PREFACE

First of all, thanks to God because of the help of God, writer finished writing the paper
entitled “The Cooperative prinsiple and Hedges” right in the calculated time.

The purpose in writing this paper is to fulfill the assignment that given by Ms. Jernih Sinurat
as lecturer in Pragmatics major. 

In arranging this paper, the writer trully get lots challenges and obstructions but with help of
many indiviuals, those obstructions could passed. Writer also realized there are still many
mistakes in process of writing this paper.

Because of that, the writer says thank you to all individuals who helps in the process of
writing this paper. Hopefully allah replies all helps and bless you all.the writer realized tha
this paper still imperfect in arrangment and the content.  Then the writer hope the criticism
from the readers can help the writer in perfecting the next paper.last but not the least
Hopefully, this paper can helps the readers to gain more knowledge about pragmatics major.

Medan, 22 April 2021

                                                                       Author
PURPOSE :
1. So that students can speak according to the situation and context, among others; who,
where, when, for what purpose and events.
2. People will speak as clearly as possible, not convoluted, concise, not excessive, speak
reasonably (including a reasonable volume of voice).

SUMMARY:
1. Cooperative principle in pragmatic means the principle of cooperative explains how
humans can communicate effectivelyin conversation in general situations
2. Under the general heading of the cooperative principle, there are 4 more specific maxims
that Grice proposed:
A. Maxim of quantity
B. Maxim of quality
C. Maxim of relation
D. Maxim of manner
3. Hedges are device used by speakers to explain utterencea beforehand in relation to the four
maxim.

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1. BACKGROUND

Humans are social creatures so they need interactions with other humans. One of the
human activities is an activity communicate. According to Littlejohn and Foss in his
book, entitled Theories of Human Communication says that "Communication is the
verbal interchange of a thought or idea ” (2008: 3), and in that book too explain another
definition, namely "Communication is the transmission of information ”(2008: 3). Thus it
can be interpreted that communication is one of the human activities in sending and
receiving information, convey their ideas, feelings or thoughts in their life. While Wood
in his book entitled Communication in our lives said that "communication is a systemic
process in which people interact with and through symbols to create and interpret
meanings ”(2009: 3), which can be interpreted that communication is a systemic process
by which people interact with through symbols to create and interpret meaning. From
understanding above can be explained that communication is a process, which means is
on going and is said to be systemic because of its part system interrelated with one
another who are involved in it. In the process of communicating humans need language,
because of us cannot communicate in the true sense without language. Todd states that "a
language is a set of signals by which we communicate" (Todd, 1987: 6), thus it can be
assumed that language is a set of signals in a communication. Usually the language is
used as media communicate someone with others in the environment and society. In
addition, in communicating the community uses various kinds of language that they
understand and understand one by one other.

In her journal, Yunita Nugraheni, entitled Analysis Implicature on The Harry Potter
and The Goblet of Fire (2010: 390) film script, mentions that there is two kinds of
communication, namely direct communication and indirect communication. Direct
communication is communication that is done face to face, while indirect communication
is communication which happens when face to face is not met or vice versa.
Communication is a form of means of exchange of information between two or more
people, the information exchange process can run well if use appropriate and efficient
communication methods, in other words that communication can go well between the
speaker or the interlocutor if they are mutual understanding and understanding of the
principle of obedience or maxims cooperative principles.
According to Grice in his book, Logic and Conversation states:
“Make your conversational 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 ” (1975: 45).
From Grice's statement above, it can be interpreted that in the principle of obedience
maxims or cooperative principles should be involved in a The conversation contributes to
the message or purpose needed in a conversation it can be conveyed. According to Grice
in his book entitled Logic and Conversational (1975: 45) cooperative principles are
divided into four maxims, namely the maxim of quantity, maxim of quality, maxim of
relation and maxim of manner. In this maxim of quantity the speakers are expected can
provide sufficient and informative information as possible, where the informatio provided
does not exceed the information required. In maxim of quality, speakers are expected to
provide correct information or according to the facts. The imperative of utterance in the
maxim of relation, speaker is expected to make a related or related contribution. While
in the maxim of manner, speakers are expected to be able to convey information directly,
clearly and not obscure or vague. However, the reality is that society in general does not
always have it apply the principles of maximal obedience in daily communication. They
don't apply the principle of obedience to the maxims sometimes because they did it on
purpose or they didn't do it on purpose do it. The deliberate case, for example, they don't
tell the truth or lies to cover up something or just to please people otherwise, exaggerate
words with a specific purpose or attract attention other people. On other occasions they
didn't say anything irrelevant or sometimes they provide information of a nature
ambiguous or unclear when communicating with others. If this phenomenon occurs
during the conversation and gives a meaning different from what he said, it means they
broke the maxims or flouting of maxims.

In Mukaro et al's journal entitled Violation of Conversational Maxims in Shona says:

“When flouting a maxim the speaker is not on a misinformation drive but wants the
hearer to look for the conversational implicature, which is an inferred meaning " (2013:
161-168).

