A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF GRICE'S COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLES IN ZOHRAN MAMDANI'S VICTORY SPEECH: A CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE APPROACH

Abstract

This paper analyzes Zohran Mamdani through a pragmatic analysis of his victory speech, employing Grice's Cooperative Principle to evaluate how the speaker used conversational implicatures in his political communication. A new leader who has held different audiences defines the importance of pragmatic competence in political discourse. The study's gap is that no research has been conducted on the application of Grice's maxims in interpreting multicultural political speeches. The theoretical framework views the four maxims of communication introduced by Grice as quantity, quality, relation, and manner as a guideline for help-seeking communication. The approach used in this research is qualitative, aiming to determine the maxims of pragmatism and, as such, identify where Mamdani asserts and where he denies. The results indicate that Mamdani employs the maxim of quantity when providing sufficient information to intellectually engage with the story and the maxim of relation when adjusting his speech to the audience's interest, thus building solidarity and trust among both the audience and Mamdani. In addition, the findings indicate that Mamdani successfully uses the power of implicature to create unity, legitimacy, and appeal to communal values, thereby fostering successful cooperative communication. To sum up, the analysis has demonstrated that Mamdani effectively realizes these maxims in a project aimed at developing a sense of collaboration and appeal in political speech and, therefore, proves helpful in analyzing it.