Abstract: There are some conversational principles necessary for a successful conversation. One is the Cooperative Principle of four maxims. Violating any one of the four maxims will give rise to conversational implicatures; the other is the Politeness Principle, proposed to rescue the Cooperative Principle. To draw pragmatic implications from the violation of the Cooperative Principle is of no difference between the west and the east. What are different lies in people’s choice of the maxims of the Cooperative Principle and this is due to different cultural background. Chinese-styled politeness is characterized by four aspects: respectfulness, modesty, attitudinal warmth and refinement. Language, as a special form of communication, may be viewed as a system, as a vehicle for cultural transmission. It does not exist apart from culture. Thus, language and cultural are interactive and understanding of one requires understanding of the other. To better achieve the communicative goal, it is necessary to choose the appreciate way of expression under certain circumstances and cultural factors plays an important role in using language effectively. Key words: cultural difference; conversational principles ; Cooperative Principle ; Politeness Principle Few areas of people’s experience are closer to them or more continuously with them than their language—they have to communicate by speaking, listening, reading and writing in everyday life. In the course of communication, it is no doubt that speech enjoys priority not only because it precedes writing in terms of evolution, but a large amount of communication is carried out in conversation as well. An ideal conversation is usually assumed to be carried out by “turn-taking” and thus the meanings of the utterance are expressed accordingly. However, the real intentions of the speakers cannot always be drawn by simply interpreting the surface meanings of the words in the utterance, for people often tend to mean more in a roundabout way than what they actually say. Let’s first look at an example which took place on the campus at noon: Devin: What time is it? Jakie: The students are going to the dining hall. Here, Jakie’s answer doesn’t seem to make sense on the face of it, but it is still an adequate answer for Devin, because the particular contexts of this conversation include the fact that the students usually have lunch at about 11:30 in the university and Devin is aware of this. It is possible for Devin to work out the time by interpreting or guessing what Jakie says and the more she knows about the context, the more qualified her guesswork is going to be. Normally in conversational interaction, people work on the assumption that a certain set of rules is in operation, unless they receive indications to the contrary. For example, if Jakie gives the same answer to a stranger, it’ll likely lead to communication breakdown because nobody expects a successful conversation in which people try to confuse, trick, or withhold relevant information from each other. In other words, a successful conversation should be the fruit of all the participants’ efforts and collaboration is a necessary factor for them to achieve a certain goal. Therefore, people are expected to be cooperate during a conversation, and such cooperative mechanisms have very little to do with logic and semantics, but are grounded in some pragmatic principles, especially the Cooperative Principle. In 1967, American philosopher H.P. Grice put forward the Cooperative Principle in Logic and Conversation: “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” (Yule, 37). Supporting this principle is the four maxims: Quantity Maxim: Make your contribution as informative as is required, but not more, or less, than is required. Quality Maxim: Do not say that which you believe to be false or for which you lack evidence. Relation Maxim: Be relevant. Manner Maxim: Be clear, brief and orderly. The importance of this principle lies in two aspects: Firstly, it is the first time to systematically induce people’s conversational activities into law. Secondly, when violation of the Cooperative Principle takes place, in one case, understanding of the discourse is hindered and the speaker should make remedies immediately to smooth the conversation; in another case, if the speaker does so intentionally, there will be more to it than what is said. Conversational implicatures, in this way, will be given rise to. 1．Violation of the Quantity Maxim 1.1 知之为知之，不知为不知。（论语） In this sentence, repetition of the same word appears twice, which accords with the formula “P=P”. From a purely logical perspective, the sentence has no communicative value since it expresses something completely obvious, but it can be understood easily that this sentence primarily advises people to be honest in engaging in scholarship. Similar apparently pointless expressions are “Business is business” and “Girls are girls”. This kind of phenomenon is called tautology. When tautology is applied in a conversation, it is clear that the speaker intends to express more than is said. Usually, this kind of usage has strong sense of emotion. 1.2 Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. (Shakespeare, Hamlet) 1.3 “我们是睡在鼓里，法语论文，等人家来杀！等人家来杀！”(矛盾：子夜) |
