Conversational analysis from the perspective of the cooperative principle—taking the film twelve years a slave as an example

Abstract

In 1967, the American language philosopher Grice has put forward a famous theory of the cooperative principle at the Harvard University. He believes that in the process of people’s communication, conversations between the two sides in naturally or unconsciously follows a principle in order to effectively complete the task of communication. Grice proposed that people in communication must follow the general principles of authenticity, information, relevance and clarity. This paper analyzes words which are from movie Twelve Years a Slave based on the cooperative principle. By means of combination between the sentence meaning and the specific context, audiences are easy to understand characters and theme of the film. What’s more, it is important for people to better understand, grasp and use the cooperative principle.