Flouting the Gricean Maxims in Vernacular Conversations

Abstract

This study has undertaken a synthesis of the research literature on the four Gricean Maxims: the Maxim of Quality, the Maxim of Quantity, the Maxim of Relevance, and the Maxim of Manner.  The purpose of this phenomenological study is to understand the praxis of the four Gricean Maxims namely Quality, Quantity, Relevance, and Manner, as employed in vernacular conversations; describe how the participants flout those maxims; discover the implicatures produced by flouting the Gricean maxims; and develop activities as benchmark toward community awareness, for the participants of vernacular conversations like those from the identified local radio stations in the city of Tandag.  This study covered only vernacular conversations employed in vernacular radio programs of local stations in Tandag City namely SURE FM: Tandag’s First, Tandag’s Best- 97.5 megahertz (MHz) and PRIME FM: Good Kaayo, Your Health to Wealth Radio- 99.1 megahertz (MHz). Conversations recorded in this study did not only limit to Tandaganon dialect but also dialects in the province of Surigao dell Sur with inclusion of Cebuano-Visayan casually used by radio disc jockeys.  Participant observation was done in the two identified local radio stations in Tandag City namely SURE FM and PRIME FM. The selection of these two local radio FM Stations in the City of Tandag undergoes Random Purposeful- (still small sample size) type of purposive sampling for it adds credibility to sample when potential purposeful sample is larger than one can handle.  The informants of this study were all the participants of the conversations recorded.  The informants included the disk jockeys or radio announcers/commentators of local radio programs in vernacular, the callers, chatters, and live guests of the stations all engaging in vernacular conversations.  Non-

Participant observation was employed in this phenomenologicall research.  I found as identified in the coding: of the 88 conversations, 12 of them belong to the Formal Logic (FL=12) while 76 belong to the Conversational Logic (CL=76).  The four Gricean Maxims in Conversations were all violated.  Through flouting those Gricean Maxims in vernacular conversations, implicatures were produced.  The four illocutionary acts namely expressives, directives, commissives, and declaratives were manifested by the sample utterances.  In the conversations, there were 88 utterances which are produced by the speakers as the implicatures.  From the 88 conversations, (GM-Ql=16; GM-Qn=29; GM-Rv=19; GM-Mn=24) flouting the four Gricean Maxims, the utterances of Speaker B in all the conversations are the implicatures produced.  The implicatures are produced not only by flouting the four Gricean Maxims (GM-Ql=16; GM-Qn=29; GM-Rv=19; GM-Mn=24)but also by manifesting illocutionary acts (IAE=48 utterances; IADr=18 utterances; IAC=21 utterances; IADc=1 utterance) evident in the conversations.