Abstract: American philosopher Grice firstly proposed conversational implicature in 1967. Grice believed that each participant are expected to follow a rule or maxims in order to ensure a smooth and successful conversation thus he put forward cooperative principle comprising four categories of maxims to explain the implicature which is implicitly expressed. The Disney 3D animation Zootopia has aroused wide attention and favor throughout the world since it was released for its fascinating characters and the conveyance of truth, goodness, beauty. The thesis is based on animation Zootopia, employing the cooperative principle and its maxims as theoretical tool to offer the audience a deep understanding of conversational implicature. The author extracts relevant dialogues from the film to elaborate on the generation of CI by which the characters generate conversational meaning by violating the rules. This paper obtains great practical significance. On the one hand, the Zootopia serves as the research object, expanding the research domain of the theory of conversation implicature, movie dialogue in the conversational implicature produced by violating rules under the condition of, can help us to a deeper understanding of conversational implicature the importance of this theory in daily conversations. On the other hand, it can enhance our understanding of communication in different contexts, and inspire scholars to concentrate on the cultivation of pragmatic competence and the improvement of English communicative competence in English learning, thus encouraging people to actively explore and use language.

Key words:    Conversational Implicature   Cooperative Principle   Zootopia

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

Chapter 1 Introduction-1

1.1 Background of the Study-1

1.2 An Overview of the Thesis-1

Chapter 2 Conversational Implicature-3

2.1 The Definition of Conversational Implicature-3

2.2 Previous studies of Conversational Implicature-3

2.3 Significance of the Conversational Implicature-5

Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework-6

3.1 Cooperative Principle-6

3.2 Violation of the Cooperative Principle-6

3.2.1 Violation of the Maxim of Quantity-6

3.2.2 Violation of the Maxim of Quality-7

3.2.3 Violation of the Maxim of Relation-7

3.2.4 Violation of the Maxim of Manner-7

Chapter 4 Analysis of the conversational implicature from the point of cooperative principle in Zootopia-8

4.1 Conversational Implicature arisen from contempt for the Maxim of Quantity-8

4.2 Conversational Implicature arisen from contempt for the Maxim of Quality-9

4.3 Conversational Implicature arisen from contempt for the Maxim of Relation-11

4.4 Conversational Implicature arisen from contempt for the Maxim of Manner-11

Conclusion-13

References-14

Acknowledgements-17