Interpretation Of Conversational Implicatures In The Film Titanic From The Perspective Of The Cooperative Principle

This thesis tries to apply Grice's Cooperative Principle to practical analysis of the film Titanic. Grice's CP is the general rule for the speaker and the hearer to obey in the conversation. However, people often violate the sub-maxims of CP to convey implied meanings, which is conversational implicature.Through the analysis of the violations of the maxims of CP, we can find out the features of dialogues or certain strategies which enable the characters in Titanic to convey conversational implicatures. The features are as follows:First, the characters'dialogues provide inadequate information or more information. The conversational implicature has a property of non-conventionality. The implied or hidden meaning of the dialogues can be inferred on the basis of the conventional meaning of words together with the context. The characters in the film adopt the strategies like overstatement or repetition to express their real intentions. The implied meanings are conveyed by violating the maxim of quantity with the characters'inner feelings reflected like sadness, doubt, anger or hesitation.Second, the information provided by the characters is untrue. The characters try to express the implied meanings by violating the maxim of quality. It is obvious that, conversational implicature is non-detachable because it is based on a particular truth-conditional content. Other ways of expressing the same truth conditional content in the given context should give rise to the same implicature. The major ways are telling white lies or talking with others sarcastically.Third, the characters'dialogues are not relevant. Conversational implicature is conveyed by characters'violating maxim of relevance. Their dialogues may be partly irrelevant or totally irrelevant. Conversational implicature is context-dependent. The utterance of the characters is irrelevant to the context for some specific reasons or intentions.Fourth, the information provided by the characters might be obscure or in disorder. The implied meanings are conveyed by their obscure, disorderly and redundant dialogues. The characters violate the maxim of manner to convey their real intentions. For instance, obscurity is a form of their dialogues which is adopted to avoid something difficult to express. They want to avoid embarrassment or to express their complicated emotions such as nervousness and hesitation.Fifth, on some occasions more than one maxim is violated at the same time, such as violation of the Maxims of Quantity, Quality and Manner, violation of the Maxim of Quantity and Manner and violation of the Maxim of Quality and Manner, etc. Although the characters may violate more than one maxim at the same time, the conversational implicatures are apparently conveyed.With the help of the Cooperative Principle, the audience can grasp the implied meanings of dialogues (the conversational implicature) and enjoy the film Titanic and foreign cultures much better. On the other hand, interpretations of the film Titanic in details can reaffirm and enrich Grice's Cooperative principle.Human communication occurs in different fields, so it is difficult for us to reach a general conclusion to all of them. Therefore, the research on conversational implicature in human communication is still to be explored and investigated in the future.