Research On Grice's Theory Of Conversational Implicature And Its Application In Detective Stories

Important as it is, the detective story has drawn less attention than it should. The study of the detective story has been limited to the interdisciplinary field. There has been relatively little research and fewer reviews on detective story that have been brought to light in published form. Though studies of literary text have now become sufficiently developed, linguistic techniques are more readily adapted to the miniature interpretation of a short text, such as a lyric poem, than to the examination of a full-scale novel, which makes the pragmatic study of detective stories not only complicated, but challenging. By providing an account of Grice's theory of conversational implicature, and Co-operative Principle (CP) and Leech's complementary principles - Politeness Principle (PP), and major critical comments from other linguists, the author of this paper mainly concerns the functional features of the theory for the effective use of dialogues in novels, that is to say the application of Conversational Implicature Theory to literary text (employing the explanation of Agatha Christie's most famous detective story: Murder on the Orient Express as example). Under the guidance of CP and PP and unilateral context inference model etc., the author analyzes 'conversation' between characters and 'conversation' between author and reader of Christie's detective story very carefully. Through this readers will understand very well what the author of novel tries to speak or imply, and thus they could enjoy and appreciate the literary works more deeply.Systematic research on detective fictions, from angles of pragmatics and stylistics, could not merely probe into its unfailing artistic charm, social values and aesthetic achievement, but provide useful reference for the creation, evaluation and appreciation of literature.