The Analysis Of Character Traits Of The Heroine Elizabeth In Pride And Perjudice From The Perspective Of Cooperative Principle

Criticisms and reviews on Pride and Prejudice, the world classic of Jane Austen, have been numerous. This thesis attempts to analyze the conversational implicature of the dialogues of the heroine Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of the Cooperative Principle. During this process, the personalities of Elizabeth can be clearly shown in front of the readers.Having made a comprehensive review of previous studies on Grice’s Cooperative Principle, especially previous studies of the application of the Cooperative Principle on literary works, as well as previous studies on the dialogues in Pride and Prejudice in contemporary times, the author of the thesis finds it feasible and necessary to study the dialogues of the heroine Elizabeth from the perspective of the Cooperative Principle. The theoretical framework consists of Grice’s Cooperative Principle and Brown and Levinson’s Off-record Strategy. Brown and Levinson divided the Off-record Strategies into four categories in accordance with the four maxims of the Cooperative Principle.This thesis conducts a qualitative case analysis. The author of the thesis has selected a lot of typical dialogues of Elizabeth from Pride and Prejudice that employ the indirect expression, in other words, dialogues that violate the Cooperative Principle, and then chooses eight from all of fifteen off-record strategies. According to the different strategy each dialogue employs, these dialogues are divided into eight categories. Having done all this, the author analyzes carefully these dialogues as well as their associated conversational implicatures. The analysis mainly includes the following aspects:(1) introduction of the background of the utterance; (2) which off-record strategy is employed; (3) Which maxim of the Cooperative Principle is violated, and how to do this; (4) what real conversational implicature is expressed; (5) what character trait is revealed, and how to do this. According to the three character traits found in Elizabeth, the main body of the thesis is divided into three chapters.Through the analysis of the chosen dialogues, it is found that Elizabeth is more inclined to violate the Quality Maxim, Relation Maxim and the Manner Maxim and less inclined to violate the Quantity Maxim. These dialogues can also reveal three kinds of character traits found in Elizabeth------her sense of humor, her independent judgment as well as her pride. At the same time, the present study also demonstrates that the Cooperative Principle is a very useful instrument in analyzing literary works and is helpful for our deep understanding of the personalities of the different characters and the relationships between them. It provides a new perspective for us to appreciate classic literary works.