Date of Award
4-2010
Thesis Type
Masters
Document Type
Dissertation
Divisions
Faculty of Languages and Linguistics
Department
Department of English Language
Institution
Universiti Malaya
Abstract
In this investigation into the conversations of Malaysian women friends, H.P. Grice’s conversational maxims are analyzed in terms of fulfillment and non-fulfillment. Included are the theoretical aspects and findings of both foreign and local researchers who have done studies pertaining to all female conversations (Coates, 1996; Hafizah Ahamad, 2004) and Grice’s maxims (Rundquist, 1992; Kulasingam, 2004; Brumark, 2006). Data is drawn from audio-tape recordings of different groups of women friends, transcribed and instances of fulfillment and non-fulfillment were singled out in the analysis process. To strengthen the validity of the findings, the recordings were triangulated with onsite observations, field notes, ‘gap-filling’ and perceptions of the participants. The framework emulated is Grice’s Cooperative Principle (CP) and conversational maxims of quantity, quality, relevance and manner. Findings exhibit evidence that maxim fulfillment and non-fulfillment occur side by side in these conversations. When fulfilling the maxims, findings suggests that the women friends employed several discourse features such as minimal responses, hedging and repetitions. In cases of non-fulfillment the link between indirectness and implicature is clearly seen and pragmatic effects such as humor (teasing etc), sarcasm and echoic use are evident. Also, the CP appears to be unbroken when non-fulfillment occurs and further foster the notion of cooperativeness in women talk. This study, having done on Malaysian women has also highlighted the influence of the Malaysian culture and languages in the conversations. These are visible in the forms of code-switching, question tags and the use of ‘lah’.
Additional Information
Dissertation (M.A.) – Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya, 2010.
Recommended Citation
Pei Ling, Lee, "Investigating Gricean maxims in conversations among Malaysian women." (2010). Student Works (2010-2019). 112.
https://knova.um.edu.my/student_works_2010s/112
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Discourse and Text Linguistics Commons, Interpersonal and Small Group Communication Commons, Semantics and Pragmatics Commons
Initial
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