Cross-cultural variation of the cooperative principle: A case of native speakers of Turkish and English

Ill ABSTRACT This study aims to find out the subjects which need to be given importance in speaking skills in ELT classes by analysing to what extent Turkish native speakers and English native speakers obey Grice's Maxims of Conversation. Participants in this study were a group of 20 native Turkish speakers and a group of 20 native English speakers which consist of 14 British and 6 American people who live in Mersin. All the subjects are university graduates since the education level is the dependent variable. Participants were interviewed in their native language and they were asked to respond to questions about a few different subjects like holiday, education, having guests. Two types of data were collected. These were: (1) Turkish Baseline Data formed by the answers of Turkish native speakers and (2) English Baseline Data formed by the answers of English native speakers. The responses were analysed according to appropriateness for the expected answers and the conversational maxims for each question. Some similarities and differences were observed in flouting Grice's Maxims between the groups after analysing the responses which formed the baseline data. Native speakers of Turkish were not able to follow the maxim of manner and native speakers of English were not able to follow the maxim of quantity. Thus, they flouted the maxims. Native speakers of Turkish were not brief and orderly in some questions and in some questions native speakers of English were as well. Native speakers of English gave more informative answers to some questions particularly about hospitality which is not a basic norm of their society. Politeness and trying to avoid hurting the hearer were observed to prevent being direct. When the results were analysed as a whole significant statistical differences were not observed except in 3 situations. Although, there were some differences relevant to the cultural dissimilarities in the groups, the difference is not as significant as in the comparison between an Eastern society with a Western society. Practising the use of flouted maxims (due to the results in the study) that were observed as problematic in EFL classes may provide contribution to communicative competence since being cooperative with the conversational maxims will help convey the message and raise the performance in communication. Cultural differences were observed to cause flouting the maxims in conversation. Thus, giving information about culture of the target language and provide examples of conversational maxims may help learners be aware of sociocultural differences, achieve communicative competence, comprehend sociocultural rules which are important in learning a language and speed up the learning process.