a decision of taking part in the run for president position in the 2016 elections Clinton defeated other candidates, last got a victory over Bernie Sanders, and officially became the Democratic candidate for president of the United States After this nomination, Clinton began the decisive competition with Donald Trump, the Republican representative

Before joining the United States 2016 president campaign, Donald Trump was famous for being a successful estate property dealer and working as a host of a

business-related television series The Apprentice Trump considered running for

president in the 2000 election, but changed his mind in the end In 2015, he announced

his dream of being the 45th president of the United States, acclaiming his candidacy for president of the United States He was officially nominated as the Republican representative for July 2016 president campaign after getting a victory over Ted Cruz and John Kasich

The first president debate was held on September 26th, 2016 at the Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York It consisted of six segments, and three topics were planned to be discussed: Achieving prosperity, America's direction and America's secure These topics were detailed in questions about economy development and creating jobs, commercial practice, the federal deficit, race relation issues and policies, terrorists fights, and foreign policy planning The debate was directed by Lester Holt, the moderator Then the two politicians would take turns to reply The questions asked in the debate were at the host's sole discretion, completely hidden from the commission or either campaign before the debate occurrence After the candidates had delivered their own answer in two-minute time, they were offered some more time to respond to the opponent's comments and continue the conversation related to the topic Each segment lasted for approximately 15 minutes and altogether, the six segments took place in about 90 minutes The audience should not applaud during the discussion and they were also asked not to send any question to the candidates However, there were often occasions the audience showed sporadic applause at various times through the debate

The second presidential debate was conducted on October 9th, 2016, at the Washington University, in Saint Louis, Missouri The debate also took place in about

90 minutes Unlike the first debate, the audience and the people of uncommitted voters across the country were selected by the Gallup Organization have opportunities to raise questions to the politicians Half of the questions discussed during the debate were challenged by the audience while the rest comes from the hosts, CNN's Anderson Cooper and ABC's Martha Raddatz The moderators' questions were carefully chosen and arranged from popular topics of social media interests

The third presidential debate was held on October 19th, 2016, at the University

of Nevada, in Las Vegas, Nevada in about 90 minutes The debate was designed with the format similar to that of the first debate This meant that the moderator, Chris Wallace from Fox News Channel's, challenged the politicians with the questions

Candidate each had two minutes to answer the host's questions although the topics were announced in advance of the debate The topics covered the following problems: national debt solving and entitlement, gun regulation, immigration issue, economic development, Supreme Court, foreign hot spots, and eligibility for being president The topics introduced in this debate, to some extent, distinguished Clinton and Donald Trump obviously from each other as they showed fundamentally different approaches and solutions to these problems

The data of this research were taken from the three presidential televised debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 in the United States The form of data is the utterances delivered by the interlocutors of the conversations of the debates The researcher collected the data from the official website of the "New York Times": http://www:nytimes.com

3.4 Technique of Data Collection

The data of qualitative research should be well-prepared, and logically objective organized before they are interpreted The researcher play a key role in design process of the data by following some steps:

 The videos the transcripts of the debates were downloaded from

3.5 Techniques of Data Analysis

Vanderstoep and Johnson (2009, p.258) claim that in qualitative research, the results are introduced in "Data Analysis" Data analysis is defined as a process of continued approximations which help reach an accurate description and interpretation

of the phenomenon Data analysis is examining data that involves organizing,

classifying, synthesizing, interpreting and understanding the data to draw conclusion The procedures of data analysis in this research were conducted as follows First, the raw data were indentified and categorized into the theme of following Grice's cooperative principle: observance or non observance, types of flouting and violation

of the Grice's maxims, strategies, functions of the appliance Second, the pursued data were carefully analyzed to find out the reasonable answer for the problem formulation The researcher then discussed the result of the data, drawing the conclusion which was bases on the findings

