Abstract

The classical film Forrest Gump has garnered a total of 13 Oscar Award nominations. The film, in the context of the 20th century American history, is a legendary story about a man called Gump with an IQ of only 75 who leads a most outstanding life. It is believed that one important factor that makes the film so popular is its wonderfully-used language and well-designed lines, which plays an important role in building each character alive for the audience and conveying the film’s significance and its artistic strengths.
The paper makes a detailed and thorough analysis on the carefully-chosen 8 typical dialogues between the main characters in the film Forrest Gump. The dialogues are arranged according to the time sequence of the character appearing in the movie, including dialogues between Forrest Gump and the black woman, Forrest Gump and Mum, Mrs. Gump and the Principal, Forrest Gump and the bus driver, Forrest Gump and Jenny, Forrest Gump and the President, Forrest Gump and reporters. Adopting Grice’s theory of Conversational Implicature and Cooperative Principle as theoretical framework, the paper attempts to analyze each selected dialogue what maxims or sub-maxims of the Cooperative Principle are violated and what implicatures are produced through such violation, and meanwhile to figure out if the implicatures can be understood by the core character Forrest Gump who is somewhat mentally retarded and if the frequencies of his violation of the maxims of the Cooperative Principle are the same as others.

Keywords: Cooperative Principle; conversational implicatures; film dialogues; Forrest Gump

摘要

经典电影《阿甘正传》曾获得了13项奥斯卡奖提名。该片以美国20世纪历史作为背景，讲述一个智商只达75的阿甘跨越时代大事件的传奇际遇。《阿甘正传》之所以受广大影迷的欢迎，其中一个很重要的原因就是角色台词的精巧设计人物对白的成功描写。人物对白对塑造人物形象，揭示作品的内涵与艺术魅力起着不可估量的作用。因此，对白分析是探讨影片人物性格和影片主题的有效方法。
本研究精心选取片中主要人物之间的8个典型对白并对之进行详细剖析，这些对白按照人物在片中出现的时间先后顺序进行排列，包括阿甘和黑人妇女、阿甘和妈妈、甘妈妈和校长、阿甘和司机、阿甘和珍妮、阿甘和总统、阿甘和记者。用格莱斯会话含义和合作原则作为理论框架，文章尝试分析在各个对白中影片人物是如何违反合作原则，产生怎样会话含义，以及找出作为智障一族的主人公阿甘是否能理解别人的会话含义，他违反合作原则的情况是否和别人一样。

关键词： 合作原则；会话含义；电影对白；《阿甘正传》