Grice's Conversational Implicature Theory Research

American linguistic philosopher Herbert Paul Grice is one of the greatest representatives of everyday-language group. Philosophers of this group hold the opinion that it is necessary to study everyday language and make clear its meaning by means of conceptual analyses ; things are quite different for the ideal language group, who think it natural to analysis everyday language with the help of tools of mathematical logic.Austin's theory of Speech-act and Searle's Theory of Indirect Speech -act have deep and far influence in philosophers of everyday language-group . Besides, Searle studied the governing conditions of everyday language to amend the inappropriateness of everyday language. The research tradition of the group, especially the work done by Searle affected Grice deeply .He inherited the tradition of conceptual analyses , brought in the tool of mathematical logic from the ideal language group creatively and summed up the general principle governing the everyday language.Grice began his research on language with the analyses to meaning. With the help of the mathematical logic, he distinguished the differences among the types of meaning , i.e. natural meaning and nonnatural meaning; utterer's meaning, sentence-meaning and word-meaning ;utterer's meaning and intention .Grice stressed the meaning used in certain context, i.e. the pragmatic meaning ,not the static meaning in word.Based on the research on meaning, Grice came to his researchemphasis -----particular conversation implicature and put forward thefamous theory of the Cooperative Principle and four related categories. The Cooperative Principle , whose function is to tell people how the conversation implicature is obtained ,is descriptive ,not normalized .The four categories related are the category of Quantity, the category of Quality, the category of Relation and the category of Manner, under which lie several maxims. The conversation implicature can be obtained by the way these categories, maxims and the principle are observed or not. If we observe them, we may get conventional implicature; otherwise ,we may get particular conversation implicature. The conversation implicature complies with the Cooperative Principle.Grice's theory of conversation implicature has great effect on the development of linguistic philosophy and logic.