The four maxims of cooperative principle guide the speakers to be cooperate to each other in a communication process. However, the speakers sometimes fail to follow the rules of cooperative principle by flouting the maxims. This research explores the occurrences of flouting maxims done by the protagonist and antagonist characters in the drama miniseries “Inventing Anna”. The aims of this research are to find the types and functions of flouting maxims employed by the protagonist and antagonist characters, and the effects of movie staging on the occurrences of flouting maxims in the drama miniseries “Inventing Anna”.

This study utilized pragmatics approach and the Grice’s theory of cooperative principle to identify the types and the functions of flouting maxims. This study was conducted using descriptive qualitative research by applying Spradely’s four major methods used for analysing the data in qualitative research namely domain analysis, taxonomy analysis, componential analysis, and cultural theme analysis. The data of this research are taken from conversations within the drama miniseries “Inventing Anna”.

The results show there are 112 occurrences of flouting maxims and 11 different functions of flouting maxims. The flouting maxims of relation became the most frequent maxims to flout by the protagonist and antagonist characters along with the functions to convince and to change topic as the most frequent functions to employ by both characters. The research also revealed that the distribution and the number of flouting maxims performed by both characters changed constantly through the four stages of the drama miniseries Inventing Anna.