From this statement it can be explained that when the speaker violates the maxims
this, the speaker expects the listener to see and know that there is something that was
meant. Maxim is violated sometimes for various reasons different as just to make humor,
to avoid an uncomfortable situation might even be possible to avoid questioning
the. Obedience and violation of this maxims are not only found in community
communication day-to-day.
 CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION

A. PRAGMATICS

"Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning" (Yule, 1996: 3), which can it
means that pragmatics is learning about a speaker's intent. In context it can be
explained that pragmatics is the study of meaning delivered by the speaker (or author)
and interpreted by the listener (or reader). It can be assumed that this study has more
to do with analysis of what is meant by the speaker of that word or phrase used in the
speech itself.

“pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning “ (Yule, 1996: 3), which can
explained that pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning. In study this needs to
involve the interpretation of what the speaker meant on the inside a specific context
and how that context affects what said. In this case we need a consideration of how
speakers set what they want to say according to people who they talked to, where,
when, and in what situations the conversation was occur.

"Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than is said" (Yule,
1996: 3), which means that pragmatics is the study of how to order more much more
was delivered than was said. This approach is necessary investigates how the listener
can infer what is spoken by speakers in order to arrive at an interpretation of the
meaning intended by speakers. This type of study explores how much something is
 not said turned out to be the part that was delivered. In other words study it is the
study of the search for meaning.

B. COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE
In Davies' journal entitled Grice's Cooperative Principle:
Getting The Meaning Across (2000: 26) states that:

“The CP is principally concerned with the distinction between 'saying' and

‘Meaning’, trying to answer the question ‘how do speakers know how to generate
implicit meanings and how can they assume that their addressees will reliably
understand their intended meaning ”.

From the above statement it can be explained that the cooperative principle is a
basic principles relating to the difference between words and meanings, in other
words that the cooperative principle is the basic assumption in conversation, in which
the speaker and listener will try to play a role appropriately in the conversation
process. Grice shares these cooperative principles into four maxims, namely the
maxim of quantity, maxim of quality, maxim of relevance and maxim of manner.
1) Maxim of Quantyty
the maxim of quantyty state :
 Make your contribution as informative as is required
 Do not make your contribution more informative than is required

example :
A : Does Elisa have any7 siblings?
B : Yes, she has sister.

when hearing B’s response, A assume that B is fully aswering the

question – that is, that B is being as informative as possible, so A
would naturally assume that Elisa has exactly one sister, and doesn’t
have any brother.

2) Maxim of Quality
The maxim of quality states :
 Do not say what you believe to be false
 Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

In some ways the first of these points is the most basic maxim for the
Cooperative Principle: communicating in good faith seems to require that we
are—or at least try to be—truthful.

The second point—don’t say that for which you lack adequate evidence—is a
bit harder to judge, and what counts as “adequate evidence” varies a great deal
from context to context.
 example : If your housemate asks you what day garbage is being collected this
week, and you can’t really remember but you think it might be Tuesday or
Wednesday, you would be violating the maxim of quality if you confidently
replied: “Garbage pickup is definitely Wednesday this week.”

3) MAXIM OF RELEVANCE
The maxim of relevance states:

 Be relevant.
 The idea behind this maxim is that when we converse, we shouldn’t
introduce irrelevant topics—we try to stick to the topic of
conversation, and we assume that our contributions will be interpreted
in that light.

example:
A: Are you visiting family this weekend?
B: I have a term paper due on Monday.
A natural interpretation of this example is that B is saying that they do not
plan to visit family this weekend, and that the reason is that they have to work
instead.

4) MAXIM OF MANNER
The maxim of manner states:
 Avoid obscurity of expression. (That is, don’t use words or phrases
that are hard to understand.)
 Avoid ambiguity.
 Be brief.
 Be orderly.

This relates not to the content of what you say, but the way you express
yourself.
Example:
Sule : Please sit down Rini
Rini : okay

From the example above, Sule tries to invite Rini as a star

guests to sit down, and Rini responds with a pretty clear answer.

C. HEDGES
 Hedging is any deliberately ambiguous statement or any equivocal statement.
Grundy (2000) includes hedging among other mitigating devices in his politeness
marker category ‘downgraders’. He calls there devices, hedges, play-downs,
understaters, downtoner, or ‘minus’ comminters.

The hedges and intensifiers are more comment on the extent to which the
speakers abiding by the maxims which guide our conversational contributions than a
part of what is said or conveyed. It seems that when we talk, we not only convey
messages, but also frequently like to tell each other how informative, well founded,
relevant, and perspicuous these messages are. Speakers frequently use highly
grammaticalized hedges and intensifiers to inform their addressees of the extent to
which they are abiding by the maxims. These hedges and intensifiers show that the
guiding principles for talk suggested by Grice really do exist and that speakers orient
reflexively to these principles as they communicate.

