Abstract

This thesis intends to study English persuasive language in terms of its persuasive implicature from the perspective of conversational implicature theory. As a powerful means of communication, persuasion bares the characteristics of extensiveness, complexity and diversity. This thesis carries out a pragmatic analysis of persuasive language by resorting to the conversational implicature theory proposed by Grice, as the theoretical guidance in an attempt to study how the speaker succeeds in persuading the audience. Conversational implicature could arise by means of violating or observing the cooperative principle maxims. The main emphasis of this thesis has been laid on the analysis of persuasive language from the viewpoint of how the speaker violates the cooperative principle when sending persuasive implicature. Some typical conversations collected from marketing, daily communication among families in different contexts are chosen for case analysis to detect the conversational implicature. At last this thesis summaries the practical and theoretical meaning of this thesis and points out the possible limitations of the present study.

KEYWORDS:English persuasive language; Conversational implicature; Cooperative principle; Context

摘　要

本文旨在以会话含义理论为指导，分析劝说语如何成功实现劝说功能。劝说语作为一种强有力的沟通工具，具有广泛性、复杂性和多样性的特点。语言学理论为研究劝说语提供了新的视角。本文运用语用学基本原理会话含义理论分析劝说语，集中探讨格莱斯的会话含义理论在劝说语应用中的具体体现和特征；通过商业领域和生活中收集的案例研究劝说者如何违反合作原则以成功实现劝说。最后揭示本研究在劝说活动中的实践意义和在语言学领域的意义并综述本文研究的局限性。

关键词:劝说语；会话含义；合作原则；语境。

1. Introduction
The human society is a combination of cooperation and competition, and persuasion plays an indispensable role in both aspects. As a powerful means of communication, persuasion is an effective way to eliminate obstacles between the persuader and the audience and it can also influence the motivation, cognition, emotion, and attitude of the listener. Persuasion has great impact on the development of our human society in areas such as business, politics, and culture. Hence it is of practical importance to study this linguistic phenomenon.