英语专业毕业论文-美剧《摩登家庭》中亲子对话的语用分析.doc

晋中学院本科毕业论文（设计）_晋 中 学 院 本科毕业论文（设计） 题 目美剧摩登家庭中亲子对话的语用分析 院 系 外国语学院 专 业 英语 姓 名 学 号 学习年限 2011年 9月至2015年6月指导教师 助教 申请学位 文学学士学位 2015年5月11日 acknowledgmentsi would like to my sincere thanks to a number of people who helped me with this dissertation. without their assistance, it is impossible for me to complete this thesis. first of all, i am most grateful to my supervisor, ms li yurong. she is an excellent scholar on pragmatics. she not only provided me with fruitful knowledge of pragmatics and linguistics but also gave me constructive and considerate suggestions to my study as well as my life. i express my hearty appreciation for her invaluable guidance, strict demands and inspiring comments, which have contributed to the completion of this paper. i owe my hearty thanks to ms hou fengying, my pragmatic teacher, who is a talented scholar on pragmatics as well. i learn a lot from her in terms of richer professional knowledge and research methodologies. my completion of this thesis is due to the patient guidance and unfailing support of the two brilliant scholars. i would like to thank ms zhang xujin, ms li ye, ms gao junmei, ms fu le for their helpful instructions in three years and informative knowledge on linguistics, literature and pragmatics. my thanks also extend to my college students, zhai qiqi and wang shuai. they provided me with their useful suggestions and comments on the paper. lastly, i am greatly indebted to my parents. my easy completion of the paper is closely related to their encouragement and support. i ian analysis of parent-child talk on modern family -from the pragmatic perspectiveabstract: parent-child talk is a common language phenomenon in life. communication between parents and children arouses wide attentions from all kinds of fields. its dialogues have great value in pragmatic study. however，the existing studies on parent-child talk at home and abroad are few, especially in the field of pragmatics. therefore, the paper makes a detailed analysis of parent-child conversations in modern family from the pragmatic perspective with grices conversational implicature and cooperative principle. as a hot sitcom, modern family has already won a big audience and aroused hot arguments since it was first broadcast in 2009. the sitcom which is about the life of an american family has many parent-child conversations. so, there are 15 pieces of parent-child conversation driven from the sitcom modern family in the paper. according to the violations of the four maxims, those conversations are classified into four categories analyzed one by one in details. the paper tries to explore the underlying meaning and pragmatic effects. the paper may help facilitate the mutual understanding in families. it is significant for building up harmonious relationship between parents and children and a more harmonious family. key words: conversational implicature parent-child conversationcooperative principle 美剧摩登家庭中亲子对话的语用分析摘要：亲子对话是生活中的一种常见的语言现象，亲子间的交流已引起了社会各界广泛的关注，因此亲子对话具有很高的语用分析价值。但目前国内外对亲子对话的分析研究很少，尤其是在语用学领域。因此，本文从语用学角度以格赖斯的会话含义理论及其合作原则为理论框架，对亲子对话做了较为全面的语用分析。作为热播情景喜剧，美剧摩登家庭自2009年开播以来已赢得大量观众并引起热议。由于这部情景喜剧讲述了美国家庭生活且对话多为亲子对话，所以本文以美剧摩登家庭作为语料来源，收集了15组亲子对话为语料，根据合作原则四准则的违反，这些对话按类进行分析。会话含义在特定的语境中产生，但父母与孩子之间因为年龄、思想观念和身份的差异，这种会话含义不一定被理解，因此本文旨在分析亲子对话所传递的隐含意义，总结归纳其语用效果。通过本文的分析，有助于家庭成员间的相互理解。对亲子间的和谐关系以及和谐家庭的建立有重要意义。关键词： 会话含义 亲子对话 合作原则contents introduction1 literature review2iii theoretical basis43.1 conversational implicature43.2 cooperative principle4 conversational implicature of parent-child conversation54.1 violating cooperative principle and parent-child talk54.1.1 the violation of quantity maxim54.1.2 the violation of quality maxim74.1.3 the violation of relation maxim94.1.4 the violation of manner maxim114.2 pragmatic effects134.2.1 generating humor134.2.2 constructing a positive image134.2.3 delivering satire or irony14v conclusion14bibliography16iv introductionthe theory of conversational implicature is the major theory in pragmatics, proposed by oxford philosopher herbert paul grice. there is evident that grice began to formulate his ideas of this theory in the fifties, but it was through the william james lecture he delivered at harvard in 1967 that this theory first became known to the public. part of the lectures was published in 1975 under the title of “logic and conversation”, on which we base our present introduction. the cooperative principle is the key of this theory. by studying whether the speakers are following the cooperative principle or violating the cooperative principle, deeper meaning could be found.parent-child talk is a common phenomenon in the family. due to different values of the world, goals and outlook in life, personal personalities and desires, non-cooperative discourses will occur and thus pragmatic effects as humor may be produced. up to now, studies on talks between parents and kids from the perspective of pragmatic are not in a large amount. therefore, it is believed that more pragmatic researches into the phenomenon will definitely broaden the research coverage and deepen the understanding of this particular utterance.the paper applied grices cooperative principle, one of the most important theories in pragmatics, to the analysis of the implied meaning and pragmatic effects of parent-child conversations in the famous american sitcom modern family. the reasons that i want to choose the topic are as follows. first of all, parent-child conversation is a hot topic. many scholars have done a lot of studies on it from different fields, such as psychology, education. but it is few on a pragmatic point of view. the author thinks it will give the inspiration to the study of parent-child