3。2。2 Violating the Maxim of Quality 12

    3。2。3 Violating the Maxim of Relation 14

    3。2。4 Violating the Maxim of Manner 15

  3。3 The Application of PP in Sherlock 17

    3。3。1 Observing the Tact and Generosity Maxim 17

    3。3。2 Observing the Approbation and Modesty Maxim 18

    3。3。3 Observing the Agreement Maxim 19

IV。 Conclusion 21

Bibliography 23

Conversational Implicature in the Dialogues of Sherlock

Conversational Implicature in the Dialogues of Sherlock

I。 Introduction 

   In our daily life, it is found that there is a great difference between the literal meaning of people’s utterance and the real intention they aim to convey (Searle, 2001)。 According to H。 P。 Grice (2002), in the daily intercourse, people are willing to cooperate with each other because they have the same purpose or a common direction; shortly, they would observe a general principle to achieve the same goal, which is called the Cooperative Principle (CP)。 However, people do not always observe the rules of CP for various reasons。 When one participant violates the CP, his real intention is implied rather than expressed directly or superficially, and then conversational implicature (CI) is generated (Dai & He, 2010)。  However, the CP cannot explain why sometimes people would like to choose complicated and implied expressions but not concise and direct words to communicate。 In order to solve this problem, famous British linguist Geoffrey Leech put forward Politeness Principle (PP), which explains that people violate the CP for politeness。  论文网

   TV series, as a kind of art, not only enrich the spiritual and cultural life of people, but also reflect the real life of people to some degree (Chang, 2012)。 Consequently, it has become an indispensable part of our life。 Dialogues in TV series, as the main media of communication and idea exchange among characters, can reflect the characters’ status, personalities, identity and intention。 Therefore, by analyzing the dialogues of a TV series, people can better comprehend the personality of characters as well as the artistic fascination of language。 However, among the existing studies of CI in the dialogues, many focus on films and modern American sitcoms, while few studies have been carried out about the CI in the dialogues of British TV programs of police and suspense。 This thesis tends to analyze the CI in the dialogues of Sherlock which has gained tremendous popularity in both Britain and China。 Based on the dialogues in the Season 1, Episode 1 of Sherlock, through case study and inductive analysis, the present thesis aims to explain how the CI is generated from the view of CP, PP and CI theories, so that English lovers can better comprehend the development of the plots and the personality of the characters。 Additionally, it is also expected that the application of CI can be extended to more fields, promoting its further development。

   As for the structure, this thesis consists of four parts。 Part One is a general introduction, including the significance, research methods as well as organization of the study; Part Two is the theoretical foundation of the study, which presents the CP and PP in details and then explains the relationship between the two theories。 Part Three is the major part of the paper, which conducts a case study to analyze the CI in the dialogues selected from the Season 1, Episode 1 of Sherlock based on CP and PP。 The last part makes a conclusion of the whole paper, involving a general summary, limitations and further advice。