Flouted Maxims in Anies Baswedan's Interview with ABC News Australia

Abstract

This study explores how flouting of Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle impacts effective communication in political interviews. Specifically, this research aims to identify the types of maxims flouted by Anies Baswedan during his March 8th, 2023 interview with ABC News Australia and to reveal the implied meanings behind the flouted maxims. To achieve this, Grice’s framework is utilized to categorize the flouted maxims, while Brown and Yule’s (1983) Context of Situation is applied to interpret the underlying pragmatics. The findings show that nine utterances from a total of sixteen responses uttered by Anies Baswedan are considered the flouting of maxims. The analysis shows that Anies Baswedan mainly flouts the maxim of quantity to elaborate his perspective about bilateral business relationships, and that he places a high value on equality, public interest, common sense, and law, rules, and regulations in making policies. Additionally, the flouted maxim of relevance implies that he does not discriminate people, despite the divisiveness of the 2017 Jakarta governor election campaign which he participated. Furthermore, Anies Baswedan flouts the maxim of manner to emphasize that he would govern fairly for everyone, not only for the people who support him.