communication. secondly, the conversational implicature and cooperative principle are true of the study of dialogues. as we all know, most of scholars like to study the dialogues of lovers and colleagues and so on. however, few scholars have studied parent-child conversation. the author finds the theory is very helpful in the analysis of parent-child conversations. thirdly, the language in sitcom is similar to the daily conversation. so the analysis of parent-child conversations in the sitcom is beneficial for parent-child communication. here the author tries to draw support from the cooperative principle and tries to make a new and comprehensive analysis on parent-child talk.all in all, this thesis intends to provide a pragmatic analysis of conversational implicature between parents and children in sitcoms. the essay introduces the definition of conversational implicature theory and analyzes conversational implicature in modern family with the cooperative principle. in this article, we will analyze the implication of parent-child conversation in modern family in order to appreciate it better. meanwhile, we can find pragmatic effects. from my perspective, the analysis will improve peoples understanding and appreciation of sitcom language from the perspective of the cooperative principle, which will help the audience to get a deep insight into the content of the sitcom. moreover, the better understanding of parent-child conversations will contribute the communication between parents and children and improve the parent-child relationship. it is helpful for people to achieve successful communication. literature reviewconversational implicature theory was first raised by the american philosopher grice and it is an important field of pragmatics. in 1967, grice made three lectures at the harvard university. during his second speech logic and conversation, grice proposed conversational implicature theory and cooperative principle. grice believes that peoples verbal communication always cooperate with each other. besides the speaker and hearer all have a common desire: in a conversation, peoples words can be understood by each other and can cooperate with each other. therefore, they are to comply with certain cooperative principle in order to achieve the desire. if the speaker does not perform one principle openly, that is to say, the speaker knows that he violates a maxim, and at the same time, he also wants the hearer to know the fact, then the conversational implicature can be produced. after conversational implicature theory and grices cooperative principle were put forward, it has caused great repercussions in pragmatics. until now, the cooperative principle has been researched by many scholars. although the cooperative principle has important theoretical value and practical significance, it still has many shortages. at abroad, horn, levinson, and leech develop the cooperative principle. horn firstly tried to provide a systematic analysis according to the cooperative principle. in horns view, grices conversational maxims and the conversational implicatures deduced by them are mainly from two parts according to auditors economy proposed by zipf, g. firstly, the speaker should fully express their own meaning so that the listener can accept and understand easily. secondly, the speaker only provides the essential information. these two principles together are the principle of least effort. horn believes that the cooperative principle should be reduced from four to two, called quantity principle and relation principle, which are formulated as follows: the quantity principle: make your contribution sufficient: say as much as you can give r). the relation principle: make your contribution necessary; say no more than you must (given q). (horn, 1984:13)horns two principle really simplify the cooperative principle, but lacking derivation mechanism and being too abstract. so levinson put forward three principles that are concrete and easy to handle. levinson call it himself the neo-gricean apparatus (levinson, 1991:108). because some matters remain unexplained, such as why people express their feeling in implicit words instead of direct language, and why people violate the maxims deliberately in communication and so on. aiming at these questions, the famous english scholar leech,g. n. put forward the politeness principle to revise and supply the cooperative principle effectively. he thinks that “the politeness principle can be seen not just as another principle to be added to the cooperative principle, but as a necessary complement, which rescues the cooperative principle from serious trouble.”(leech, 1983:80) after that, the cooperative principle is applied in many fields. in the field of education, edwards, mercer and friel analyzed the dialogues in class with the cooperative principle in the development of understanding in the classroom (2005). in the field of psychology, singer and lehnert deem that asking a question can be divided into five stages: coding the questions, clarifying the questions, choosing the strategies of q&a, memory search and comparison and reaction on the basis of the cooperative principle in answering questions about discourse. ervin and elizabeth have given some constructive suggestions by using cooperative principle for reference on the grammaticality. they infer that the woman is more cooperative than the man, because the woman breaks the maxims rarely in conversation and cooperation (1990). in china, the cooperative principle draws much attention as the important content of pragmatics. the cooperative principle was introduced by hu zhuanglin in 1980, he pointed out that “pragmatics was a powerful weapon