Awareness of Conversational Implicature of Different Academic Year Students of English Department of Faculty of Language and Arts State University of Medan

Conversational implicature is the inference by assuming that speaker and addressee knows and accepts the communicational norms (maxims). The study attempted to describe the students’ awareness of conversational implicature and to give the reasons of students’ awareness of conversational implicature. The subjects of the study were the students of different Academic Year, English Department of Faculty of Language and Arts, State University of Medan. The study conducted by applying qualitative descriptive design. The technique of elicitation was applied to find out the students’ awareness of conversational implicature and in depth interview used to know the reason of students’ awareness of conversational implicature. Results of the study showed that there was different degree of awareness among the subjects. The difference was viewed from time of awareness process and levels of subjects’ awareness. The students were very aware in term of time because 81% students of third and fifth semester could perceive the implicatures in five to ten seconds. Then, the students were quite aware in term of level of correctness because 45.6 % students of third and fifth semester could perceive the implicatures correctly or in the high level of awareness in five to ten seconds. The reasons why the subjects’ implicature of the students were different because of students’ perspectives to the conversation itself. It was due to their different their different understanding and different culture of communication. Both types of conversational implicatures; PCI (Particularized Conversational Implicature) and General Conversational Implicature (GCI) were found different degree of awareness to both students at the third semester and the fifth semester from conversation one to ten. As a result, length of study is not a factor for different time awareness processing of conversational implicature. Thus, students at university level, especially English Department are expected to be aware and perceive the conversational implicature. Students’ awareness of conversational implicature is expected to be useful as of the process of gaining content knowledge, intention, not only in academic subjects, but also in daily life.