An Analysis Of The Ambiguity In Communication From The Perspective Of Cooperative Principle

This thesis researches the theory of Cooperative Principle,and the ambiguity generated by the Cooperative Principle.H.P Grice,an American Philosopher,puts forward the Cooperative Principle.Once proposed,the Cooperative Principle has attracted a large number of linguists.They gather around to study the new theory.In recent years,they focus on the research of violation of the Maxims of the Cooperative Principle.In terms of its application in language comprehension and description,scholars carefully studied the Cooperative Principle.They finds that people come across many barriers in comprehension is not because of the lack of vocabulary.They may be lack of enough knowledge of linguistics and pragmatics.They always focused on the literal meaning and ignored the real intention of the speakers.There are some ambiguities such as phonological ambiguity,lexical ambiguity,syntactic ambiguity.They are caused by language structure,and will be revealed or wiped out based on pragmatic level.Therefore pragmatic is the most significant part in the study of ambiguity.Meanwhile we would focus on it in this thesis.This thesis includes three parts.The first part is the introduction;the second part is the main body;the third part is the conclusion.Now let us look at the contents in detail.The first part is the introduction.At first,it introduces the research results of scholars at home and abroad.And it briefly introduces the Cooperative Principle and ambiguity.At last,it puts forward the creative points and practical significance of this thesis.The second part is the main body,and it is divided into three chapters.The first chapter gives a brief introduction of Cooperative Principle and Conversational Implicature,it will start by introducing the definition,features and significance of Conversational Implicature.The conception,the notion,the theoretical bases,and the influence of Cooperative Principle would be discussed in detail in the following parts.This parts also introduces the definition of ambiguity,and its relationship with the Cooperative Principle.Chapter Two puts much emphasis on the Conversational Implicature which is caused by the violation of the maxim of Cooperative Principle and introduces the classification of ambiguity which is analyzed according to the Cooperative Principle and Conversational Implicature.It illustrates the ambiguous phenomena and manifests their application and comprehension in daily life.These kinds of ambiguity can often be found in our daily communication.At the same time we must learn to recognize the illocutionary acts and to find out what is the real intention of the speaker.We should also learn to comprehend the Conversational Implicature.Because many ambiguities are due to the misunderstanding of Conversational Implicature.Clear deixis is also very important in the daily communication.Unclear deixis often can be the chief criminal of ambiguity.The purpose of the classification is to wipe out the negative ambiguity and make clear-cut communication.Thus we should adopt disambiguating strategies.The ambiguity can be used as a rhetorical device.It can be used in the interpersonal communication which has functions including: face keeping,conflict avoiding,self protecting,politeness achieving,task fulfilling,purpose realizing,etc.An ambiguity will occur when a sentence shows the different intentions from the superficial meaning or an intention is not expressed in a direct way but need the hearer to get the deepening connotation.That situation may be caused by the fact that the speaker intend to express something but he chooses to avoid the direct utterance denotation.This thesis tries to focus on study of pragmatic ambiguity,mainly intentional ambiguity.We suggested some effective ways to eliminate the ambiguities according to the common pragmatic ambiguity.At the same time we must learn to recognize the illocutionary acts and to find out what is the real intention of the speaker.We should also learn to comprehend the Conversational Implicature.Because many ambiguities are due to the misunderstanding of Conversational Implicature.Ambiguity,as an linguistic phenomenon,is concerned with many aspects of language.It should be classified into many types according to different perspectives and standards.Among them two types would be put forward in this thesis.That is,we classified ambiguity based on linguistic level or speakers’ motivation and effects.On one hand,there are phonological ambiguity,lexical ambiguity,syntactic ambiguity,semantic ambiguity and pragmatic ambiguity based on linguistic level.On the other hand,there are intentional ambiguity and unintentional ambiguity base on speakers’ motivation and effects.Chapter Three describes the pragmatic functions of ambiguity,and use the Cooperative Principle to analyze these functions,from the perspective of violation of Cooperative Principle.Except those pragmatic functions,ambiguity can also become a persuasive advertisement strategy to guide or attract customers.This chapter puts forward that we should avoid the negative ambiguity as much as possible.We have some effective ways to eliminate the ambiguities according to the common pragmatic ambiguity.But the positive ambiguity or intentional ones can achieve a rhetorical effect in the context or reach a certain communicative goal.From this study we can find that ambiguity can be used widely in figures of speech,which include pun,irony,humour,metaphor and euphemism.Intentional ambiguity often has several functions: expressing sarcasm,creating humor,protecting oneself and covering harsh facts.In some literary works,these pragmatic functions of intentional ambiguity can often embellish them.Meanwhile this chapter highlights the application of Conversational Implicature and uses Cooperative Principle and Conversational Implicature as the guideline to help people improve their comprehensive competence and communicative ability.Grice’s theory is more popular than any other one because it has a close relationship with practice.Non-English majors are actually lack of the knowledge of linguistics especially the pragmatic knowledge,such as Cooperative Principle and Conversational Implicature which give a clear explanation of the way how the native speakers get the implied meaning or connotation of the message.It helps us move away many obstacles in comprehension,and improves our performance in daily communication.The essence of Cooperative Principle is based on that it is likely for speakers to convey meanings more than what is said literally.Participants are expected to obey the Cooperative Principle which is a guarantee for success.The fact is that people often do not cooperate in their communication due to different reasons,such as shortage of background,weak competence,external pressure,face saving,politeness achieving and so on.Then in these cases,they may violate the maxims of Cooperative Principle,thus Conversational Implicature occur.People often use this non-cooperative way to convey information more than just the literal meaning or superficial meaning,and make the nature language more interesting and strengthen social relations.Pragmatic ambiguity also can be divided into negative and positive ones.Negative ones are often obstacles for people to communicate with each other.We try our best effort to compensate the deficiencies and inconvenience which are brought out by ambiguity and to integrate the merits of ambiguity.This thesis pays much attention to the pragmatic ambiguity,and applies the linguistic theory Cooperative Principle to the research of ambiguity.We classified the ambiguity and analyzed it to help people to take advantage of positive ambiguity,and eliminate the negative ones.Thus we can teach them to solve problems in any situation,and apply this phenomena to their daily life.The third part is conclusion.It makes a summary to the paper and points out its innovative points and limitations.