Violation to Observe Grice’s Conversational Maxims in TV Cellular Operator Advertisements

Abstract

Grice’s conversational implicatures have aroused far more attention in advertisements. The basic idea is that language-activity, most typically, is a kind of irrational (and purposive) social interaction governed by the principle of co-operation. It describes the violence of maxims in XL advertisements as one of Indonesian cellular phone providers. The aim of the research is to investigate the maxim mostly violated in XL advertisements and the evidences of those violations issued by Excelcomindo. The findings of the research show that the maxim mostly violated by XL cell phone provider. Moreover, the evidence of those violations is the use of uninformative and obscure utterances. It occurs because the cellular phones’ copywriters use indirect comparison. It means, in comparing their products with competitors, they do not directly mention the competitors’ product but they only use implicit utterances to refer to competitors’ products.Key words: Advertisements, principle co-operation, violations