A Study On Conversational Implicature In Downton Abbey From The Perspective Of The Cooperative Principle

Cooperative Principle was proposed by Herbert Paul Grice,a famous American linguist,when he delivered a lecture Logic and Conversation at Harvard University in 1967.Cooperative Principle has attracted much attention from scholars at home and abroad since it was proposed.Grice believes that in daily conversation,the parties sometimes deliberately violate a certain maxim of Cooperative Principle in order to make the conversation go smoothly.And the conversation sometimes does not directly convey the meaning,so it has a Conversational Implicature under the literal sense.Cooperation Principle can better explain this conversation in daily communication.Scholars at home and abroad have applied Cooperative Principle to teaching humor,rhetoric,advertisement research and so on.It is applied to the study of meaning beyond words intentionally conveyed by two sides of the conversation,but shaping the personality is also realized through violating one of maxims of Cooperative Principle.This thesis mainly discusses violation of one of the maxims of Cooperative Principle from four aspects:the violation of Quantity Maxim,the violation of Quality Maxim,the violation of Relevant Maxim,the violation of Manner Maxim,which enlightens Conversational Implicature,and then analyzes the shaping of personalities through violating Cooperative Principle.Relevant researches in recent years indicate that many scholars have used Cooperative Principle to analyze literary or film works,but there are few related studies on shaping the personality that use the Conversational Implicature from the perspective of the Cooperative Principle.This thesis is based on the conversation between Mary and others,discuss how shaping the personality are perfected step by step from the perspective of Cooperative Principle.Downton Abbey is the most popular British drama in recent years.This thesis aims at exploring how the heroine,Mary's personalities are gradually and naturally shaped through violating one of maxims of Cooperative Principle in Downton Abbey.The conversation of this paper is taken from Downton Abbey,which is between Mary and others.The thesis attempts to adopt violating one of maxims of Cooperative Principle as the framework to work on shaping Mary's personalities,this thesis studies how Mary's personalities are gradually shaped and become vivid step by step.At the end of this thesis,the findings on the applications of Cooperative Principle in shaping personalities are involved:on one hand,according to its functions in shaping personalities,Mary's wisdom is most vividly displayed.She was cold in appearance but soft in heart.Mary is kind in dealing with servants,which reflects her concern for people in difficult situations or people with low status.Mary is complicated when communicating with people in the higher or her family members where she violates the maxims of Cooperative Principle mostly.This thesis will explore Mary's personality by her violating the maxims of Cooperative Principle.On the other hand,features of Mary's language will be explored through her violating maxims of Cooperative Principle.Firstly,Mary is inclined to use high-pitch and ring tone to express her language feature through violating Quality Maxim and Quantity Maxim.Secondly,Mary is inclined to use intensifier adjective as well as interjections to express her strong emotions by violating Quantity Maxim,Manner Maxim and Relating Maxim.Thirdly,Mary prefers to employ tag questions to obtain more support from other parties by violating Relating Maxim and Manner Maxim.Mary is humorous in language nature,which is explored through her violating Cooperative Principle.