When seeking information, children expect informants to provide information that is congruent with their knowledge and to use conventional labels. Violations of these linguistic expectations influence their behaviour and perceptions, as they are less likely to seek information from informants with a history of inaccuracy or of violation of conversational form (Eskritt et al., 2008; Koenig & Harris, 2005) and perceive unreliable informants as “silly” (Brosseau-Liard & Birch, 2010). I explored whether violations of linguistic expectations influence children’s perceptions of knowledgeability and helpfulness and whether these characteristics predict children’s information seeking. Forty 5-year-olds observed a farmer and a car mechanic label objects for a foreign child. The objects were associated with one of the two informants, rendering one as the expert, and the other as the non-expert. The informants labelled the familiarization objects by stating either the object’s color or its super ordinate category. During test trials, children selected one of the two informants to label novel objects that were either related or unrelated to either one’s domain of expertise (i.e. novel animals, tools or odd objects). Finally, children rated informant’s knowledge of the familiarization objects and their willingness to help the foreign child. Results show that children perceive an informant who provided the super ordinate category as more helpful and somewhat more knowledgeable than one who provides the colour. When labelling objects related to the informants’ domain of expertise, children rely on expertise to seek information. For unrelated novel objects, a trend suggests that perceptions of the expert’s knowledge influence decision making. These results provide new factors underlying children’s information seeking. / Thesis (Master, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2010-09-29 11:43:23.22

Although conversations in television shows are supposed to mimic and represent everyday natural speech, they are written for a specific purpose. The aim of this paper is to find out what maxims are flouted the most in the television series Firefly and analyse what the effects of these flouts are. Presented here is an analysis of how scripted conversation in the aforementioned television show is constructed. By applying Grice's cooperative principle and his theories on flouting and implicatures, certain patterns emerge that show recurring uses of flouts for specific effects. The results are based on a study of three episodes of the television series Firefly. The results show that the maxim of quality is flouted the most and that the distribution of flouts between characters is somewhat uneven. This suggests that the use of flouts has to do with the personalities of the different characters.

<p>When we converse we constantly fail to observe the rules of conversation in order to simplify and make dialogues more effective. The scriptwriters who work with TV shows use non-observances of maxims in order to evoke different feelings from their viewers. The aim of this paper was to investigate how frequently non-observances of maxims occurred in the TV shows Desperate Housewives and That 70’s Show. I examined where and why they were used as well as how often flouting was used compared to violations. The base of the study was a drama and a comedy show.</p><p>Research has shown that the maxim of relevance is most frequently used to create different comical or dramatic situations. The scriptwriters have their characters ignore what is relevant to the situations in order to make them come off as flustered, odd and stupid in humorous situations and as mysterious, cowardly, respectful or bold in dramatic situations. Also research shows that flouting occurs more frequently than violations when it comes to breaking maxims. Violations occur most often with the maxim of quality when the characters lie to mislead in order to direct blame away from him/herself. In Conclusion, this investigation has shown that non-observances of maxims are important for scriptwriters in order to create humorous and dramatic situations in verbal interaction.</p>

This paper explores how flouting of the Gricean maxims is used to create comedy in the television series Community.  The aim of the paper is to find out what maxims are flouted the most to create comedy and what maxims the different characters flout in order to create comedy. The paper examines the use of flouts in different situations and explores in what situations the different characters flout the maxims for comedy.  The paper is based on transcription of eight episodes of the series. The results show that the maxim of quantity was flouted most often, and some characters used more flouts than others. These results suggest that the use of flouts has to do with their different personalities, which is why some characters did not use as many flouts in order to create comedy, since it would not be in line with their personality.

