A Study On Conversational Implicature In The Dialogues Of Chinese Drama Text

Most of people's daily communications are carried out by means of the activity of conversation. In both the English and Chinese discourse, the meaning of an utterance can be divided into two categories: the literal meaning of the words and sentences said by the speaker, and the implicit meaning implied through the utterance. In this way, we can draw a distinction between the two categories as "meaning" and "implicature". In people's talk exchange, implicature is quite common because the speaker often mean more than what they say. The implicature beyond the speaker's utterance can not be well explained by theories concerning semantics, but needs to be analyzed by some pragmatic approach.The American linguistic philosopher Grice proposes the theory of conversational implicature and the "Cooperative Principle", and sets up a generation or deduction mechanism of conversational implicature based on the maxims of CP, including Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner. The fact that the CP is expressed in the imperative has misled many people to regard it as prescriptive, telling people what to do; while the truth is that the CP is meant to describe what actually happens in conversation. In fact, CP has long existed in people's minds to guide them sub-consciously or unconsciously. CP offers people a good approach to interpret how the literal meaning and utterance are linked, and how conversational implicature is generated and understood, but it can not explain why people in daily communications often prefer to choose an indirect way of expression rather than to utter what they want to say directly. Leech proposes the "Politeness Principle", which could rescue and develop Grice's CP in this regard. He points out that politeness takes priority in conversation because it can maintain the social equilibrium and keep friendly relations between the speakers. Different from PP, which can save the face of the hearer, the CP often threatens the face of the hearer. For face preservation is so important in reaching successful conversations, the CP and its maxims can be sacrificed.Both CP and PP are important pragmatic principles. This thesis selects dialogues from the works of two distinguished Chinese playwrights, Cao Yu and Lao She, and makes an attempt to integrate how conversational implicature is obtained in Chinese drama text through the application of CP and PP. The aim of this study is to emphasize the following conclusion: Conversational implicature is a common yet important phenomenon in people's daily communications. The combination of CP and PP offers us an effective approach to analyze conversational implicature in Chinese literature, in particular, the drama text.