Adaline's Case Summary

The conversation is taking place at the Hospital. Adaline has got an accident when she drives a car in the night. As she turns the car around, a tow truck plows into her, a hit and run, leaving her to die. An ambulance takes her to the hospital. Ellis is waiting in with anxiety in hospital waiting room. Then, the doctor is already checked up Adaline’s condition after car accident that happened to her. The doctor calmly tells the condition of Adaline to Ellis.

First of all, the answer provided by the doctor seems to flout the maxim of quantity, since more information than required is given. In the conversation, Ellis just asks about Adaline condition. But the doctor gives too much information than what is required by Ellis since he says “We've just run a series of tests and don't see any long term damage. It's quite

By giving more information, she wants to make the patient and their family does not too worry about the result of the accident. Specifically, the doctor is attempting to calm down the situation.

3.3.2 Flouting maxims of Quality

When the Quality maxim is flouted, the speakers in many cases increase the degree of intensity of their statements. In other words, they overstate the information that they provide to produce hyperbolic expressions or they provide opposite meaning to produce ironical expressions. Through the overstatement and ironical expressions, the speakers sometimes insult the addressee indirectly. Moreover, the speaker uses sarcasm expression to insult the addressee directly.

The first maxim “do not say what you believe is false” is flouted as frequently as the other one “do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence”. When the speaker flouts the first maxim, they say something they believe to be patently untruthful. The first example happens in the following case in which the speaker uses ironical expression to insult the