A Gricean Analysis of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Channels TV Interview

Abstract

Conversationalists are noted to cooperate in every interactive discourse situation they findthemselves in, thus, the affirmation of the cooperative principle as propounded by thephilosopher, Paul Grice. The essence of this is to have successful discourses. In beingcooperative, speakers or writers are to adhere to the maxims of cooperative principle, but this isnot always the case as there are instances of non-observance of these maxims which results inconversational implicature. It is said specifically that political discourses are enveloped withnon-observance of maxims to achieve different socio-political goals of having them in politicaldiscourses. This study analyzes the interview of President Muhammadu Buhari in order to unveilthe maxims of non-observance (flouting, violation and opting out of maxim) therein. Elevenresponses were randomly selected for this analysis. The study adopted the theory of cooperativeprinciple and discovered that violations, flouting and opting out of maxims were used in order tostructure the political discourse to achieve a desired goal.