2313-8912Research Result. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics2313-8912DOI: 10.18413/2313-8912-2019-5-3-0-11763THEORY OF LANGUAGEThe cooperative principle in political discourse: flouting Gricean maxims in Modern Standard Arabic political speechesThe cooperative principle in political discourse: flouting Gricean maxims in Modern Standard Arabic political speechesAl-QaderiIssaAl-QaderiIssaissaalqaderi@gmail.comUniversity of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland20195300

              The purpose of this study is to investigate the universality of the Gricean Theory of Conversational Implicature and its application to the Modern Standard Arabic on political speeches. To do this, a recorded available broadcasted interview on an Egyptian TV channel with an ex-president of one of the Arab states lasting for 82 minutes was transcribed and used to generate representative utterances for flouting the four maxims of speech (i.e. quantity, quality, relation and manner). Ten utterances were generated and analyzed to represent the violation of flouting the maxims of speech. The findings revealed that the Gricean Theory of Conversational Implicature can actually be applied to the Modern Standard Arabic. The findings of this work have two implications for the study of pragmatics. First, political speech has the norm of being overtly unsystematic and covertly systematic, and this interprets the need of the Gricean Theory towards speech regulation. Second, intentionality and unintentionality of the violation of the maxims of speech is probably controlled by the speaker sometimes and is being uncontrolled in some other times – raising the point that experimental and/or behavioral research is needed to develop a certain scale measuring this aspect.

              The purpose of this study is to investigate the universality of the Gricean Theory of Conversational Implicature and its application to the Modern Standard Arabic on political speeches. To do this, a recorded available broadcasted interview on an Egyptian TV channel with an ex-president of one of the Arab states lasting for 82 minutes was transcribed and used to generate representative utterances for flouting the four maxims of speech (i.e. quantity, quality, relation and manner). Ten utterances were generated and analyzed to represent the violation of flouting the maxims of speech. The findings revealed that the Gricean Theory of Conversational Implicature can actually be applied to the Modern Standard Arabic. The findings of this work have two implications for the study of pragmatics. First, political speech has the norm of being overtly unsystematic and covertly systematic, and this interprets the need of the Gricean Theory towards speech regulation. Second, intentionality and unintentionality of the violation of the maxims of speech is probably controlled by the speaker sometimes and is being uncontrolled in some other times – raising the point that experimental and/or behavioral research is needed to develop a certain scale measuring this aspect.

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