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International Journal of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Vol.11, No. 1 (2020), pp. 2217-2229 A Pragmatics analysis of Michael Scott and the Violation of Conversational Maxims in The Office Television Series 1. Muhammad Afzaal Senior Lecturer Foundation University Islamabad, Pakistan Shanghai International Studies University, China Email. [email protected] 2. Philip Habarman School of Foreign Languages Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China [email protected] 3. Muhammad Imran [email protected] Lecturer in English Department, The University of Sahiwal, Pakistan. 4. Najla AlFadda College of Languages and Translation King Saud University, Saudi Arabia Email: [email protected] Abstract The objective of this study is to investigate the failure to observe the Gricean maxims of conversation (quantity, quality, relevance, and manner) in the American adaption of the television series The Office. This study focuses on the character Michael Scott with the aim of discovering the ways in which he fails to observe the conversational maxims. The investigation utilizes written and recorded data from the television show’s manuscripts. The conversations Michael participates in are taken from fourteen randomly selected episodes and analyzed in order to find out what role Grice’s maxims play. As it turns out, the maxim most often violated by Michael is the maxim of quantity. Michael is one of the main characters of the show, and contributes heavily to the quirky, weird, and often uncomfortable situations which occur throughout the program. Keywords: The Office, Gricean maxims, conversational maxims, violation of maxims, pragmatics 2217 ISSN: 2005-4289 IJDRBC Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC International Journal of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Vol.11, No. 1 (2020), pp. 2217-2216 1. Introduction When conversing, it is said that certain rules exist which, if followed, allow for a conversation to be considered cooperative. However, if a speaker deviates from these rules it may cause communication problems which lead to misunderstanding and confusion. A key figure who put these unspoken rules into a framework was Paul Grice. Grice laid out a set of guidelines which he said could be found in cooperative conversations. Today the guidelines are referred to as Grice’s conversational maxims (Grice, 1975). The following conversation is offered in order to exemplify the outcome of a conversation when the rules, or maxims, are not observed. Suppose a conversation in which person A asks person B whether or not their friend’s new boyfriend is a nice person, to which person B does not take the maxims of conversation into account in their response. Person A – “Is he nice?” Person B – “She seems to like him”. Person B could have given a definitive answer by replying yes or no. However, they have opted to give an unclear reply (Thomas, 1995). In doing so, person B has failed to observe what is known as the maxim of quantity which states not to say too little, nor too much. This maxim, along with several others, are a part of Grice’s cooperative principle, a framework which will be discussed in greater detail later in this paper. The American TV show, The Office (Gervais, Merchant, & Daniels, 2014), is an American adaptation of the British television program which shares its namesake. The American version ran for a total of nine seasons from 2005 to 2013. Including a Golden Globe, the show won 47 awards and was nominated for 186 more. The Office is a mockumentary (a show about the making of a documentary) about a paper company whose employees have strange or awkward quirks and personalities. One of the key components which made the show a success was the clever use of dialog and conversation by the writers of the show. The character’s conversations are frequently littered with irrelevant, untruthful, ambiguous, and over or under informative propositions. At some point during the show, all of the program’s characters violate Grice’s cooperative principle. The main character throughout the show’s first six seasons, and a majority of the seventh, is the company’s regional manager, Michael Scott. Michael’s character has a tendency to make others feel awkward, embarrassed, or angry because of his lack of adherence to the rules of conversation, and frequently failing to observe Grice’s cooperative principle and its underlying maxims. Because of the shows long running (9 years) and success (47 awards), I thought it would be interesting to investigate how Michael’s character changes throughout the years as it relates to conversational maxims. Therefore, the goal of this study is to analyze how Michael breaks the maxims, how these violations are distributed amongst the observations, and if a change occurs during the show in how and how often he violates the various maxims. In light of the previous section, the research questions of this study are the following: 1. How often does Michael Scott violate Grice’s maxims? 2. How are the violations distributed amongst the observations? 3. Does Michael’s character change which maxims and how often he violates them throughout the show? In order to carry out a thorough analysis, two episodes from each of the seven seasons in which Michael appears (14 episodes in total) are analyzed. This is done to hopefully answer the study’s research questions and see if there are any noticeable patterns in relation to Michael’s failure to observe Grice’s cooperative principle and maxims of conversation. 2. Theoretical background 2.1 The cooperative principle According to Birner (2013) in a conversation, people first and foremost try to cooperate with those they are conversing with. In such discourses, speakers and addressees usually have mutual objectives such as solving 2218 ISSN: 2005-4289 IJDRBC Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC International Journal of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Vol.11, No. 1 (2020), pp. 2217-2216 a problem or settling an argument. In addition, the cooperative principle asserts that people’s utterances should be appropriate in order to progress the conversation. Although conversations in which participants disagree or find themselves in opposition may appear to be uncooperative, the very fact that they are attempting to resolve the matter is in itself a form of cooperation. Birner (2013) goes on to offer a set of criteria for which to describe a cooperative conversation, by saying that during a disagreement, people tend to remain on topic, make interpretable utterances, and offer complete thoughts that do not contain irrelevant information which misleads or causes confusion. Moreover, as long as a conversation is in progress the participants should converse in an appropriate manner, doing so until the discussion’s completion while not ending the discussion prematurely because of disagreement unless it is mutually agreed upon by both members (Grice, 1975). Conversations only function if both participant’s utterances are appropriate (Grice, 1975). In contrast, a person whose utterances are not appropriate is not considered cooperative. A participant who fails to provide appropriate contributions to a conversation would render having a successful discussion or argument nearly impossible. Moreover, a participant’s ability to properly understand the meaning of an utterance rests on the belief that the other person in the discussion is making an effort to cooperate. In order to be seen as cooperative, there is an expectation placed on interlocutors that they will act in certain ways when they are involved in a conversation. Grice, in 1975, subset his cooperative principle into four maxims, which he believed people were following when they took part in conversations that are considered to be cooperative. The four maxims described by Grice are the maxim of quality, the maxim of quantity, the maxim of relevance or relation, and the maxim of manner (Grice, 1989). When a speaker involves her or himself in a discussion, they should make every attempt to offer input which seeks to achieve the aim of the conversation (Huang, 2007). Grice’s cooperative principle is sometimes misinterpreted as a strict rule for conversation which people must follow. However, in reality, the principle is Grice’s description of several commonly reoccurring elements found in discussions. When participating in a conversation, members assume that a common set of guidelines exist which everyone is following. In comparison, when someone drives a vehicle, they assume that all drivers on the road are following the same set of rules as they are. Much like a traffic accident occurring because one person did not observe the rules expected to be followed by all drivers, accidents also happen in conversations, when one participant fails to observe the rules. Grice’s maxims of conversation can therefore aid us in following the cooperative principle and avoid costly accidents (Thomas, 1995). In the next section, these maxims are discussed in greater detail. 3. Gricean Maxims Grice’s maxims of conversation are four descriptive guidelines which he theorized people observe in cooperative conversations (Grice, 1975). 3.1 The maxim of quality The maxim of quality consists of two sub-maxims which set forth that, in a conversation, people should not say something they believe is false, and that an utterance should not be made unless sufficient evidence exists to support it (Grice, 1975). In other words, the maxim of quality is to “say things which are true”. However, because being completely certain of every truth is virtually impossible, a cooperative elocutionist must make every effort to utter things believed to be true while abstaining from making claims thought to be false. 3.2 The maxim of quantity The next maxim, the maxim of quantity, relates to the supplying of needed information within a conversation. As with the maxim of quality, this maxim also has two sub-maxims which provide knowledge about the inner-workings of the maxim (Grice, 1989).

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