A Pragmatic Analysis Of Conversational Implicature In Death On The Nile

The theory of Conversational Implicature was originally put forward by an American philosopher Grice. Besides its crucial role in pragmatics, it is of great significance in intercommunication as well. Ever since its inception, the theory of Conversational Implicature has attracted growing attention from both home and abroad. Numerous scholars are trying to interpret, even complete this theory from different perspectives. As the core content of Conversational Implicature Theory, Cooperative Principle not only functions as the fundamental rule in standardizing communicative discourse, but also reflects the meta-requirement in communication. However, Cooperative Principle must be comprehended and followed dialectically. According to him, people may sometimes break this principle consciously to express what they really want to say, thus speakers communicate meaning via implicatures and listeners recognize those communicated meanings via inference. It is those implicatures and inferences that preserve the assumption of cooperation.Conversational Implicature Theory explains the generation of conversational implicatures without accounting for the reason why people choose to break these maxims. Following this line, Brown and Levinson put forward their Politeness Theory to cover the shortage.This thesis not only gives a review of the domestic and overseas research in Cooperative Principle and Politeness Theory since the late 19 th century, but also proves the significance of research occurring in the field of studying Agatha Christie and her works from multiple angles. On this basis, the writer of this thesis combined these two fields together, aiming to prove the necessity and feasibility of applying pragmatic theories into analyzing a detective fiction. Hence, this thesis carefully researches the conversational implicatures contained in one of Christie’s masterpieces, Death on the Nile. Grice’s Conversational Implicature Theory explains how conversational implicatures are generated, namely the act of breaking Cooperative principle and its maxims so as to express the real meaning in a roundabout way and produce implicatures. Whereas Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory explains the reason for breaking CP and employing politeness strategies, that is for the sake of politeness. According to their research, politeness strategies can also be divided into on-record and off-record strategies.In order to better understand the nature of this theory, the writer of this thesis introduces two aspects as mentioned above, but great detail and extra attention are given to off-record strategies to illustrate different utterances which invite conversational implicatures and perform face-threatening-act implicitly. The characters violate certain conversational maxims to generate implicatures in an off-record way. Thus, face-threatening-acts are done to maintain Brown and Levinson’s Politenss Theory while sacrificing CP.Brown and Levinson divided their politeness strategies into four categories based on Grice’s Cooperative Principle. Under the guidance of the above two theories, 28 examples chosen from this book are categorized based on the politeness strategies they employ, namely performing face threatening acts with or without redressive action and performing face threatening acts in an off-record way. Detailed analyses are made to reveal the conversational implicatures hidden behind them.Performing face threatening acts with or without redressive action put the focus on portraying characters, exposing their values and demonstrating their complex relationships. In addition to the above mentioned functions, off-record strategies reveal multiple ways that conversational implicatures can be generated. Speakers perform face-threatening-acts and express their real intention using off-record strategies while maintaining politeness. Christie also hides clues and suspenses in conversations through the employment of displacing hearer, over-generalization and being vague. Meanwhile, these two theories exhibit Christie’s brilliance in manipulating clues and hiding information from readers. Therefore, we can better appreciate the language style of the author and their implied meaning on one hand, and testify the validity and significance of employing pragmatic theory into the detective genre on the other.