Pygmalion was created by Bernard Shaw in 1912 and it was his most popular drama, which carefully worked study of developing relationship between a “creator” and his “creation”。 It describes a transformation of a flower-selling girl of lower class, Eliza Doolittle, into a duchess by a phonetic professor Henry Higgins。 This play is full of interesting plots and exposes the social problems of the exploiting class in a funny atmosphere, making this drama be familiar to the public。 What’s more, the cinematic presentation of Pygmalion, which named My Fair Lady, makes Pygmalion earn great popularity and is widely read by all over the world。 

The fact cannot be denied that with the development of linguistics, pragmatic approach is used by more and more researchers to study drama。 However, as for the width and depth are concerned, research on drama is lag behind after other literary study, one of the important reasons is that stage performance is the main presentation of drama。 The drama which is performed on the stage maybe an interpretation of the stage director, but an excellent literary work can be explicated from whole angles。 The drama Pygmalion which produced by the G。B Shaw is not an exception。 In his drama, the plots are pided into five acts, and each interesting scene happens one after another arouse readers’ interest。 The characters in the drama Pygmalion are very distinct。 Eliza Doolittle, her love of conversation, her character of straightforward, her self-respecting and loveliness are interesting traits of the character。 The other two men Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering are also main characters, both two have distinct personality in the Pygmalion。 The theme of Pygmalion is carried through his writing。 In the drama, Bernard Shaw shows clearly that there are no surface differences by comparing with the upper class of the bourgeoisie and the labor of the underworld。 Upper class is only educated in bourgeois and can say something elegant language, otherwise, labor class’s soul is more pure。 The dialogs in Pygmalion are generated by many characters and the speech is the essential part of the drama。 Dramatic dialogue in the Pygmalion is filled with direct and connotative logic conversations which are very interesting and witty。文献综述

    In a word, the dramatists of that period regarded exaggerated melodrama or slapstick comedy as a kind of artistic creation, Bernard Shaw emphasized the importance of education function in drama very much。 In order to achieve the dramatic education function, and enhance the readers’ judgment and critical consciousness, the drama Pygmalion was carried with realistic social content by Bernard Shaw。 At that time, he managed to show his own thinking about life in this play, and put many philosophical ideas in it。

III。 Two Theoretical Frameworks

3。1 Cooperative Principle and Four Maxims

Oxford philosopher Herbert Paul Grice notices that in daily conversations people do not usually say things directly but tend to imply them。 In other words, we seem to follow some principle like following: “make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (Grice 45)。 And this principle is known as the cooperative principle, or CP for short。 Grice originally put forward the cooperative principle though the William James lectures at Harvard University in 1967, and his theory first become known to the public。 What’s more, most of his lectures were published in Logic and Conversation in 1975。 In order to specify the CP further, Grice introduced four categories of maxims as follows: 来;自]优Y尔E论L文W网www.youerw.com +QQ752018766-

The Maxim of Quantity：

1。 Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange)。