On Conversational Implicature In Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor Of Casterbridge

The Mayor of Casterbridge is a one of the representative works of the famous British novelist Thomas Hardy. It depicts the ups and downs of the main character Henchard and tries to create an unforgettable image of Henchard which turns out to be one of the greatest tragic heroes created in novels. Although criticisms on Thomas Hardy and The Mayor of Casterbridge are numerous, seldom are there scholars who analyze the conversational implicature from the perspective of pragmatics. This thesis reviewed the criticisms and researches on The Mayor of Casterbridge and analyzed the feasibility and necessity of studying the conversational implicature from pragmatic perspective. The cooperative principle and the politeness principle are the theoretical background, which are applied to the analysis of conversational implicature generated by violating cooperative principle. The functions of the conversational implicature can be described as creating a characteristic image, constituting a communicative style and constructing a culture-specific context of communication. This thesis aims at helping readers better understand and appreciate this novel and enrich the literary criticism of The Mayor of Casterbridge from linguistics perspective.The story is set in the19th century Britain which is featured by the Industrial Revolution, and it particularly describes the contradiction of the new and old forces which is finally replaced by the new one. The main character of the novel, Henchard, failed to adapt to the new age due to his impulsion, stubbornness, aloofness and arrogance, which lead to his failure to Farfrae who represents the new force. Grice believes that people obey certain cooperative principles to reach successful communication. However, when in real communication, people tend to violate or ignore cooperative principles, which generate conversational implicature. In such cases, people mostly try not to threaten hearers’face and choose to express their real meaning in an indirect way. The thesis has chosen large quantities of typical conversations from the novel and analyzed them from the perspective of cooperative principle and politeness principle and expressed how conversational implicature is produced and explored the effective way of successful communication. I hope that this thesis makes some contribution to the exploration of literary pragmatics.