Conversational implicature and political positioning of Donald Trump's interview

Fajar, Azharul (2026) Conversational implicature and political positioning of Donald Trump's interview. Sarjana thesis, UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung.

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Abstract

In political discourse, speakers often convey meaning implicitly rather than explicitly, especially when facing sensitive or difficult questions, resulting in what is known as conversational implicature. This study analyzes 18 data points taken from Donald Trump's interview with journalist Terry Moran on ABC News, aired on April 29, 2025, under the title President Trump: The First 100 Days. This phenomenon frequently occurs when Grice's (1975) conversational maxims are deliberately flouted to achieve specific communicative and political purposes. Therefore, this study aims to identify the types of maxims flouting and the conversational implicatures they generate, and to analyze how this implicatures function as realizations of Chilton's (2004) strategic functions of legitimization, delegitimization, representation, and misrepresentation in constructing Trump's political positioning. This research employs a qualitative descriptive method with a pragmatic and political discourse analysis approach, based on Grice's (1975) Cooperative Principle and Chilton's (2004) framework of deictic mechanisms. The findings reveal that the maxim of quantity is flouted most frequently, found in nine data, followed by the maxim of relation in eight data, while the maxim of quality is flouted only once, and no instance of flouting the maxim of manner is found. In terms of strategic function, fourteen data realize legitimization and delegitimization, four data realize representation and misrepresentation, and three data realize both functions simultaneously. These findings indicate that Trump predominantly uses flouting maxim to build his own image as a strong and trustworthy leader while weakening the image of his opponents, often by giving excessive information or shifting the topic away from the question asked. Thus, conversational implicature plays a significant role in shaping political positioning within political interview interaction.

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