Analysis Of Dialogues In David Copperfield From The Perspective Of Flouting The Cooperative Principle And The Politeness Principle

Charles Dickens has been widely recognized as one of the greatest representatives ofEnglish critical realism in the Victorian times. Of all his works, David Copperfield is hisfavorite. As Dickens’s autobiographical work, it has been studied mainly from theperspective of literary criticism. But people seldom appreciate this novel from theperspective of pragmatics. This thesis tries to analyze the dialogues in the novel in detailsfrom the pragmatic approaches. And this thesis is an interdisciplinary study combininglinguistics and literature.This thesis gives a brief introduction to Charles Dickens and David Copperfield fromthe perspective of literary criticism. And the dialogues in David Copperfield are analyzed onthe pragmatic theories. The pragmatic theories used in this thesis include Grice’sCooperative Principle and Leech’s Politeness Principle, which provide a theoretic frame andresearch tool for the analysis of the conversations in the novel. The CP and its maximsexplain how Conversational Implicature is produced and interpreted. Leech’s PP and itsmaxims explain why people prefer to express their ideas indirectly and implicitly.This thesis analyzes how the characters of the novel violate CP and PP in theirconversations. The study manifests the development of the plot by the violation of the PP inthe novel of David Copperfield. The rhetorical effects are produced by the violation of theCP. It profoundly reveals the personality of the characters in the novel, which can helppeople understand the novel better. It also testifies the effectiveness and significance ofusing pragmatic theory to analyze literary works.