to study and analyze language characteristics of literature when referring to the relationship between pragmatics and literature.” in his article pragmatics. three years later, cheng yumin introduced the cooperative principle in detail in the article grices conversational implicature which is acknowledged to be “the most all-sided and faithful one”. soon afterwards, the cooperative principle has been applied into kinds of fields. some scholars as teachers of linguistics try to connect cooperative principle with their teachings, and emphasize how to make the teaching especially english teaching smooth and efficient by using cooperative principle. whats more, the cooperative principle has been applied to humor. jiang huan brings forward the actors how to win the audiences laugh with a cooperative attitude. she points out that the actors usually violate the cooperative principle to produce the humorous effect in a pragmatic study on humor in the zhao benshan sketch.(2011). in addition, the fields of translation, advertisements, comic dialogues and so on have also applied the cooperative principle. while the latest researchers begin to apply the theory to the analysis the us drama. lai ting applies the theory to the research of the dialogues in the us drama in a study of dialogues in the us drama by conversational implicature. (2010). hu lin analyses the conflict talk by conversational implicature in conversational analysis of conflict talk between lovers based american soap opera gossip girl. (2011).parent-child talk, as a language phenomenon, has not been paid enough attention until now. researches on it are mainly conducted from the perspective of linguistics, education and psychology. all of these researches chiefly mention how to achieve the scientific, lasting, and effective parent-child talk. hu huiqiang believed that the nature of parent-child talk is neither education nor communication. it is a conversation in an analysis of essential and achievement of parent-child (2003). yang xiaoli put forward the strategies for solving the parent-child conflict problem in parent-child conflict talk analysis in modern family (2012). from what has been talked, we can see that it is necessary to conduct a systematic study on parent-child talk from the pragmatic perspective by using conversational implicature and cooperative principle, which is significant for building up harmonious families and then a more harmonious society.iii theoretical basisthis chapter aims on present a theoretical framework of conversational implicature theory and cooperative principle, with the purpose of providing an analysis of parent-child talk and finding pragmatic effects in the sitcom modern family. 3.1 conversational implicaturethe theory of conversational implicature is the core of pragmatics, which plays an important role in speech communication. its originally proposed by the herbert paul grice, a linguistic philosopher with american nationality. in 1975, grice proposed conversational implicature theory. the theory attracts extensive attention within the field of philosophy and linguistics for its new and important content. inpragmatics, it refers to an indirect or implicitspeech act: what is meantby a speakersutterancethat is not part of what is explicitlysaid. the conversational implicature is divided into two categories: generalized conversational implicature and particularized conversational implicature. generalized conversational implicature refers to the meaning that can be derived without the help of special context. because this kind of implicature is easy to understand, we will not analyze it in detail. particularized conversational implicature refers to the meaning that only can be derived with the help of special context.3.2 cooperative principlegrice defines this principle as follows: make your conversational contribution such as is required at the stage at which it occurs by accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you engaged (cole and morgan. 1975: 45). note that the cooperative principle does not state exactly what is “required” of a conversational contribution by each participant. in order to explain how the conversation participants interpret the implied meaning. grice introduces four conversational maxims under guidance of the cooperative principle. the four conversational maxims proposed by grice in logic and conversation (1967/1975) are formulated as follows: quantity maxim: (1). make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange) (2). do not make your contribution more information than is required quality maxim: (1). try to make your contribution one that is true, do not say what you believe to be false. (2). do not say that for which you look adequate evidence. relation maxim: you must make sure what you say is relevant with the utterance or you will violate the relation maxim.manner maxim: you must make sure your utterance is perspicuous:(1).avoid obscurity of expression.(2).avoid ambiguity(3).be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity)(4).be orderly so, we are requested to follow these maxims in our daily life, but those maxims are not always observed and sometimes violated. when the speaker could not observe these maxims in conversations, the hearer has to force himself to understand the speakers implied meaning. and these four maxims can be violated for various reasons, but only when they are “flouted”, conversational implicatures occur (dai weidong; he zhaoxiong, 2002). so the premise could be summed up as: (1) the hearer has a clear mind that the speaker does not obey a maxim; (2) the hearer has no reason to think that the speaker is not observing the maxim. conversationa