Pragmatic Analysis of ex-President Donald Trump’s interviews and its relation with the Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle

Abstract

This analytical-descriptive paper investigates the violation and the keeping of Grice's (1975) cooperative principles (CPs) in an interview between some American Journalists and former President Donald Trump. The study involved the observation and analysis of ten Donald Trump’s interviews in the context and content of racism, coronavirus, election, politics, leadership and social relation that were randomly selected via YouTube. Its aim was to assess critically the violation and the keeping of Grice's (1975) cooperative principles (CPs) and its maxims, the speech act theory, and also improve upon interlocutor’s communication skills. Also, pragmatically, the current study examines the perlocutionary effect of utterances on interlocutors and listeners in general, and further investigates a new way of understanding speakers' non-cooperative and cooperative attitude and their violation of Cooperative Principles and its maxims throughout the communication process. The research sample was solely analyzed through conversational implicature and the consideration of Grice’s four propounded maxims under cooperative principle, as well as the speech act theory. According to the results, speakers' uncooperative attitude is mostly influenced by psychological factors like frustration, irritation, nervousness, anxiety, conflict of interest, and other factors such as politeness, cheap praise, lack of adequate information, entertainment, and sometimes deliberate violation. It was also revealed that language users do sometimes cooperate most often than not due to the perlocutionary effect on listeners and themselves. Besides, interlocutors sometimes violate some maxims, because they have least or no idea about the consequences of their responses on their listeners as well as themselves. Also, it was evident that, albeit speakers might not be aware of Grice’s maxims and its Cooperative principles yet they habitually conform to it in communication process. The study recommends a deeper way for readers understanding of Paul Grice’s CP and its maxims, the speech act theory, and also improve upon their communication skills. In summary, it recommends that communicators, language learners, teachers and linguists are to be mindful about their diction and its consequences on their participants and the society as a whole.