When we converse we constantly fail to observe the rules of conversation in order to simplify and make dialogues more effective. The scriptwriters who work with TV shows use non-observances of maxims in order to evoke different feelings from their viewers. The aim of this paper was to investigate how frequently non-observances of maxims occurred in the TV shows Desperate Housewives and That 70’s Show. I examined where and why they were used as well as how often flouting was used compared to violations. The base of the study was a drama and a comedy show. Research has shown that the maxim of relevance is most frequently used to create different comical or dramatic situations. The scriptwriters have their characters ignore what is relevant to the situations in order to make them come off as flustered, odd and stupid in humorous situations and as mysterious, cowardly, respectful or bold in dramatic situations. Also research shows that flouting occurs more frequently than violations when it comes to breaking maxims. Violations occur most often with the maxim of quality when the characters lie to mislead in order to direct blame away from him/herself. In Conclusion, this investigation has shown that non-observances of maxims are important for scriptwriters in order to create humorous and dramatic situations in verbal interaction.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:43:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2096249 bytes, checksum: 20b16a22a08a04ed2a906972bbc6e758 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-03-23 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This dissertation presents the results of a research which aimed at investigating the semanticdiscursive functions of the violation of the Gricean Maxims, which generates indirect acts in texts advertising medicines. The hypothesis on which the work is based is that in texts advertising medicines the Gricean Maxims are not respected, thus generating indirect acts which could work as a strategy to sell the product. It was possible to notice that persuasion is sometimes achieved in an indirect way, i.e. the speaker considers his interlocutor when acting, suggesting implicit meanings which contribute to the success of the advertisement. In order to guarantee the intended effect, the advertising text is constructed through the use of as many non-observed maxims as possible, which generates indirect acts. These indirect acts guide interpretation towards the consumption of the product, the idea, the object of the message, which means that the non-observance of the maxims predetermines reading possibilities which aim to include the advertiser s intentions. The present investigation is essentially of a qualitative and interpretative nature and was based on the Cooperative Principle and Conversational Maxims, proposed by Grice (1982 [1975]), and on the Speech Acts Theory, according to Austin (1990 [1962] and Searle (2002, [1969]). The corpus consisted of advertisements of medicines published in the magazine Saúde! (Editora Abril), 2008 and 2009 issues, and shown on TV channels in 2008 and 2009. The advertisements were selected according to the recurrence of the non-observance of the maxims. This investigation discusses the production of indirect acts created by the non-observance of conversational maxims as a semantic-discursive resource. / Esta dissertação apresenta resultados da pesquisa que teve como objetivo geral investigar a(s) função(ões) semântico-discursiva(s) da quebra das máximas conversacionais gerando atos indiretos, em textos de propagandas de remédios. A hipótese que norteou a pesquisa é de que as máximas conversacionais, em textos de propagandas de remédios, são quebradas gerando atos indiretos que, por sua vez, podem funcionar como estratégias para vender o produto. Através das análises, constatamos que a persuasão, algumas vezes, acontece de forma indireta, ou seja, o locutor age em função de seu interlocutor insinuando sentidos implícitos que corroboram para o sucesso da propaganda vender o(s) medicamento(s). Para garantir o efeito pretendido, o texto da propaganda é construído com o maior número de quebra de máximas possível, que gera atos indiretos. Estes, por sua vez, dirigem a interpretação para o consumo do produto, da ideia, do objeto da mensagem, ou seja, a quebra das máximas predetermina possibilidades e direções de leitura(s) que visam à admissão das intenções do anunciante. Inserida em um enfoque essencialmente qualitativo e interpretativo, esta investigação pautou-se no Princípio de Cooperação e Máximas Conversacionais postuladas por Grice (1982 [1975]), e na Teoria dos Atos de Fala, conforme Austin (1990 [1962] e Searle (2002, [1969]). O corpus selecionado para nosso estudo consistiu em propagandas de remédios veiculadas na revista da Editora Abril Saúde! , edições dos anos de 2008 e 2009 e em canais de TV, nos anos de 2008 e 2009. As propagandas foram submetidas a uma triagem preliminar em função da recorrência de quebra de máximas. Esta investigação justifica-se por colocar em discussão a produção dos atos indiretos advindos de quebra de máximas conversacionais como recurso semântico-discursivo.

The conversational maxims are guidelines to how a conversation should be conducted, but sometimes these maxims can be broken for different reasons. The aim of this thesis is to identify breakings of the conversational maxims in the crime drama Blindspot and to study which maxims are broken, for what purpose the maxims are broken and if there are any changes to the number of maxims broken between different seasons of the series. The results show that the maxim of quantity is most frequently broken in the episode from season one and the maxim of quality is broken most frequently in the episodes from season three and five. Some of the reasons for the breakings are sarcasm used for a comedic effect, not giving enough information to keep the viewers in suspense and as a way to change the subject or focus of a conversation.

