Analysis Of Zhen Huan’s Conversational Implicature From Perspectives Of Cooperative Principle And Politeness Principle

Recent years have witnessed network novels as representative of network literature. An increasing number of films and TV series adapted from network novels appear on TV screens in thousands of households. The Biography of Zhen Huan is such a television series. Since it was shown on TV, the audience ratings have hit high records.The story deeply impresses viewers not only with its complicated and intertwined plots, but also with the very unique conversing manners. Zhen Huan’s speaking has thus been widely recognized as “Zhen Huan language style”, which has become the street talk. The Biography of Zhen Huan is being translated into English,Japanese, etc, and is to be shown in many overseas TV stations. So far, the research on The Biography of Zhen Huan mainly focuses on the female image, literature, sociology as well, but little research has been conducted from the perspective of pragmatics.In the field of pragmatics, Grice’s Cooperative Principle(CP) and Leech’s Politeness Principle(PP) are two major theories for the research of this type. With the theoretical framework of Grice’s CP and its four maxims, Leech’s PP and its maxims,Brown and Levinson’s indirect politeness strategies, this study explores how Zhen Huan produces her intended conversational implicature. By analyzing 29 cases selected from the TV series of The Biography of Zhen Huan, this study attempts to reveal how and when Zhen Huan obeys and violates CP and PP.By analyzing the discourse produced by Zhen Huan from the perspective of pragmatics, this study has disclosed the following findings:(1) Zhen Huan has made best use of different language skills and employed corresponding speaking manners on different occasions, and she could converse with addressees of different social status, so as to accurately express her intention and clearly convey her standpoint;(2)Zhen Huan has observed the maxim of PP in order to gain appreciation and recognition when she talks to people whose social positions are higher than her present status such as the emperor, the empress dowager, and the empress. And whenshe talks to those whose social positions are equal to her status such as her close friends. Sometimes she also violates the maxims of CP, for the sake of maintaining the others’ face. By doing this, she manages to maintain good relationship with those whose positions are higher than herself;(3) When she talks to those whose positions are lower than her or to those who are unfriendly to her, she often violates the maxim of CP and PP so that she can avoid direct conflicts, embarrassment or other negative results.The present study helps us better understand the inner world of Zhen Huan. It is suggested a feasibility of analyzing Zhen Huan’s conversational implicature from pragmatic perspectives. It has, therefore, broadened the application of pragmatics in literary studies.