The researcher identify utterances based on the theory of utterance An utterance can be a word, a phrase, or an entire sentence If the speaker hesitates to find a word, treat it as one utterance Utterances that were split across speakers also present a canonical example of participant coordination in dialogue When a candidate interrupted the other by a word, phrase or a sentence it was treated as a change of talk

Chapter Summary

In conclusion, quantity-qualitative approach was employed in processing the

transcription of the data The data analyzed in this master thesis involves the three

presidential debates transcripts between the representatives of the two major political parties in The United States: Clinton the Democrats and Trump the Republicans The data were identified, classified, and then investigated based on Grice's Cooperative Principle proposed by Grice (1975)

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, the researcher sets aim to find out the non-observance that the two candidates committed in the three debates The results are presented in tables Then efforts are made to explain the results, basing on the research frame work After reading and analyzing the data, the researcher found that Both Trump and Clinton did not always follow the maxims However, they both breached the maxims only in respects of violation and flouting There was no case when one of the candidates committed the opting out or infringing a maxim Therefore, in this chapter, the researcher only focuses on maxim violation and flouting

4.1.Trump and Clinton's Violation of Grice's Maxims

After reading and analyzing the debate texts with great efforts, the author can list the maxims non-observance and illustrated as follow:

Table1: Clinton and Trump's Frequencies of Grice's maxims Violation Maxim Number violation Total utterances violation percentage

From table 1, it can be said that both Trump and Clinton committed Grice's maxims violation and flouting in which Trump showed a higher average rate of non- observance than Clinton The rate of violation is much higher than that of flouting The violations also differ between different maxims The most violated maxims are quantity and relation ones More than a third of Trump's answers were not or little related to the concerned issues at the time This problem was approximately 17 percent in Clinton's answers Below are some analysis of these commitments

4.1.1 Quantity Maxim Violation

As mentioned above, quantity maxim is concerned with the amount of exchanged information at a certain stage of a conversation To accomplish the maxim,

a speaker should provide sufficient and adequate information as required in the question Any failure of this task, either too much or too little information is provided,

is considered to be the case of quantity violation

In the three debates, both Clinton and Trump showed their involvement in violating the maxim It is clear that the topics as well as the specific raised questions were clear, requiring truthful and precise responses from the participants However, quite many times, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton made the listeners disappointed

in term of this aspect They not only failed to cover all the issues in the questions, but they also sometimes gave flooding stories which resulted in the deceptive effects on the public They violated the maxim by providing too little required information or giving too much details which were truly related to the concerned issues

a) Trump's Violation of Quantity Maxim

Trump surpassed Clinton on this subject He intentionally controlled the conversations by the way he wished The audience was usually flooded with his supply

of data but at the same time felt hungry when the offered details were not sufficient For most of the topics discussed in the three debates, Trump created an impression that

he rarely answered the questions with expected information The questions were quite specific and detailed However, Trump always steered the topics In general, the questions raised in the debates were mostly about future actions and plans but Trump mainly talked about past and current situations Repeatedly, the moderator had to repeat the question or challenged Trump to get him to focus on the question but he often failed The information he gave hardly met the requirement in the question This

was completely opposite to the amount of information he talked about present situation Trump dealt with the question by continuously blaming the past and current government including Clinton's involvement for the country's bad situations while the questions focused on the future's proposals Below are some specific examples

In the first debate, as for the opening segment "Achieving Prosperity" of which the central part was how to create more well-paid jobs moderator's question was "Why

are you a better choice than your opponent to create the kinds of jobs that will put more money into the pockets of American workers?" (Holt, Debate 1, 2016) Trump

obviously got his engagement in violating the quantity maxim Instead of focusing on

proving his future plans, he described the current situation of the country's job market

He stressed "our jobs are fleeing the country" to many different countries because of

money devaluation policy This information could be seen as the background base for the Republican representative to build his plans, but it was important that he ought to

be more specific on his future proposals Unfortunately, this did not take place Trump gave an detail account of the existing economic development while his plans and methods were not fully introduced In fact, he said a little more than a general

advertisement: "Under my plan, I'll be reducing taxes tremendously, from 35 percent

to 15 percent for companies, small and big businesses." (Trump, Debate1, 2016)

