대화격률과 함축에 관한 연구

A Study of Conversation Maxims and Implicature

The purpose of this paper is to review Grice's conversational maxims and to characterize the implicature. Grice proposes the Cooperative Principle (CP) and four maxims (Quality, Quantity, Relation, Manner). The assumption that speaker and hearer are both observing the CP and its component maxims permits the exploitation of these maxims to generate conversational implicature, a conveyed message which is meant without being said. Implicature results from an effort to resolve the bottleneck by controlling the informativeness of an utterance depending on the context, and by leaving some part of the speaker's message unuttered. As pointed out by Yun (1993), the Politeness Principle (PP) does not exist apart from the CP, but rather exists as one of the maxims of the CP in pragmatics. The Politeness maxim is more or less universal, but the degree of its application varies according to the culture. This study suggests that Politeness 3 maxim (Modesty) is considered the most important kind of maxim in Korea. This study demonstrates the application of the CP and the pragmatic inference derived therefrom in discussing English and Korean examples. It reveals that sometimes the maxims of the CP work together, reinforcing each other. It also shows that clashes between the maxims occur very often, while one maxim takes priority over the other. It is noted that the interaction between the maxims can make communication successful via implicature. By exploring implied meanings and indirect speech acts in utterance, this paper attempts to contribute to a better understanding of socio-cultural factors in human verbal communication.