An Analysis Of Feminism In Eat,Pray, Love From The Perspective Of Cooperative Principle

Literature is an art of language. Linguistics is a scientific study of language. The study of literature can’t be separated from linguistics, and the study of linguistics can’t be separated from literature. Only by combining modern linguistics with literary criticism can the readers get a better understanding of literature works. In decades, more and more scholars start to study literature works from the aspect of linguistics. The Cooperative Principle Theory is made to help people communicate with each other better. The Conversational Implicature theory is made to understand people’s utterances better.Taking Cooperative Principle Theory and Conversational Implicature Theory as the theoretical framework, the thesis has collected112conversations from the novel Eat, Pray, Love. Then the thesis classifies them into three groups according to Levinson’s three principles,48conversations of the violation of information,34conversations of the violation of quantity, and30conversations of the violation of manner. The thesis analyzes the violations of the principles in different contexts. Then the feminism of characters is analyzed.Through the analysis of characters’utterances in Eat, Pray, Love, the thesis comes to the conclusions:Firstly, the characters sometimes violate the maxims of Cooperative Principle to achieve their goals, such as saving face, or insulting others. Secondly, the feminism of characters is discovered.①The pursuit of the right of education. Men and women should have the same right in accepting education.②The pursuit of the right of reproduction. Women have the right to decide whether to give a baby or not.③The pursuit of the right of work. Men and women have the same right in applying for a job and the work.④The pursuit of the right of pursing love. Women have the right to pursue love actively.In the thesis, the utterances of the characters are analyzed from the aspect of Cooperative Principle in Eat, pray, love. On one hand, it proves the effectiveness of applying CP theories into the study of literature works. On the other hand, it helps the readers appreciate literature works better and get a deeper understanding of feminism and feminist literary criticism.