Levinson (1985) states that the theory of conversational implicature is a theory

of language in which language is viewed as a self-contained system of rules. He
further argues that there are interesting relations between structure and function of the
language. Thus, the English particles such as ‘well’, ‘oh’, ‘ah’ ‘so’, ‘anyway’,
‘actually’, ‘still’, ‘after all’, are the lexical items which at time refer to the notion of
conversational implicature and are being described as “maxim hedges” indication how
an utterance is preface in order o make up to cooperative expectation.

Moreover, in academic speech, hedging is most appropriately described as

either (a) a lack of competence commitment to the truth value of an accompanying
proposition, or (b) a desire not to express that commitment categorically.

Myers (1989) groups all linguistic devices under his categories of "negative
politeness and hedging, focusing less on the description of the linguistic devices
themselves than on their purpose or motivation. Further, hedging is a politeness
strategy when it marks a claim or any other statement as being provisional, pending
acceptance in the literature, acceptance by the community-in other words, acceptance
by the listeners. He goes to point out that hedging can be realized in any different
linguistics forms, and gives examples of the use of condition statements, modifiers,
verb choice, framing statement that indicates the weight a statement should have or
the degree of doubt involved, and even statements of personal opinion.

Hedges are device used by speakers to explain utterancea beforehand in

relation to the four maxims
Hedges may take the form of many different parts of speech, for example:

 There might just be a few insignificant problems we need to address.

(adjective)
 The party was somewhat spoiled by the return of the parents. (adverb)
 I'm not an expert but you might want to try restarting your computer.
(clause)
  That's false,isn't it? (question clause)

Type of hedges :
1) Quality Hedges
Brown and Levinson (1990) state that quality hedges may suggest that the
speaker is not taking full responsibilities for the truth of his utterances. For
instance:
think…
I believe…
assume…

Or alternatively they may stress S’s commitment to the truth of his utterances;
in other words, they reflect the commitment of the writer to the quality of the
proposition contained in the subsequent part of the statements and do not
contribute truth value to the statements as a whole. Such as, I absolutely
(deny/ promise/believe) that…, others take the opposite view and say…, The
issue says…, It is quite right what people say…, Some people believe that…,
So you can imagine even…, In this case..., etc. Or they may disclaim the
assumption that the point of S’s assertion is to inform H, such as, As you
know…, As it well known…, As you and I both know…, etc.

2) Quantity Hedges
we find archetypal examples in these English expressions, which give notice
that not as much or not as precise information is provided as might be
expected, such as: roughly, more or less, approximately, give or take a few, or
so, I should think, I can’t tell you more than that it’s…, to some extent, all in
all, in short, basically, so to speak, etc. the assertion of personal opinion show
that the information tried to be conveyed is limited.

3) Relevance Hedges
In Relevance hedges, we note that because of sensitivity of topic changes as
impositions on H’s face, such changes are often done off record. Hedges that
mark the change, and perhaps partially apologize for it, include, by the way…,
oh I know…, anyway…, this may not be relevant/ appropriate/ timely but…, I
might mention at this point…, while I remember…, etc.

4) Manner Hedges
Finally, some common Manner hedges includes, what I meant was…, more
clearly…, to put it more simply…, you see, yeah?, got it?, OK?, is that clear?,
see?, etc.
 QUESTION

1. What is maxim ? What the purpose of maxim in your discussion ? Because i don’t
understand about maxim. (Kiki group 3)
= Maxim is a principle that must be adhered to by participants in their interactions, both
textually and interpersonal in an effort to smooth the process of communication.

2. about the cooperative principle, can you explain again ?, in shorter terms and in easy to
understand words, I apologize for not understanding the explanation, ( naila karimah group 4)
= The concept was introduced by philosopher H. Paul Grice in his 1975 article "Logic and
Conversation" in which he argued that "talk exchanges" were not merely a "succession of
disconnected remarks," and would not be rational if they were

3. I wanna ask you,please explain about maxim quality? ( Indah group 3)

= communicating in good faith seems to require that we are—or at least try to be—truthful.
States: Do not say what you believe to be false
Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

4. On quantity hedges, can you explain the example in the form of a sentence? ( Larisma
group 9)
= all I know, they want a divorce. it's just that I will not answer what the reason for their
divorce.
I can't tell you any more than that

5. Can you explain about maxim manner? because I don't really understand your explanation
earlier. ( Siti group 6)
= This relates not to the content of what you say, but the way you express yourself.
States: Avoid obscurity of expression. (That is, don’t use words or phrases that are hard to
understand.)
Avoid ambiguity.
Be brief.
Be orderly.

6. What is about hedges? Please explain in simple terms in your own words and give
examples around you! (nova group 8)
= an expression that shows the speaker's doubt or uncertainty about something that is being
said.
Example: I'm not sure if this is right.. or as for as I know
 CONCLUSION

In carrying out daily activities, humans will always meet and interact with other people. In
interacting with other people, humans use language as a medium of communication. In
proper communication, each of the parties involved, namely the speaker and the addressee,
will always try to convey their speech effectively and efficiently. In order for these utterances
to be accepted by the interlocutor, speakers and addressees usually carefully consider the
various pragmatic factors involved or may be involved in a communication process.