An analysis of the use of grice’s cooperative principle in the day show

Abstract

This study seeks to analyze the use of Grice’s cooperative principle and its maxims in The Day show, a television talk show on TV3. Seven different videos, representing seven episodes with distinctive themes were purposively selected based on their level of interactivity. The selected videos represented a theme on religion, social issue, personal story, education, Business, entertainment and health. The findings revealed instances of observance of all the maxims (quantity, quality, relation and manner) and occurrences of five kinds of non-observance (flouting, violation, infringement suspension, opting out). The maxim of manner emerged as the most observed maxim with 113(113%) occurrences, followed by the maxim of quantity92(36.50%), relation35(13.88%), and quality(4.76%). Regarding non observance, violating maxims had the highest number of occurrences with a total of 107(67.7) instances. This is followed by flouting25(15.8%), infringement17(10.7), suspending 5(3.1%), and opting out 4(2.5). Further, the study revealed some possible reasons for non-observance of maxims to be face-saving, emphasis, creating fake truth, convincing, appealing to emotions, and avoiding certain topics. The study concluded that, panelists on the Day Show exhibited preparedness and willingness to share their life experiences with their audience. Again, the number of instances of observance of the Grice’s maxims outnumbering non-observance also affirms how prepared these panelists were to share their experiences with others. These findings affirm the important role Grice’s cooperative principle plays in helping to understand in a conversation. The study recommends that Producers of The Day Show invite panelists who would be cooperative as possible and willing to share their candid opinions on selected themes as required at each stage of the conversation. This will ensure that conversations are seen as natural and possible to yield genuine and quality results.