An Analysis of Violated Maxims by the Main Character of 13 Reasons Why Season 2 TV Series

Abstract

This research deals with Grice’s cooperative principle theory as the main tool to analyze the utterances produced by Clay Jensen, the main character in 13 Reasons Why Season 2 TV Series. This research aims to reveal the lying behavior through violated maxims, the reason why the main character violates the maxims, and the impacts after the character telling lies through violated maxims. The utterances are analyzed with the cooperative principle theory proposed by Grice (1975) and theory of context of situation by Brown and Yule (1996), along with the lies motivation theory from Buller & Burgoon (1996) and Ekman’s Deception Guilt Theory (1992). This research uses a qualitative method as the main approach. The approach is combined with documentary research strategy. The primary data of this research are utterances which are collected from https://8flix.com/scripts/13-reasons-why-episode-scripts/. The secondary data are the screenshots of the dialogues that show the emotion of the main character in telling lies. The data which violates the maxims and contains lie are analyzed with the cooperative principle theory and theory of context of situation to classify the types of each utterance. Then, Lies motivation Theory and Guilt Deception theory are used to reveal the possible reasons and impact of violated maxims that represent lying behavior produced by the main character of 13 Reasons Why Season 2 TV Series. The result of this study shows that there are 24 utterances from Clay Jensen which violates 4 types of maxims. Those types of maxims are maxim of quality, maxim of quantity, maxim of relevance, and maxim of manner. The reasons why Clay Jensen violates the maxim are classified into 3 types of Lies Motivation, namely Instrumental, Relational, and Identity Motivation. The reason he uses instrumental motivation is to avoid punishment and to protect the source of information. The reason Clay uses relational motivation is to redirect social interaction and protect the listener’s feeling from being hurt, worried, or jealous. The most dominant reason is identity motivation. Clay tells lie to hide the private information and projecting a favorable image of the speaker. Moreover, after telling lies and violating the cooperative principle, Clay Jensen as the main character feels guilty. As a result, some impacts are revealed from Clay’s behavior. It is also supported by his statement and his decision to fix what he has done before