It can be seen that the public certainly had difficulties learning how Trump's controlling programmes and establishment would be effective because they were so general Too little detail was delivered This fundamentally contradicted with his accusations to the current government The reason for this quantity manner violation was that he wanted to take advantage of chance to attack his opponent, Hillary, who was considered to be closely related to the present establishment In addition, the politician wished to avoid unexpected negative comments from his opponent as well as the voters General promises would face less criticism than details which could show some incompetence This certainly did not satisfy the moderator He went on asking

Trump to focus on the topic "How are you going to bring back the industries that have

left this country for cheaper labor overseas? How, specifically, are you going to tell American manufacturers that you have to come back?" (Holt, Debate 1, 2016)

However, once again, Trump continued the conversation with accusations:

"Our country's in deep trouble We don't know what we're doing when it

comes to devaluations and all countries, especially China They have a VAT tax We're

on a different system When we sell into Mexico, there's a tax When they sell into us, there's no tax It's a defective agreement It's been defective for a long time, but the politicians haven't done anything about it" (Trump, Debate1, 2016)

He only focused on blaming Clinton for what was happening "She's been doing

this for 30 years And why hasn't she made the agreements better? The NAFTA agreement is defective" (Trump, Debate 1, 2016) He only cared about attacking the

past and present government What he addressed to the question was only total 7

words "We have to renegotiate our trade deals" far shorter than the unnecessarily

added information He poured out successive acclaims of the opponent while pretending to be addressing the question No matter how much the moderator, Holt, tried to get him more specific and direct to the question, Trump remained violating the quantity qualification Holt had to repeat the question three times, more and more

specific "Back to the question, though How do you bring back jobs , American

manufacturers? How do you make them bring the jobs back?" (Holt, Debate 1, 2016)

Trump's answer was more and more marginal and showed little focus Even Trump

stated "the first" but didn't mention the second The plan he revealed was no more than the slogan "renegotiate the deals, don't let the jobs leave" It was too general to be

convincing His answer violated quantity maxim because it did not give enough information He should have delivered his plans with more specific details like what his government would done to get the factories come back home or what were his detail policies for the economy

Another typical case was in the second debate when Trump was asked to tell the way he would force insurance companies to make coverage accessible for people

with preexisting health condition he just say "you are going to have plan" When the moderator asked what it meant he continued to repeat "You're gonna have plans that

are so good" His answer was not satisfying because the listeners could not have clear

information On the other hand when the moderator asked in detail "Are you going to

have a mandate that Americans have to have health insurance?", he gave a long

answer claiming that Obamacare was a "fraud", a "big lie" and the Obama government

was responsible for that It was clear that this information was not necessary because the voters only wanted to know whether or not Trump would pose a mandate so he just

needed to say "Yes" or "No" Trump violated the quantity maxim here because he wanted to avoid the answer If he said "No", he might have difficulty proving his healthcare plan was preferable If he said "Yes" the public would not believe it would

be practical Whereas, he criticized the current establishment to criticize Clinton because she previously praised Obamacare This could deemphasize Clinton's image in the public's eyes This rhetorical strategy was also exploited by Trump in many other situations in the debates It was so common that the moderators were used to repeating questions as well as accepting his added information in every his answer

b) Hillary's Violation of Quantity Maxim

In general, Clinton appealed the voters by trying to addressing the question as

an experienced and competent politician She made efforts in covering asked issues, presenting her proposals and solutions However, she sometimes couldn't stick with Grice's maxims, including the quantity maxim

In all the three debates, Clinton committed violation of quantity maxim in both aspects of lacking necessary information and offering too much information In terms

of lacking sufficient details to deal with the questions, Clinton often avoided answering the difficult questions which threatened her image or could put her on the verge of being criticized more This typically occurred in topics about her e-mail serve, Obamacare, Clinton Foundation, refugees or moral quality or stance In the questions related to these topics, Clinton had to try her best to get relieved from embarrassing comments from both the moderators and Trump She was seen to cleverly avoid committing unfavorable actions by covertly ignored delivering necessary information When facing specific questions with convincing evidences, Clinton cleverly resorted to quantity maxim violation to defend herself

