Pragmatic Implicature of Manado Malay Speakers' Questions

Abstract

In various occasions, Manado Malay speakers often use question implicature. They use questions in different ways according to the context for specific purposes. Frequently asked questions often have certain pragmatic implicature in accordance with the context of the conversation, so that the same questions can have different intentions or implicature if the context is different. Pragmatic implicature of the questions used by Manado Malay speakers is an interesting language phenomenon. This study aims to describe pragmatic implicature of questions used by Manado Malay speakers in interacting. Pragmatic theories are used to examine this problem, especially the theory of question implicature developed by Grice (1975). Pragmatically, questions not only contain literal meanings, but they also have non-literal meanings. The meanings of the questions as part of such utterances can be related to natural meaning and non-natural meaning. This research uses a descriptive method. The main data of this study are utterances in the form of questions in various occasions in the society of Manado Malay speakers. The informants in this study were native speakers of Manado Malay. The data were obtained from direct observation, recording, and interviews. The main instrument of this research is the researcher himself who is assisted with field notes guidelines, interview guidelines, and recordings. The three data analysis procedures collected are: (1) data reduction, (2) data presentation, and (3) conclusion/verification. A triangulation process was carried out to check the validity of the data, which include source triangulation, techniques and methods, and theory triangulation. The results of the study show that speakers of Manado Malay used questions that have pragmatic implicature for ten purposes, namely: giving direct and indirect commands, invitations, prohibitions, requests, rejections, advice, approval, certainty, expressing doubt, and borrowing. The use of the question implicature in conversation has several functions, which are to make utterances morepolite, to give more emphasis on the illocution, and to conceal the real intention of the speakers