Analysis Of Conversational Implicatures Of Dialogues In Forrest Gump

The classical film Forrest Gump has garnered a total of 13 Oscar Award nominations, of which it won six, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing and Best Visual Effects, and it has gained a huge success. The film, in the context of the 20th century American history, is a legendary story about a man called Gump with an IQ of only 75 who leads a most extraordinary life. Until today, when enjoying it, we find that the film has not diminished its charm at all as time goes by; instead the protagonist Gump's ordinariness and greatness still touch the hearts of millions of the audience. It is believed that one important factor that makes the film so popular is its successfully-used language and well-designed lines, which plays an important role in building each character alive for the audience and conveying the film's significance and its artistic merits. Therefore, analysis of film dialogues is an effective means to explore the characters' personalities and the films'theme.Since its release, the film Forrest Gump has received considerable attention and numerous comments and reviews. For decades, the researches on it have never stopped and have been fruitful with multi-dimensional interpretations by scholars from various approaches. However, there are few or unsystematic studies in the literature on the analysis of the conversational implicatures of the film from the perspective of pragmatic theories to appreciate the characters'conversations. In view of this gap, the author attempts to analyze the rich conversational implicatures of the characters'dialogues in Forrest Gump with the purpose of gaining a better and fuller understanding and appreciation of this film.Grice's Theory of Conversational Implicature is one of the most important theories of pragmatics, and it is an attempt at explaining how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant, from the level of expressed meaning to the level of implied meaning. According to the theory, both speakers and listeners have the expectations to cooperate with each other to conduct a successful communication. Thus, participants are required to observe a cooperative principle and maxims of quality, quantity, relation and manner, which is called Cooperative Principle. Yet on many occasions, the speakers would not follow but violate the maxims for one reason or another. The violation of the maxims will produce the implied meanings which express the speakers'real intentions in an indirect way. When the speakers superficially violate the Cooperative Principle, the listeners should deduce the speakers'implied meaning based on the context. The implied meaning deduced from what the speakers say is called Conversational Implicature by Grice.Like daily conversations, movie dialogues which occur in particular contexts belong to one kind of conversational activities. So, film characters also violate the maxims of Cooperative Principle and thus create conversational implicatures on the screen. The film Forrest Gump has of course its characters violate the maxims in their dialogues and produce rich conversational implicatures which are totally different from what they say. From the perspective of pragmatics, the present study has made an analysis of the enriched conversational implicatures in Forrest Gump with Grice's theory of Conversational Implicature and Cooperative Principle as theoretical framework, and furthermore, explored the protagonist Gump's and the others'personalities as well as the film's theme and artistic merits.The present study makes a detailed and thorough analysis on the carefully-chosen 20 typical dialogues between the main characters in the film Forrest Gump. The dialogues are arranged according to the time sequence of the character appearing in the movie, including dialogues between Forrest Gump and the black woman, Forrest Gump and Mum, Mrs. Gump and the Principal, Forrest Gump and the bus driver, Forrest Gump and Jenny, Forrest Gump and one student, Forrest Gump and the President, Forrest Gump and Bubba, Forrest Gump and Dan, Forrest Gump and reporters. Adopting Grice's theory of Conversational Implicature and Cooperative Principle as theoretical framework, the present study attempts to analyze in each selected dialogue what maxims or sub-maxims of the Cooperative Principle are violated and what implicatures are produced through such violation, and meanwhile to figure out if the implicatures can be understood by the core character Forrest Gump who is somewhat mentally retarded and if the frequencies of his violation of the maxims of the Cooperative Principle are the same as others. Based on the analysis, the author summaries general results of the study:(1) There has always been one maxim or more violated by the retarded person Forrest or the other speaker in each dialogue. (2) The other speaker violates the maxim of the CP in a dialogue while the retarded person Forrest, in most cases, observes the CP. (3) When the maxims of the CP are violated, the conversational implicatures are produced. (4) The implicatures produced are usually understood easily by the others while the retarded person Forrest seems to have the difficulty in understanding it or just misunderstands it. Then the author explores the functions of the conversational implicatures of film dialogues in Forrest Gump from three aspects, that is,reflection of personalities of the characters, indication of the philosophies of life and creation of the effect of humor. At the end of the study, based on the major findings, some implications can be provided:Since the analysis of conversational implicatures of film dialogues can be efficient means to understand the characterization of a film, it is of great significance for screenwriters to command a knowledge of conversational implicature and cooperative principle, and thus to create well-designed lines for each character in films in accordance with their personalities;Since the retarded people may sometime have difficulties in understanding the conversational implicature, we should tend to observe the maxims of the CP, and to make our points as explicitly as possible so as to let them understand us correctly and easily in actual communication.