In the other hand, Clinton appeared to add more information than needed with a view to getting Trump involved in the problem or advertising her plans or proposals Her most favourable topics were about tax release, racism, and cyber attack because she could pose numerous blame on Trump She took advantage of every chance to advance or turn back these topics For example, Clinton made use of Trump's reluctance to reveal tax return to question his capability to be the president She used his business background to fire him back In addition, she preferred to add more details

of her agenda to present herself as a strong leader whose establishment could advance

the American economy, broke all barriers and promote the public's faith for a better America Following are some typical examples:

A clear example of Clinton's violating the quantity maxim in the first debate was

in the segment of securing America The moderator asked Clinton about the person who caused cyber attack and how to fight it For this question, it was clear that Clinton should name the person she thought caused cyber attack and presented her plans to solve the problem She began her talk by saying that cyber attack was one of the biggest challenges both for the country and the next president Then she claimed that Russia was responsible for the attack Like many other answers, she added more details getting Trump involved in the topic She blamed Trump for praising Putin and inviting Putin to hack into Americans Whereas, for the second point of the question, her answer was not clear enough because her suggest lacked necessary details She

couldn't offer specific solutions Instead, the audience only got the general slogan "we

are not going to sit idly by and permit state actors to go after our information, our private sector information or our public sector information We will defend the citizens

of this country, and the Russians need to understand that They've been treating it as almost a probing, how far would we go? How much would we do? I was so shocked when Donald publicly invited Putin to hack into Americans That is, that is just unacceptable." (Clinton Debate 1, 2016) All the listeners could get here was that her

government would do something but they didn't know what would be done She failed

to meet the quantity maxim's cover She did not give enough information about the way to fight cyber attacker while giving unnecessary information related to Trump's relationship with Putin She intentionally derailed the conversation towards Trump

Similarly, Clinton resorted to violating quantity maxim by giving too much unnecessary information and ignored required details in the question of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, in the second debate Karpowics, an

audience, raised the question that "Premiums have gone up, deductibles have gone up,

co-pays has gone up, prescriptions have gone up and the coverage has gone down What will you do to bring the cost down and make coverage better?" (Debate 2, 2016)

Clinton began her talk by showing her agreement with what the voter said about Obamacare and promised to fix it if she became president Nevertheless, she then praised a lot of features of the 2010 Affordable Care Act She claimed that no other

healthcare policy was as good as 2010 Affordable Care Act This information was unexpected in her answer because what the listeners cared was the solutions to the problems of high increasing cost and reduced coverage Once again, Clinton's proposals were too general and had no specific plan She just repeated that she wished

to improve Obamacare and mentioned that many benefits would be lost if it was replaced as Trump's suggest:

"If we repeal it as Donald has proposed and start over again, all of those

benefits I mentioned are lost to everybody Not just people who get health insurance

on the exchange And then we would have to start all over again Right now we are at 90% health insurance coverage That's the highest we have ever been, in our country

I want to get to 100% and get cost down and quality up" (Clinton, Debate 2, 2016)

It is clear that Clinton approved Obamacare while Trump called it a disaster and wanted to replace it And the question here also focused on its negative sides Clinton would obviously faced disadvantage if she couldn't steer the topic to a more favorable direction She deliberately praised Obamacare's feature to reduce the audience's current impression and prevent further negative comments from the moderator and Trump This meant that she failed to observe the quantity maxim

