Grice Maxims Mapping of the English Expressions Taken from Nasreddin Stories to Arouse Students’ Reading Interest

Abstract

In Indonesia, English is taught in school as foreign language. English that is taught in Indonesian school actually does not give contextual communication because teaching and learning process sometimes only uses what the textbook that has been provided. The class atmosphere sometimes is also always in a high tension so the students sometimes have no interest in learning English. For example, in students‟ book or students‟ work sheet, the material to teach narrative is always telling about fairy tale that is already known by most of students like Cinderella, Snow White and etc. Therefore, teachers need to give other good materials for the students. Materials to teach English can be taken from authentic material because it contains contextual communication to teach language. There are many types of authentic materials, one of the good authentic materials that can be used in order to break the classroom atmosphere and also give students interest are humour stories, for example, Nasreddin story which can attract the students to read the story because the story contains some humours, but humour is not easy to understand, there are many implied meanings in order to make the story funny. Yule (2010) states, “With the co-operative principle and maxims as guides, we can start to work out how people actually decide that someone is „implying‟ something.” According to Brown and Yule (1983), the term „implicature‟ is used by Grice to account what a speaker can imply, suggest, or mean, as distinct from what the speaker literally says. Grice (in Brown and Yule, 1983) suggests these following conversational conventions, or, maxims, which support the principle: Maxim of quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange); Maxim of quality: Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence; Maxim of relation: Be relevant; Maxim of manner: Be perspicuous, avoid obscurity of expression, avoid ambiguity, be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity), and be orderly. Nasreddin story is a narrative story which sometimes contains humours in the story. Nasreddin Hodja is a well-known humorous figure in the region of Middle East. This book is chosen by the researcher because this book contains 22 shorts and simple stories and much more understandable for junior high school. Therefore, this book is appropriate to teach junior high school students. Every story contains some humours to motivate students in reading story, and also has good moral value that is appropriate for students. In this research, the characters put humour(s) by violating maxims in their conversation to lead into unrelated topic, to imply the meaning, to insult, to make order, or to refuse, meaning that humours can take a part to make something interesting and fun. Accordingly, they possess a high potential to enhance motivation and learning in foreign language classes and lower anxiety. The nature of Nasreddin Hodja stories is so eligible for classroom use because they combine humour elements with didactic components. This Nasreddin stories can be used as a new material for teaching narrative text because the stories are rarely used for narrative text.