Violation of maxims in "Knives Out" movie

This thesis aims to analyze the types of violation of maxims used by the main characters and its context of situation that affect the main characters in violating the maxims in “Knives Out” movie. The researcher uses Gricean theory. In this study, the data is the utterances from Benoit Blanc and Ransom Drysdale. The method of this study was descriptive qualitative method. The way the researcher collected the data was by downloading both the “Knives Out” movie and its movie script from a website. The researcher gave code to the utterances which contained violation of maxims. Then the researcher classified the utterances based on the type of the four maxims and explained the context of situation which affected the characters in violating the maxim. Based on the result of the study, the researcher finds 20 utterances uttered by the main characters that violate the four maxims, those are 4 utterances of violation of maxim of quantity by giving more information when the main character tries to reveal the case, 5 utterances of violation of maxim of quality by giving sarcastic statement when the main character feels resentful to other character because of her innocence, 9 utterances of violation of maxim of relevance by giving unrelated answer and hiding the truth when the character wants to dig the information, and 2 utterances of violation of maxim of manner by giving exaggerating and ambiguous answer when the characters feel confuse about the suspect and gave more description about the suspect of the case. In this study, violation of maxim of relevance is the most violated maxim than others.