4.1.2 Violation of Relevance Maxim

As above- mentioned, the relevance maxim controls that an interlocutor is expected to offer his or her share of conversation with appropriate relevance An input

is considered to be relevant for an individual at a certain stage of talk exchange if it connect with available contextual assumptions to produce a mutually positive cognitive results When the speaker and the hear can share the maximum of relevant hypothesis, the conversation takes place smoothly and successfully In the three

debates, Trump and Clinton repeatedly violated the relevance maxim by appearing

making commitment to addressing the questions but intentionally and covertly shifted

to another topic when they were in danger of facing unfavorable questions The moderators often raised direct and detailed challenges to seek specific responses but the representatives quite often failed to meet the requirement Significantly and repeatedly, he addressed the challenges with accusations, and Clinton cooperated by answering his accusations and sometimes they took their turn of order This was so common that it even didn't matter to them what the moderator's questions were In

their discussions, they often opened the next segment for a while when the previous was still not fully addressed or continued dealing with the previous problem regardless

of the moderator's direction This was so common and serious that in the three debates, the most discussed topics were not the topics raised in the questions It was common that when one of the candidate violated relation maxim, talking about unrelated topic, the other continued the unrelated issue, ignoring or not addressing the concerned topic

in the question This sometimes made the conversation develop in a different way Here are some examples:

Table 2: Example of Trump's violation of the relation maxim

Debate Questioned Topic Most Discussed Topic

a) Trump's Violation of Relation Maxim

Trump dominated in all the three debates in terms of violating Grice's relation maxim by steering the talk exchange off-course Through the discussed topics, Trump easily jumped from one directed issue to any other one he liked, derailing the segment

He failed to observe the maxim in most of the topics, especially in his long answers In some question, he gave some related information In other topics, such as home grown attack, Syria crisis or cyber attack, he showed an complete failure in fulfilling the relation quality Moreover, Trump mainly violated the relation maxim by focusing on attacking Clinton and the current government with negative comments on the country's domestic and foreign affairs Whenever a question was raised, he developed his talk through showing a disappointing picture of the past or current time although the question was to the future This maybe resulted from the fact that his opponent was involved in the establishment and this helped him to present Clinton in a negative way When asked about his treatment of women or his questionable tax release, he turned to his favorite talking topics such as ISIS or Clinton's emails In the second debate, for

example, he highlighted ISIS six times in his answer to the question about the Access Hollywood tape in which he claimed he would grab a woman's genitals without her consent In the third debate, when asked about the doubt of the practicality of his energy plan, he only talked about the country's job market, NAFTA, and TPP and blamed Clinton for these When asked about how he would treat Russia's war planes in Aleppo, he said Aleppo was a disaster and Clinton was responsible for that

For example, in the second debate, on the topic of personal behavior, he took advantage of Clinton's relation violation to escape from the unfavourable question

"I’ll actually agree with that I agree with everything she said I began this campaign

because I was so tired of seeing such foolish things happen to our country This is a great country This is a great land" (Trump, Debate 2, 2016) Unlike Clinton, who

designed her political career to continue the preceding Democratic President's achievement to enhance the economic development, Trump showed his discouragement and disappointment of the current government:

"I began this campaign because I was so tired of seeing such foolish things

happen to our country Whether it's in business and trade, where we are doing so badly Last year we had an almost $800 billion trade deficit." (Trump, Debate1, 2016)

He stressed the incompetence of the past and current governments Then he showed no hesitation of advertising himself as a leader who could saved the situation

to open a positive and prospective future for the country "I want to do things that

haven’t been done, including fixing and making our inner cities better for the American citizens that are so great and for the Latinos, Hispanics, and I looking

African-forward to doing- It’s called make America great again (Trump, Debate 1, 2016)

Obviously, Trump did not address the question at all He just presented his attack to the opponent and broadcast his campaign slogan This was because he himself was fully aware of the possibility that he might encounter unexpected comments if the question's issue was further discussed and exploited Throughout the first debate, he tried to draw all of the public's attention to two things: the Democratic government was not competent and he was the only one who was suited for the president position

He wanted no reference to the personal behaviors And he would try his best to avoid

it as much as possible The moderator had to repeat the question and added specific

detail as the sign that the candidates completely ignored the raised concern: ''Are you