Abstract:Titanic has caught thousands of people’s attention with its gorgeous scene and its typical love story. It is not only a feast of beauty, but also a movement of love. According to the philosopher and logician, Paul Grice’s cooperative principle, this thesis focuses on analyzing the dialogue of Titanic from the maxim of quantity, the maxim of quality, the maxim of relation and the maxim of manner. The writer of this thesis tries to understand the characters’ conversational implicature from the violation of these maxims among dialogue. By the analysis of violation of those four maxims under this general principle and the conversational implecature, we can find that speaker can violate these maxims for various reasons to express the special conversational implicature(the speaker is intentionally implicitive in something and avoid interrupting the conversation).

Key words: cooperative principle; dialogue; conversational implicature; violation

Table of Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Grice's Cooperative Principle-3

2.1 The introduction of Grice's cooperative principle-3

2.2 The content of Grice's cooperative principle-3

2.2.1 The maxim of quantity-3

2.2.2 The maxim of quality-3

2.3.3 The maxim of relation-4

2.3.4 The maxim of manner-4

2.3 The violation of the maxims-5

3. Analysis of the Cooperative Principle Reflected in the Dialogue-6

3.1 The maxim of quantity reflected in the dialogue-6

3.2 The maxim of quality reflected in the dialogue-7

3.3 The maxim of relation reflected in the dialogue-9

3.4 The maxim of manner reflected in the dialogue-10

4. The Effect of Grice's Cooperative Principle in the dialogue of Titanic-12

5. Conclusion-13

References-14

Acknowledgements-15