Context And Conversational Implicatures In Literary Works

Conversational implicature is one of the essential pragmatic phenomena in common talks. H. P. Grice referred to a branch of conversational implicature - the generalized conversational implicature and the particularized conversational implicature in "Logic and Conversation" published in 1975. Generalized conversational implicature is the implicature normally carried by the use of a certain form of words, in the absence of special circumstances. And particularized conversational implicature is the implicature that arises with a particular context. The particularized conversational implicatures arising from violating the Cooperative Principle in literary works can be represented as the use of idioms, allusions, cultural concepts as well as some rhetorical figures such as irony, metaphor and hyperbole etc. The thesis aims at analyzing the conveyance of particularized conversational implicatures in English-Chinese translation in literary works.Under the guidance of the Cooperative Principle and context, the author of this thesis makes a careful analysis of the translation of the "conversation" between characters and "conversation" between the author and readers in Pride and Prejudice. Through the case study of English-Chinese translation and a detailed analysis, the author of the thesis finds that translators may resort to different translation strategies in the translation of particularized conversational implicatures in literary works. The main strategies are: (1) to reproduce the literal meaning by using a Chinese expression with the same or very similar contextual implicit meaning; (2) to reproduce the implicit meaning by using a Chinese expression with same or similar implicit meaning and different literal meaning; (3) to reproduce only the implicit meaning by using a Chinese expression with the explicit meaning; (4) to reproduce the literal meaning with footnotes added. The merits and demerits of the two translated versions of the work are also explored with the hope to improve the quality of translation.The thesis analyzes the translation of all these particularized conversational implicatures under certain context, trying to explain translation process and product from the perspective of pragmatics. Meanwhile the thesis also offers a criterion of fidelity for translation.