This study is aimed to find out what conversational maxims are mostly broken by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the second presidential debate 2016, how the conversational maxims are broken by them and what implicatures are generated from the broken maxims. The Cooperative Principle was proposed by Herbert Paul Grice, 1975. The principle stated that speaker should be cooperative by making the contribution as required in the talk exchange. There are four main maxims in Grice’s theory; the maxim of Quality, Quantity, Relevance and Manner.
The data of this research was the utterances of the two presidential candidates which were gained from the responses made by the two candidates that contained the broken maxims. This research used descriptive qualitative method. The findings showed that Donald Trump broke the conversational maxims more than Hillary Clinton did. He broke the maxims by the number of 61 times, where he broke the maxim of Quantity the most by 24 times followed by the maxim of Quality by 18 times and the maxim of Manner by 12 times. Among all maxims, the maxim of Relevance was broken by Donald Trump the least by 7 times. In regards to the way the maxims are broken, Donald Trump violated by 50 times, flouting by 4 times and opting out the maxims by 7 times. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton broke the conversational maxim less than Donald Trump did. She broke the maxims by 26 times where she broke the maxim of Manner the most by 10 times, followed by the maxim of Quality by 9 times and the maxim of Quantity by 6 times. Surprisingly, the maxim of Relevance was broken once (1). In terms of the way the maxims are broken, Hillary violated the conversational maxims by 20 times, flouted 5 times and opted out once (1). It is found in this study that the purposes in implicatures generated from the utterances were to inform, to confirm, to criticize, to influence, to convince, to show feeling and to avoid answering. Trump violated the Quality maxim in order to criticize 7 times, to convince 6 times, to influence 2 times and to show feeling once. When Trump violated the Quantity maxim, he did it in order to inform (5), to avoid answer (4), to show feeling and to influence (3 times each), to convince and to criticize (2 times each) and to confirm once. Trump violated the Relevance maxim in order to avoid answer (3 times), to show feeling and to inform once each. Meanwhile, Trump violated the Manner maxim mostly in order to convince (4 times), to inform (2) and to confirm (1). Trump flouted the Manner maxim in order to convince (2), to avoid answer and to inform once each. Trump opted out the Quantity maxim mostly to avoid answer (3) and to inform (1). He also opted out the Relevance maxim by 2 times in order to avoid answer and opted out the Manner maxim in regards to criticizing (1). In regards to the violation of the Quality maxim, Hillary did it to inform and to confirm (3 times each), to convince (2) and to influence (1). She violated the Quantity maxim by a balance supply (2 times each) in order to convince and to show feeling. She also criticized once by breaking this maxim. Hillary violated the Relevance maxim to show feeling (1) and violated the Manner maxim twice in order to criticize while to show feeling, to influence and to convince (once each). Hillary flouted the Quantity maxim in order to convince (1) and flouted the Manner maxim for the purposes of influencing and informing (2 times each). Hillary, at last, opted out the Manner maxim once in order to avoid giving appropriate answer. The finding illustrates that the conversational maxims are ideally being followed in communication yet they are mostly being broken and thus not
forbidden to break the maxims. The implicature may vary in meaning since it merely depends on the context of the conversation. By this finding, it is suggested that students and teachers of English language can study more about conversational maxims and their implicatures. The future researcher may conduct the study on Grice’s CP and its maxims in silent language and its implicature because it may sometimes serve communication.