A Study Of Non-cooperative Phenomena In English-Chinese Pragmatic Domains

Non-cooperation exists in Chinese, English and cross-cultural communication. Cultural context results in the non-cooperation. In cross-cultural communication, if we do not face such a problem, we would make pragmatic failures.This paper is intended to do some researches in these non-cooperative phenomena in both English and Chinese pragmatic domains. Through researches, the author holds that the study of the Cooperative Principle has to be conducted in context, since context interferes into linguistic signs and, further, the Cooperative Principle. Thus various non-cooperative phenomena in daily conversation and communication occur, which is a violation, on a large scale, to the four conversational maxims put forward by Grice (e.g. the Maxim of Quality, the Maxim of Quantity, the Maxim of Relevance and the Maxim of Manner). This non-cooperation, however, does not affect the smooth proceeding of people's conversation and communication, especially in Chinese conversation. Considering this case, we should get aware of the Chinese cultural influence on pragmatic theories and strategies. Since most pragmatic theories are born abroad, especially in English-speaking countries and based on English language materials, when transplanted in the Chinese language, they unavoidably meet conflicts in this totally different culture. The Cooperative Principle is such a case. It encounters many challenges when applied, especially in the Chinese language, in study of conversations and communication. The paper makes a tentative study of whether Cooperative Principle is a principle helpful to all conversations and communication from the following four parts, with daily conversations and communication both in Chinese and English languages as examples to analyze such a pragmatic phenomenon—the non-cooperative phenomenon.The first chapter: The Cooperative Principle in context mainly deals with a theory introduction and summary. First, the paper introduces H. P. Grice's Cooperative Principle and his four Conversational Maxims, i.e. the Maxim of Quality (Try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically: Do not say what you believe to be false; Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence), the maxim of Quantity (Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange; Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.), the Maxim of Relevance (Make your contributions relevant.) and the Maxim of Manner(Avoid obscurity and ambiguity; Be brief and orderly). Then, the paper introduces another important pragmatic concept—context in three aspects: the definition, the categorization (roughly linguistic context and extra-linguistic context) and the substance of context (a social humanistic network). Finally, the paper summarizes the relationship between the Cooperative Principle and context in two...