Analysis Of The David Letterman Show Under Grice’s Conversational Implicatur

Since the 20 th century, talk show has turned into a new and popular form of entertainment mainly in the form of conversation and become worldwide spread. Among various kinds of talk shows, the David Letterman Show stands out and becomes the most famous and influential one.This study is based on Grice’s Conversational Implicature Theory, which believes that both the speaker and the hearer will abide by a series of standards in common conversational interaction, in order to make the conversation in a coherent and not gibberish way. However, it is not hard to find that in real communication, people do not strictly comply with the cooperative principle and its related principles and sometimes violate the cooperative principle for various reasons to achieve specific communicative intention. Guided by the theory of conversational implicature, and with the aid of a large number of vivid examples, the study has researched the implicature produced by violation of the Cooperative Principle in David Letterman Show.The data of the study come from David Letterman Show, among which ten episodes are chosen as samples. They come from well-known Chinese video websites, such as SINA, YOUKU, TODOU, etc, with high click volume. Through transcription of the chosen episodes, the original material has been gotten. Through both quantitative and qualitative research methods, and with the help of the Conversational Implicature Theory, some major findings can be got:Firstly, compliance of CP does appear to be the most frequently in the talk show in order to keep the communication going smoothly, and lead the hearer to talk in a cooperative way, which is crucial for a program to be completed.Secondly, such a conclusion could be reached from analysis of conversational implicature of dialogues that the quality maxim is much more easily to be flouted. Within the 121 dialogues that violate the CP, 54 dialogues violate the quality maxim, 18 dialogues violate the quantity maxim, 30 dialogues violate the manner maxim, and 19 dialogues violate the relevance maxim. It might be inferred that the quality maxim is easy to be flouted than the other three maxims by speakers in their daily communication.Last but not the least, according to the analysis of dialogues occurred in the David Letterman Show under the Grice’s conversational implicature theory, the author draws such a conclusion that deliberate violation of the Cooperative Principle usually creates a humorous, ironic, or harmonious atmosphere.This study did research on the elaborately selected dialogues in David Letterman Show. On one hand, it not only makes up for the deficiency of relevant researches in this field at abroad but also enlarges the width of research. On the other hand, theoretical support also fills up the gap, which lacks depth towards research of David Letterman Show at home. As a result, the implicit meaning in talk show is analyzed with the help of pragmatics. Moreover, people could have a good understanding of conversation strategy and it could help English learners in China improve their communication ability to some extent and communicate with each other more successfully in reality.