Gricean Maxims and The Interpersonal Considerations

Gricean maxims are designed to make verbal interaction become quick, clear, and efficient. Grice (1975) proposes four maxims for verbal interactions: quality maxim, quantity maxim, relation maxim, and manner maxim. Maxim of quality requires speaker to speak truthfully. In order to support communication, one should be truthful and should not say what one thinks is false. One can only make statements if they are supported by evidence. Maxim of quantity requires speaker to pass sufficient information. The contribution made has to be as informative as required to proceed with the conversation. One should not make the contribution more informative or less informative than is required. Maxim of relation demands relevance in the conversation. The given information should be relevant with the topic of the conversation. One cannot suddenly give unrelated information in an ongoing conversation. Finally, maxim of manner requires clarity. Interactants must avoid obscurity of expressions. One should avoid ambiguity when giving information. Furthermore, the given information should be brief and orderly.

However, the “maximally efficient” verbal interaction is almost impossible to be done due to the interpersonal consideration among the people in the society. Thus, Gricean maxims are violated. These violations, however, are acceptable in the community for the presence of the cooperative principle which allows every interacting individual supports each other. Besides, In order to understand language use as social action, one has to consider the implication of speech act in particular context. Speech act and language use are sensitive matters which have many influencing factors to be considered. One cannot perform speech act without putting much concern to other’s face. The level of politeness applied reveals the interpersonal consideration of the interactants.

Politeness theory  (Brown and Levinson, 1978) brings contribution to our understanding of the effectiveness of communication in social interaction. Politeness is the result of some interacting factors such as the social distance, the degree of power, and cultural beliefs. Therefore, what is said to be an effective communication does not necessarily quick, clear, and maximally efficient.  One should not make the contribution more informative or less informative than is required. Maxim of relation demands relevance in the conversation. The given information should be relevant with the topic of the conversation. One cannot suddenly give unrelated information in an ongoing conversation.

Finally, maxim of manner requires clarity. Interactants must avoid obscurity of expressions. One should avoid ambiguity when giving information. Furthermore, the given information should be brief and orderly. However, the “maximally efficient” verbal interaction is almost impossible to be done due to the interpersonal consideration among the people in the society. Thus, Gricean maxims are violated. These violations, however, are acceptable in the community for the presence of the cooperative principle which allows every interacting individual supports each other.

Fransisca Kristanti "The Interpersonal Underpinning of Talk: Face Management and Politeness" on Pragmatics Course

The New Rules of The World

No doubt if all countries should go through the globalization era in this world, and there is no country that would be able to escape from it. Thus, the relationship among nations becomes the most important thing in achieving each own goal when the globalization comes up. On the one hand, during this globalization world, it has become the common issue that a country should build cooperative relations with another country and extremely requires a hand of another to support the growth of globalization. It then becomes such important thing that can be used as a tool to find out the social changes. If we try to see the globalization through the economic perspective, the international market offers more and more job opportunities for people and it indirectly raises the income for the government and here globalization becomes something promising for a country to improve sustainable economic development.

However, in this movie, The New Rules of the World, globalization becomes the reasons for international branded-companies to widen their wings in Indonesia. And, the existences of these branded-companies require many workers and labors of Indonesia to support the need of the companies, let’s say Nike, GAP, Old Navy, and Reebok (as what mentioned in the movie). Ironically, those workers and labors often work over time with the low salary in a month (more or less Rp. 10.000/day with 24-30 hours of working time) for the private goals of the company that is to raise the ordered-product. For example, for the product which costs Rp.112.000 they only get Rp. 500. As a result, Indonesia is claimed growing as a country with of 70% poor people.

This phenomenon becomes the reason why IMF, after the old regime let it come again to Indonesia and build such cooperative relationships with it, takes a part in the economic growth of Indonesia by the sake of global development and to bridge that 70% of poor people into the promising future by giving the loan. This loan enables IMF to manage the nature sources of Indonesia. As a result, it just makes Indonesia goes down into the deep poverty and there are more and more poor people because of IMF’s system. It seems like, this documentary movie tries to go behind the hype of the new global economy and reveals that the divisions between the rich and poor have never been greater -- two thirds of the world's children live in poverty -- and the gulf is widening like never before. The film looks at the new rulers of the world -- the great multinationals and the governments and institutions that back them -- the IMF and the World Bank. Under IMF rules, millions of people throughout the world lose their jobs and livelihood. The reality behind much of modern shopping and the famous brands is a sweatshop economy, which is being duplicated in country after country.

In The Spectre of Comparisons, Anderson takes a closer look on the effect of the spread of capitalism and the role of the state in promoting the official nationalism and he also tries to figure out how the capitalism takes the steepening economic stratification of the global economy which has resulted in the ethnicization of political life in the wealthy. In the case described above globalization doesn’t seem to bring much change to improve the economic growth of Indonesia and worse it turns out to bring bad effects for people in which the international branded-companies including IMF with their masks of promising future get Indonesian into deep down of poverty. As a result, the workers and labors become the victims of globalization. This phenomenon seems going along with what Anderson in Imagined Communities ever argued for. He argues that nations emerge in the eighteenth and nineteenth century as a result of various forces in which one of its forces is claimed as the print of Capitalism. In this stand point, it is assumed that the international markets bring the benefits for a country; they offer the job opportunities and vacancies for unemployed people and IMF offers the loans with the promising future but then it only results in the raise of the poverty. 

Arapa Efendi, Movie Review; The New Rules of the World. A Paper on Cultural Studies. 

Can we still believe in world when it remains in silence?

World, can we trust you?
We've been tired of talking
You stand there without any words out
Children were screaming
Mothers were rapped and murdered
Fathers were massacred when they struggled for us
No rain fell down but bombs
Our houses, mosques, and schools were destroyed
Others are blaming one another
While others are praying for us, but you...
Why do you stare at us with that empty look?
While we're bleeding...
(to be continued...)