A Pragmatic Analysis And Appreciation Of The Chinese TV Series Who Will Make A Decision For Us Young People

There are many studies in which some pragmatic theories, mainly Cooperative Principle and Politeness Theory, have been used to analyze and help appreciate literature works. However, to apply these theories to the analysis of movies or TV series, especially Chinese TV plays, are seldom seen. This thesis is going to make an analysis on a Chinese TV series Who Will Make a Decision for Us Young People within the pragmatic framework of Cooperative Principle and Politeness Theory. There is a large quantity of utterances with conversational implicature. This thesis collects and identifies these utterances. And guided by the two main pragmatic theories of Cooperative Principle and Politeness Theory and combined with the plots and conflicts of the TV series, the present study attempts to find the deep reasons why these young people produce conversational implicature in a certain context as well as the pragmatic strategies adopted by them to bring about implicature utterances.The present study indicates that those born-after-1980 youth have their own unique linguistic way to show their independence and personality. Conversational impliacture is the frequently used linguistic strategy in their talks. When they are speaking with peers or their parents, in order to achieve a certain purpose or be polite, they sometimes violates one or more of the Cooperative Principle, producing conversational implicature. The other party has to infer the real intention with the relevant context. The most frequently used pragmatic strategies in bringing about conversational implicature include metaphor, exaggeration as well as rhetorical questions, which make their languages indirect, vivid, humorous and philosophical.This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One functions as an introduction, which describes briefly the research background, research method and the significance of the study. Chapter Two makes a brief introduction to the main theories adopted in this thesis, including conversational implicature, the Cooperative Principle and Politeness Theory. Chapter Three is the theoretical framework of this thesis. It tries to explain a reasonable relationship between the production of conversational implicature and the two main pragmatic theories Cooperative Principle and Politeness Theory. It discusses how these two theories are employed to analyze the conversational implicature in this TV series. Chapter Four makes a detailed pragmatic analysis on the conversations from the TV series by using CP & PP, including the reasons and strategies of producing conversational implicature. In this chapter, it can be seen how the young generation follow and violate the cooperative principle to demonstrate their personality. Chapter Five summarizes the research, lists the limitations of the thesis and offers some suggestions for further study.