VIETTESOL INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION 2025

This study was aimed at identifying the non-observance of Grice's maxims and investigating the forces behind that breaching in the three American televised presidential debate in 2016 between Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, and Donald Trump, the nominee of the Republic Party. The data were collected from three downloaded videos of the presidential debates in 2016. Qualitative method was employed in processing the transcription of the data. The data were identified, classified, and then investigated based on Grice's Cooperative Principle proposed by Grice (1975). The findings show that Clinton and Trump violated and flouted all the maxims in which they committed more violation than flouting and Trump failed to observe the maxims more often than Clinton. The most violated maxims were the maxim of quantity and relation while the most observed was maxim of manner. The study reveals that Trump and Clinton violated the maxims to deceive or mislead the listeners. They both employed this strategy to strengthen their image as well as weaken the opponent's preferability. On the other side, they sometimes flouted the maxim of all kinds with the purpose of making their arguments more persuasive and convincing. In conclusion, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton repeatedly failed to observe Grice's conversational maxims in all the debates and they exploited this rhetoric to present themselves positively and other negatively to gain the listeners' approval.