Abstract

The Cooperative Principle (CP) was proposed by H.P.Grice, in which he claimed that the interlocutors should make cooperative efforts in a conversation. The CP comprises four maxims in terms of quantity, quality, relation and manner of the conversation. However, people may occasionally violate the maxims of the Cooperative Principle to convey implicit meanings beyond the literal meaning of their utterance, thus giving rise to the Conversational Implicature (CI), which was also put forward by Grice after the CP. Learning to interpret the Conversational Implicature is very essential for English learners to fully understand the English conversations, as this ability is considered an important part in composing language learner’s pragmatic competence.

The British TV program Downtown Abbey, which enjoys particular popularity among Chinese audiences, is a good example of learning source for English learners to get access to an updated and living language corpus. There are a large number of conversations in Downtown Abbey that violate the maxims of CP and bring up correspondent conversational implicatures, hence the thesis will focus on these clips of conversation to analyze how CI is inferred through violating maxims of CP in certain contexts. And the examples will be divided into four categories according to the subsumed maxims of CP. In order to get a better understating of the conversational intentions of the interlocutors, the thesis will also conclude the strategies that are commonly used when speakers convey conversational implicatures, and summarize reasons that interlocutors generate CI by violating the CP from a pragmatic perspective.

Keywords: Conversational Implicature, Cooperative Principle, Violation, Downtown Abbey

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

1.1 Research Background-1

1.2 Research Significance-1

1.3 Research Questions-1

1.4 Outline of the paper-1

2. Literature Review-2

2.1 Pragmatics & Implicature-2

2.2 Implicature categorization-2

2.3 Four maxims-4

2.4 Grice’s Axiomatization-6

2.5 Difficulties & Other Theories-7

3. Inference of Conversational Implicature of Dialogues-9

3.1 CI Generated by Violating the Quantity Maxim-9

3.2 CI Generated by Violating the Quality Maxim-10

3.3 CI Generated by Violating the Relation Maxim-13

3.4 CI Generated by Violating the Manner Maxim-15

4. Discussion-16

4.1 Under the maxim of Quantity-16

4.1.1 Overstatement-16

4.2.2 Understatement-16

4.2 Under the maxim of Quality-16

4.2.1 Telling Lies-16

4.2.2. Irony-17

4.2.3. Metaphor-17

4.2.4 Hyperbole-17

4.2.5. Paradox-17

4.3 Under the maxim of Relation-17

4.3.1 Topic change-17

4.3.2 Giving hints-17

4.4 Under the maxim of Manner-18

4.4.1 Being Vague-18

5. Conclusion-19

5.1 Analysis of the Inferences of CI in Dialogues-19

5.2 Common Strategies to Generate Conversational Implicatures-19

5.3 Reasons of Violating Maxims of Cooperative Principle-19

5.3.1 Politeness-19

5.3.2 Humor-20

5.3.3 Sarcasm-20

5.3.4 Offering other important information-20

5.4 Summary-20

References-22