An Analysis of Conversational Implicatures of Dialogues in Green Book from the Perspective of Cooperative Principle合作原则视角下《绿皮书》电影对白的会话含义分析开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

1. introduction1.1 research backgroundpragmatics is a comparatively new branch of linguistic studies. it can be defined as the study of how speakers use the sentences of a language to affect successful communication. (hu, 2001). in recent years, it has received considerable attention from linguists both abroad and in china and undergone rapid development. with its potential applicability in other fields, many important theories of pragmatics have been successfully applied to literary criticism, and then a new interdisciplinary subject has been foundedliterary pragmatics. according to tu (2005), the source of literary pragmatics is linguistic pragmatics. pragmatic theories such as conversational implicature, speech act, politeness principle, relevance, presupposition are the theoretical foundation of literary pragmatics and function as new perspectives of literary criticism. since the principles and assumptions of natural language and literary language are based on the general mechanism of language, pragmatic theories, originally used to study natural language, can be applied to the study of literary language. these pragmatic theories and approaches have displayed great vitality in literary criticism and which in turn has poured a new vigor into the contemporary literary criticism. tu (2004) states that literary pragmatics focuses on social significance of literary language system and usage, including psychological mechanism and processes of production and interpretation of literary texts. it reinstates the ancient linkage between rhetoric and poetics, which is of lasting importance for linguistics and literature. inspired by the concept of literary pragmatics, the present study is an attempt to apply the theory of conversational implicature to the analysis of film dialogues in green book from the perspective of cooperative principle.1.2 an overview of green bookthis film is a comedy film written and directed by american director peter farrelly in 2018, which is based on real events. the story takes place in the united states in the 1960s. tony, the protagonist, is an idle bastard who works as a waiter in a nightclub. this nightclub will be closed for a few months for some reason, so he is eager to find a new job. at this juncture, a black pianist named donald shirley decides to hire him. he is about to start an eight-week southbound piano tour, but at that time, discrimination against the black people in the south was very serious, so tony became shirleys driver and bodyguard. conflicts often occur because of their different personalities, but the unfair treatment shirley suffered in the south also makes tony abhor racial discrimination. the film won the 91st academy awards for best picture, best original screenplay and many other awards. having been widely acclaimed by the audience all over the world, the film green book has received numerous criticisms and reviews not only from the scholars but also from the common people who are interested in it. it is generally agreed by the academic circles that the films success should be attributed to profound social implications and cultural contents. however, many researchers think, in addition to the above reasons, one important factor that makes the film so popular is its successfully-used language and classic characters dialogues, which illustrates the view that well-designed lines in films do not only help the audience appreciate the story, but, more importantly, also help build characters images and heighten artistic merits.1.3 need for the studyin films, the dialogue of characters is an important link in promoting the development of the plot, shaping the characteristics of the character and expressing the theme of the story. green book tells the story of tony becoming donald shirleys driver and accompanying him on a piano tour, finally gaining a friendship across races and classes. in green book, most of the dialogues conform to the cooperative principle, but there are also features that violate the cooperative principle. this paper uses the theory of cooperative principles to study the dialogues in the film green book, analyzes the conversational implicatures of these dialogues in a specific context, and summarizes its pragmatic characteristics and functions. by citing the relevant conversations in the film, discussing the expression of pragmatics in the film, and analyzing the specific violation of the cooperative principle, this paper makes an attempt to analyze the conversational implicature of the part of the storyline and the creation of the character images. in short, analyzing the conversational implicature of the dialogues in the film that violates the cooperative principle has positive reference value for both theoretical research and cross-cultural communication.2. literature reviewthis chapter gives some detailed information about grices theory of conversational implicature and previous studies on conversational implicature and cooperative principle.2.1 grices theory of conversational implicatureas one of the most important theories of pragmatics, conversational implicature, first proposed by grice in 1967, has become the core of pragmatics, which plays an important role in speech communication. in real communication, the intention of the speaker is often not the literal meaning of what he or she says. the real intention implied in the words is called conversational implicature. grices theory of conversational implicature is an attempt at explaining how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant, from the level of expressed meaning to the level of implied meaning. according to grice (1975), the cooperative principle is the premise and guarantee for a successful conversation. it demands people to observe its sub-maxims to reach their goals in the process of communication in which dialogues are adopted as the main means. yet on many occasions, the speaker would not follow but violate the maxims for one reason or another. when this happens, the listener should perceive the differences between what the speaker says and what he means by what he says, the particular meaning deduced from the latter being implicature. films are the manifestation of real life, by which everyday stories are reflected in an artistic way. so, film dialogues are regarded as condensed and refined communication forms of real-world dialogues and they are not exceptions of those disciplines. that is to say, film characters also violate the maxims of cooperative principle and thus create conversational implicatures. furthermore, film dialogues make the conversational implicature on the ground of violation of cooperative principle to be the primary method of carrying on characters communication, of unfolding peoples personalities and of conveying films significance。

