CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents background
of study, problems of the study, objectives of the study, significance of the
study, scope and limitation, and definition of the key terms.
1.1 Background of the Study The
term “implicature” is used by Grice (1975) to account for what a speaker can imply, suggest, or mean, as
distinct from what the speaker literally says (Brown and Yule: 1983). For instance, “I
looked at my watch after two hours and
realized that only twenty minutes had passed” (Grundy: 71). From this example, the reader automatically understands
that the statement shows how boring she
is even she does not say it explicitly.
In simple way, implicature can be
defined as indirect or implicit meaning of
an utterance that is produced by the speaker. Levinson also states that Implicatures can give pragmatic explanations
to the phenomenon that can be explained
by using theory of linguistics and show the differences between what is literally said and what is intended to convey.
Paul Grice (1975) divides
implicature into two types, conventional implicature and conversational implicature.
Conventional implicature is not based on
the cooperative principle or the maxims.
It does not have to occur in conversation,
and does not depend on the special contexts for the interpretation, conventional implicature deals with specific
words, such as „like‟ „but‟, „yet‟ and „even‟ (Yule, 1996: 45) The second type is conversational
implicature, it refers to the inference a hearer makes about speaker‟s intended meaning that arises from their interpretation of the literal meaning of what
is said (Paltridge:2000). According to Grice,
conversational implicature is the theory how people used the language. It is a theory how people communicate to others.
Brown and Yule (1983) state that conversational
implicature is something that deals with cooperative principle or maxims.
In addition, Grice divides
conversational implicature into generalized and particularized conversational implicatures.
Generalized conversational implicature is
the implicature which is not required from the particular context of situation
in inferring the meaning, all of them
got only from the maxim, especially maxim of quantity and maxim of manner (Paltridge, 2000:
45). When there is no special or particular
context that follows to give the additional meaning of the utterances it is called generalized conversational
implicatures. The other type of conversational implicature is particularized conversational
implicature. The particularized conversational
implicature can be defined as the assumption of the hearer in understanding the utterances by relying on the
context of situation maximally (Yule, 1996: 42-43). In short, particularized conversational
implicature is expressed in a particular or special context.
This study focuses on the conversational
implicature since as Levinson (1992:97)
states that the notion of conversational implicature is the single most important
ideas in pragmatics. The other reason is that implicature can show the difference between what is literally said and
what is intended to convey, because it
is not matter of sentence‟s meaning but instead of utterances‟ meaning. The hearer may
imply further information from what the speaker actually says.
This study takes a debate as the
data source because in debate people speak
to convey their ideas and facts. They also have to oppose. In a debate, candidates state and defend their positions on
major issues. Debate is natural conversation
(Stubbs, 1983:33). The debate which is chosen is the one made between Barrack Obama and John McCain on
September th 2008 held in Missisipi University. As the first debate,
there are crucial issues debated by Barrack
Obama and John McCain. They make the
debate very interesting since both of
candidates always release many sharp statements in order to criticize the opponent, more over they also practice the
language game (David Crystal,1995: Part V). The debate between Barrack Obama
and John McCain cannot be separated from
the war of language game which contains a lot of conversational implicatures.
There are some studies previously
done in this field, they used some objects
and different contexts, such as Head Lines in a News Paper, Head Line in Breaking News, and Advertisements. Syaifullah
(2002), for example, examined implicature of Headlines Used in Jakarta Post based on Grice‟s theory of implicatures. He focused his study on the cooperative principles. In his study,
Syaifullah found two kinds of conversational
implicature: generalized implicature and particularized implicature.
He also gave a description about
Floating and Hedging Maxims. Ahmadi (2003) who analyzed the implicatures in Headlines of
Breaking News METRO TV also found two
kinds of implicatures: generalized and particularized. Another relevant study was carried out by Harianto (2003). His
study focused on the conversational maxim
and the special terms used by Indonesian Chatters. In his study, he found that short/special terms and
abbreviation/short message are often used to express their facial expressions, he also made a
conclusion that maxim of quantity are often
flouted and hedged. Yazid (2004) focused on the implicit meaning from the advertisements, emphasizing on floating and
hedging maxims. The study looked at the
advertisements published in Yellow Pages.
Not many writers, however,
studied conversational implicature used in the spoken discourse, such as in debate. The
previous studies, for instance, use written object. Based on the above reasons, this study
analyzes spoken object in debate, entitled
“The Implicatures Used in the Debate between Barrack Obama and John McCain” .
1.2 Problems of the Study Based on the
background of study presented above, this study is conducted to answer the following questions: 1. What are
the types of conversational implicatures used in the debate between Barrack Obama and John McCain? 2. How
are the conversational implicatures used in the debate between Barrack Obama and John McCain? 1.3 Objectives
of the Study Based on the problems of study, this study aims to: 1. identify the types of conversational
implicature used in the debate between
Barrack Obama and John McCain 2. understand how conversational implicatures
used in the debate between Barrack Obama and John McCain.
1.4 Significance of the Study The
significances of the study are to give contributions in pragmatics study
especially implicature. The findings of the study are expected to be one of references and alternative information about
how to applied pragmatics study especially
implicature theory in the real field namely debate. Since this study is focused on types of implicature namely
conversational implicature, the result of the study is expected can give more
exploration toward conversational Implicature in the debate and can give deeper analysis
toward the types of conversational implicature
which exists in the debate. In other word, the result of this study is expected can provide and enrich the
conversational implicature study from different
phenomenon and object. Then, the result of this study also expected can fill the gap of the previous related study.
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