The master's thesis Politics, Media and Manipulation: Political Journalism and Pragmatic Linguistics examines contemporary Czech publicized political communication using pragmatic analysis. It focuses on topics like power, ideology and self-presentation of the political participants in the media. It is also concerned with the framing of media communication and with the communication strategies that the political participants and journalists use. The research was conducted with the use of quantitative pragmatic analysis. Each sample was examined from many different angles. In this thesis, pragmatic phenomenon are examined like the function of the statements, speech acts, intertextuality, conversational maxims, the use and violation of speech etiquette, presupposition, conversational implicatures, deixis, and reference. The semiotic analysis and the examination of the context, from which the analyzed media texts originated, is involved as well. Journalistic texts from different types of media from the time of the first Czech direct presidential election have been chosen as samples for the analysis. The goal of the thesis is to design a complex pragmatic analysis and describe the used communication strategies of the participants.

Anna Šmilauerová: TV Sitcom Friends: Analysis of character humor strategies based on the violation of Grice's Conversational maxims Abstract The purpose of this diploma thesis is the analysis of the humor strategies employed by the characters of Phoebe and Chandler in the TV Sitcom Friends. The discovered prevailing strategies were then compared with the personalities of the two characters. The data analyzed were the written script of five exemplary episodes from the Season 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9, in which the utterances eliciting laughter from the audience were thoroughly analyzed from the point of Grice's Cooperative Principle: only those utterances were considered in which the characters violated one or more of the conversational maxims (quality, quantity, relation and manner). Phoebe was found to violate most often the maxim of relation, thus it is her being non-factual and non-conventional that constitutes her most entertaining quality. As she develops and grows more mature as a character, the frequency counts of this humor strategy evince a descending tendency. Chandler, on the other hand, is mostly being ironic, violating the maxim of quality. His character also gradually changes but his sense of humor remains the same - ironic throughout the show, as follows from the instances of almost fixed frequency....

The purpose of this study was to investigate how often a character of a TV-series non-observed the conversational maxims, and if non-observances can be used for characterization in TV-series. The aim of this study was also to examine how much conversations and generally unknown conversational rules can affect people and their entire perception of others. The study focused on the main character of the TV-series Sherlock and investigated how often Sherlock breaks the conversational maxims, in what ways he does so, and how 20 respondents would describe Sherlock based on his conversational input. The most frequent non-observance turned out to be flouts and the most commonly non-observed maxim was the maxim of relation. According to the survey that the respondents answered, there seems to be a correlation between Sherlock’s conversational input and how they would describe him. In general, the respondents applied more negative personality traits to Sherlock when describing him based on excerpts where he did not observe the conversational maxims, whereas they described Sherlock in a more positive manner when he followed the conversational maxims. / Syftet med denna studie var undersöka hur ofta en karaktär från en TV-serie bröt mot konversationsmaximerna, samt huruvida brytandet av konversationsmaximer kan användas som verktyg i karaktärisering i TV-serier. Vidare var även syftet med denna studie att utforska hur stor påverkan som konversationer och, generellt sett, okända konversations-regler har på människor och hela deras perception av andra människor. Studien fokuserade på huvudkaraktären i TV-serien Sherlock och undersökte hur ofta Sherlock bryter mot konversationsmaximerna, på vilket sätt detta görs samt hur 20 informanter skulle beskriva Sherlock baserat på hans konversationer. Den vanligaste formen av icke-observerande visade sig vara flouts och den maxim som främst gick oobserverad förbi var relationsmaximen. Enligt enkäten som informanterna fick svara på tycks det finnas en koppling mellan hur Sherlock deltar i konversationer och vilka personlighetsdrag som kan användas för att beskriva honom. Generellt sett valde informanterna i högre grad negativa personlighetsdrag för att beskriva Sherlock efter att han brutit mot konversations-maximerna, medan de istället beskrev honom mer positivt när han följt konversations-maximerna.