| Many core theories of pragmatics have found a successful application in literary critics, thus hastening the appearance of a new interdisciplinary–Pragmastylistics or Literary Pragmatics. Pragmatic theories, such as Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle, have a strong exposition and application in literary critics. And it has a better interpretation when they are used to apply to the conversations in dramas and fictions.The Apple Car: a Political Extravaganza is a George Bernard Shaw's drama in his later period, and one representative of his series of political Extravaganza. Grice's Cooperative Principle, Leech's Politeness Principle and Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory are used to expound the enriched conversational implicatures in the The Apple Cart. This thesis accounts for these theories as well as the relationship between them in detail, which offers the theoretical framework for analyzing the conversational implicatures.This thesis analyzes this drama by applying these significant pragmatic theories to elaborate how the conversations push the plot and portray characters, meanwhile verify that pragmatic theories can account for drama text better.According to Grice, in order to guarantee a successful, accurate and effective communication, two sides of communication are required to arrive at a common aim and adopt a cooperative principle throughout communication. He calls it Cooperative Principle (CP for short) to which the two sides should equally conform, which consists of four sub-principles, or maxims, that is, quality maxim, quantity maxim, relevance maxim and manner maxim. According to CP, both sides of the communication have the desire to ensure a successful and effective communication. Thus people are required to obey these maxims. However, it is obvious that an utterance always violates some maxim to lead to an extra meaning: implicature. Immediately after this theory comes into being, many linguists all over the world show considerable enthusiasm in it. Though Grice's CP is capable of explaining the process of conversational implicature and understanding of conversational implicature, it is inept at clarifying why people are often indirect in conveying what they mean and even violate some maxims on purpose. Then, some linguists complement and enrich the CP. Among them, Leech's Politeness Principle (PP for short), which is proposed in 1983, may rescue and further develop CP to some extent. He suggests that violate the maxim of CP on the consideration of politeness and on some occasions PP overrules CP. He further divides PP into six sub-maxims. Brown and Levinson put forward their own politeness theory, which contains the face theory, face-threatening acts and off-record strategies.This thesis analyzes the enriched conversational implicatures under the theoretical framework of Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle in the drama The Apple Cart: a Political Extravaganza. Characters in this drama violate the maxims of CP from time to time. This thesis expounds the reasons by analyzing the conversational implicatures in the context. There are probably many purposes for them to employ indirect uses of language, such as: out of politeness, or to make the conversational goal beneficial for one side, or to remedy their conflicts and to achieve the conversational goal and so on. Undoubtedly, considering politeness and rescuing the others'face is the reason. At the same time, we can appreciate the characters and the conflicts in this drama better.Therefore, by exploring the conversational implicature from the CP and the PP in The Apple Cart, this thesis in one way reaffirms and enriches the conventional Shaw criticism and claries the validity of taking pragmatic theory into literature criticism, and at the same time have a better understanding of drama conversation from a different and original aspect. The study can also give some new insights to the teaching and learning of drama in literature field.
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