2.2 studies on cooperative principle abroadthe american philosopher grice (1975) pointed out in the article logic and conversation that when people conduct verbal communication, they consciously or unconsciously follow a certain cooperative principle to keep the communication going. he called it the cooperative principle. it specifically includes the following four maxims: 1) the maxim of quantity. this means that what you say should not only meet the amount of information required for communication, but also not exceed. 2) the maxim of quality. it means that people should guarantee that the content of the conversation is authentic and reliable. don't say anything that you think is false or that lacks sufficient evidence. 3) the maxim of relevance. you should make your words relevant, and the words should be centered on the purpose and closely related to the theme. 4) the maxim of manner. this means that your words must be clear and acceptable to others. what you say should avoid obscurity and ambiguity, and be concise and orderly. the above four maxims describe a reasonable and orderly conversation process. if the participants in the communication strictly follow these maxims, the purpose of a smooth conversation can be achieved.according to the studies on cooperative principle, many scholars abroad have applied the theory to various fields as follows.firstly, in the field of intercultural communication, goody (1978) studies intercultural communication with the help of cooperative principle. he presents that questions do convey the contents and that they also reflect the complicated relationship between questioner and answerer. he points out his shared definition which is a kind of restriction that people from different social stratum will pose different questions and the generation and understanding of these questions will be restricted due to the different social stratum.secondly, in the field of grammar, in accordance with cooperative principle, ervin (1990) infers that the female tends to be more cooperative than the male and thus violates the cooperative principle and its maxims less frequently.thirdly, in the field of education, edwards and mercer (2001) adopt the cooperative principle to analyze the class conversations. they indicate that people could infer the shared knowledge through the specific maxims of the cooperative principle so as to facilitate the acceptance and agreement of the utterance.2.3 studies on cooperative principle in chinasince the emergence of grices cooperative principle in 1967, much importance has been attached to it by scholars in china. it was hu who first introduced cooperative principle in his article pragmatics into china in 1980. it is said to be the most comprehensive and faithful one that cheng also introduced cooperative principle in his article grices cooperative principle and related discussion in 1983. he (1997) makes a clear comparison of the cooperative principle and sperber and wilsons relevance theory from the perspectives of the function of the cooperative principle and its maxims. in the following years, cooperative principle has been applied to fields like translation, teaching, comedy, advertisement and so on in china.in the process of the development of cooperative principle in china, the studies have achieved great development in depth and width. however, china is still left behind in many aspects in comparison with other foreign countries. according to zhang (2006), most articles concerning the cooperative principle are still at the stage of introduction or evaluation but lack our own viewpoints, and the methodology and explanation of our study is simple and weak.2.4 studies on conversational implicature abroadafter the proposal of grices cooperative principle, the theory of conversational implicature was matured and included in the cooperative principle. then many linguists developed the theory of conversational implicature on the basis of the cooperative principle and its maxims.in 1983, leech (1983) illustrated grices theory and proposed politeness principle and other principles to supplement the cooperative principle. in 1991, levinson (1991) developed the classic gricean theory of conversational implicature to the neo-gricean theory of conversational implicature.2.5 studies on conversational implicature in chinain 1989, cheng (1989) described the concept, features, formation and inference of conversational implicature in the article grices conversational implicature theory. in 1995, xu (1995) discussed the conversational implicature in pragmatic inference and new gricean theory of conversational implicature and pragmatic inference. in 1996, xu (1996) again discussed and commented on the classic gricean theory, neo-gricean theory as well as the three principles of levinson in the new development of the theory of conversational implicature. in the same year, zhong (1996) summarized xus views on conversational implicature, presenting the development of the classic and neo-gricean theory of conversational implicature in china systematically.2.6 studies on conversational implicature of film dialoguesin 2006, zhang（2006）made a research on conversational implicature of lovers in american romance films in 1990s with the theory of cooperative principle. the focus of her study is the application of cooperative principle in the conversations between lovers, the analysis of how they do face-threatening acts, and interpretation of thus generated conversational implicature. in order to reduce the face damage to the hearer, the speaker always convey his real meaning and feeling in a seemed polite way to avoid conflicts, embarrassment or other negative results. in 2007, wang (2007) pointed out the characteristics and sequence of english film dialogues in violation of the maxims of cooperative principle, and proved that violating cooperative principle is a major form for the film characters to generate conversational implicature in their dialogues.they conducted research on conversational implicature of a specific category of people from the perspectives of pragmatics, but other factors like culture, psychology, sociology, etc. are not taken into consideration. in addition, the samples they collected lack logical categories.referencesedwards, d., mercer, n. (2001). common knowledge: the development of understanding in the classroom. london: routledge.ervin, e. (1990). the rhetoric of courtship: conversation and cooperation in newspaper personal ads. eric, ed 318072.goody, e. (1978). questions and politeness: strategies in social interaction. cambridge: cambridge university press.grice, h. p. (1975). logic and conversation. in cole morgan, syntax and semantics. new york: academic press.leech, g. (1983). principles of pragmatics. new york: longman group limited.levinson, s. c. (1991). pragmatics. cambridge: cambridge university press.程雨民（1983），格赖斯的会话含义与有关的讨论，《国外语言学》，（1）：66-71。

何自然（1997），《语用学与英语学习》。

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

The present paper uses the theory of cooperative principles to study the dialogues in the film Green Book, analyzes the conversational implicatures of these dialogues in a specific context, and summarizes its pragmatic characteristics and rules. The specific research questions are: 1) What maxims of the cooperative principle are violated? 2) What implicatures are produced through such violation in Green Book? 3) What pragmatic functions do these dialogue implicatures have? The study will adopt qualitative research methods. Qualitative research refers to obtaining sharp insights through exploring problems, understanding events and phenomena, analyzing human behaviors and viewpoints, and answering questions. A descriptive study will be conducted to analyze the conversational implicatures of film dialogues in Green Book from the perspective of cooperative principle. The theoretical backup of the study is Grices theory of cooperative principle and conversational implicature. The examples in the analysis are carefully chosen from the conversations between the main characters in the film Green Book and the target dialogues are all typical in the sense that they violate the cooperative principle and generate conversational implicatures.