Studies On Fictional Dialogue From The Perspective Of Gricean Conversational Implicature Theory: A Case Study Of Jane Eyre

This thesis is a detailed analysis of the conversational implicature in Jane Eyre from the perspective of Gricean Conversational Implicature Theory. Although Jane Eyre has been studied fully since its publishing, few studies explored it from the perspective of pragmatics and hence this thesis.First, , the criticisms and reviews on Jane Eyre are surveyed with the emphasis on the existent subject matters and approaches since 19th century. The discussion of the conversational implicature from the pragmatic approach is thus introduced, and its feazibilities and necessities are explored sufficiently. Then, Grice's CP and the conversational maxims are carefully reviewed, which serve as the theoretical framework to facilitate the conversational analysis in Jane Eyre.The author discovered that Characters in Jane Eyre always violate the regularities to generate more than what is said, that is, they employ indirect expressions to produce conversational implicature by flouting the CP and the conversational maxims. Speakers'conversational implicature is confirmed in particular situation; while, for some factors, conversational implicature often can't be understood well, such as lack of the common context, background knowledge, beliefs or interests, etc. Gricean Conversational Implicature Theory is right to interpret the generation and understanding of these specific examples'implicature .By exploring the conversational implicature from the approach of pragmatics in Jane Eyre, this thesis in one way manifests Charlotte's realism and Jane Eyre's...