A Study Of Conversational Implicature: The Practical Application In China's Stage Plays

In 1960's American linguistic philosopher Grice proposed "Cooperative Principle" and "Conversational Implicature". And "Conversational Implicature Theory" becomes the core of pragmatics and has been attached great importance in speech communication. In spite of its original significance, this theory is not perfect. Levinson, Leech, and many other researchers developed it into Neo-Gricean Conversational Implicature Theory. However, the latter is not easy to master by common communicators. Thus, "Tact Principle" is put forward. In order to illustrate the practical application of these theories, I painstakingly select 49 paragraphs of conversations from two well-known stage plays Thunderstorm and Sunrise created by one of the great playwrights in China Cao Yu and employ "Cooperative Principle" and "Tact Principle" to analyze their conversational implicature. In this dissertation, I just emphasize the practical application of these two theories and their supplementary functions to each other, and present my own way of understanding conversational implicature based on these theories. Right or wrong, I am open to criticism.