Analyses Of Conversational Implicature In The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain's masterpiece--The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, regarded as the milestone in American literature, still plays an important role both in American and the world literature. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is full of conversations of the characters, which shows the feature of humor, witty, sarcasm and meaningfulness. On one hand, such tactful conversations not only convey the purpose of the characters, but also profoundly reflect personality of the protagonists of the novel. On the other hand, such skillful conversations embody the assertion of Mark Twain to some degree. Through reading some related works and literature, the author of the thesis has found that most previous studies on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are done from the perspective of literature, and few studies are done from the perspective of pragmatic theories. Therefore, it is worthwhile for the author to analyze The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of pragmatics.Based on previous studies in pragmatics, the thesis has taken Grice's cooperative principle as the theoretical framework and used the method of qualitative analysis in order to help the readers better understand The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. By using the cooperative principle, the author has made a detailed analysis to twenty-nine typical conversations selected from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.First, Mark Twain's writing background, and his masterpiece--The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are briefly introduced. Then the thesis reviews previous studies of the novel. Next, the thesis briefly introduces some pragmatic theories, especially reviews the cooperative principle both home and abroad. In the third part of the thesis, Grice's cooperative principle and its four maxims are illustrated in detail, that is, conversation participants should obey some maxims in order to converse efficiently. The cooperative principle forms the theoretical framework when analyzing the conversations of the characters. In chapter four, the main body of the thesis, is analyses of the conversational implicature of twenty-nine typical conversations selected from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. According to the violation of the cooperative principle, these conversations are classified into several categories in order to analyze in detail. Conversational implicature, which is generated under a certain context, is not understood by the hearer due to the differences of culture, understanding, background, attitude, context, politeness and language ability. In chapter five, the author of the thesis has made a conclusion, that is, the readers can understand the novel better through analyzing conversational implicature of the conversations of the characters such as the theme, psychology or personality of the character and Mark Twain's writing strategy and opinion. Moreover, pragmatic theories can be applied in literary works in order to broaden traditional studies. Meanwhile, the analyses show that we should improve language competence in daily communication in order to understand the speaker's conversational implicature.