Analysis Of Scalar Implicature In Chinese TV Drama Conversations

Since dramatic conversations are reproduction of real conversations, it is worthy to make an attempt to analyze such kind of conversional implicature. As a special conversational implicature, scalar implicature has been analyzed at length in the pragmatic history. Those studies mainly focus on the theoretical discussions, such as the proposal of scalar model of Polarity items proposed by Horn (1973), supplement of Horn scale by Levinson (1983,2000) and Hischberg (1991) and relevance limitation discussion on the production of scalar implicature by Carson (1998). There are few studies adopting scalar implicature theories to analyze conversational texts. Gong (2009) provides a suggestion that researchers can attempt to study conversational implicatures in texts based on the extended scalar implicature theory. At this point, this thesis regards the indirect speech of main characters in Chinese TV dramas Aspiration and Beijing Youth as the research object. It concentrates on the discussion about the content and process of scalar implicature derivation in conversations extracted from the two dramas. The analysis of conversational scalar implicature provides a new perspective for the study of conversational implicature in TV series.This thesis selects25indirect dialogues from two Chinese TV dramas-Aspiration and Beijing Youth according to the property of scalar implicature. The author adopts qualitative method to explore the following three questions:how the indirect speech produces scalar implicature, what kind of implicature is derived and what kind of communicative effects are produced based on the working mechanism of scalar implicature computation:scalar model, ad hoc pragmatic scale and the Relevance principle. Three points are found through the whole analysis:(1) Scalar implicature derived through scalar model is generally triggered by scalar operators, pragmatic scales and the relation between reference point and target point;(2) Under the framework of ad hoc pragmatic scale, scalar implicature is deduced by different categories of hyperbolic metaphors;(3) Scalar expressions are used to strengthen expressing forces and convey blame, irony or encourage in order that hearers behaves as speakers expect and audience presuppose the conversational implicatures.