Abstract

This paper is to deal with dialogues in Forrest Gump from the perspective of Cooperative Principle and to work out how the effect of humor is achieved through the violation of this principle.
People sometimes violate the Cooperative Principle for special purposes. But for Forrest, it is inevitable for his lower IQ. Usually characters in a movie are supposed to observe four maxims of Cooperative Principle, but actually they often violate these maxims in conversations. In Forrest Gump, Forrest has violated these maxims for many times because of his lower IQ. In his eyes, he has conformed to the Cooperative Principle very well; in fact he fails to understand the implied meaning of others’.
Forrest Gump is a comic movie with humorous effect presented throughout the whole movie. Usually the humorous effect is produced by Forrest’s failure in understanding other people’s conversational implicature for he is a person whose IQ is lower than normal people, so his knowledge about some information is limited. In this occasion, his utterances produce a humorous effect.

Key Words: Cooperative Principle  maxim violation  movie dialogues  humor

摘  要

本文试以合作原则分析《阿甘正传》中的电影人物，探讨由于违反合作原则而达到的幽默效果。
许多人出于特殊目的违反合作原则，而对于阿甘这个低能儿来说，这种违反却是不可避免的。通常来说，电影人物都要遵守合作原则中的四个准则，但实际上，他们在对话中经常违反这些准则。在电影《阿甘正传》中，阿甘经常违反这些准则。在他看来，他严格地遵守了合作原则，但事实上，他没能理解别人话中的隐含意义，从而导致误会，使对话变得有趣。
《阿甘正传》是一部喜剧电影，幽默效果贯穿了整部电影。通常幽默效果来自于阿甘。因为智商偏低，他无法理解别人话语中的会话含义，对一些信息与知识的掌握也非常有限，影片中的幽默效果也因此而备受关注。

关键词：合作原则  违反准则  电影对白 幽默

1 Introduction
Cooperative Principle is a theory put forward by H.P. Grice, a famous linguistic philosopher in America, concerning the relationship between literal meaning and implied meaning in a conversation (Mey, 2001). It is a study discussing the humor in the movie Forrest Gump from the perspective of Cooperative Principle, illustrating how the humorous effect is achieved through the violation of maxims.