Cooperative Principle is also a significant theory which is used to analyze how people use language to covey direct message in drama Pygmalion。 However, in our daily life conversational implicature can arise from either rigidly and directly observing or intentionally and indirectly violating the four maxims of cooperative principle。 The conversational implicature theory is thus introduced and cooperative principle and its maxims are carefully reviewed to analyze implicatures produced by the selected typical examples from Pygmalion, then according to cooperative principle and its maxims to make a comparative analysis to analyze the enriched conversational implicature of the text in drama Pygmalion。

The paper mainly discusses the conversation between Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins from the perspective of cooperative principle。 Analyzing the figure characters by studying the implied meaning of the conversation, we can further understand the conversational implicature in this drama Pygmalion。 So far, there are many researchers have made analysis of literary works through different angles, but few people put an attention to studying drama by using theoretical knowledge, especially pragmatic approach。 Therefore, it is of great worth analyzing the conversational implicature in Pygmalion from the perspective of cooperative principle and its maxims。

According to Grice’s four maxims of the cooperative principle, this paper decides to carefully analyze the conversational implicature from the perspective of cooperative principle by making the full use of qualitative approach, which needs some typical conversations excerpt from the drama Pygmalion to make a detailed analysis。 So the analysis of conversational implicature in Pygmalion is an important element of this paper。

Last but not least, in the part of conclusion, the value researches of the paper are summed up and the limitation of paper is pointed out and suggested。

II。 Review of Drama Pygmalion

2。1 The Main Content of Pygmalion

Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts, which was produced by George Bernard Shaw in the year of 1912。 The name of Pygmalion derived from an ancient mythology of the king of the Cyprus, who decided to never marry become of shorting of mortal women。 He was good at carving and used his talent of magic art to create a statue of beautiful woman, who had put all the energy, all the passion, all the love on the statue。 In the end, Pygmalion fell in love with the girl he created, and prayed to Aphrodite to give his statue a life。 Aphrodite heard his prayer and was moved by what he did, so he brought the sculpture to life as Calatea, and let them married。 This mythology of king Pygmalion told us a thing can be incredibly changed by a person with a spirit of perseverance of life。 In Bernard Shaw’s drama Pygmalion, the man named Henry Higgins is an English linguistic professor who transforms a flower selling girl of lower class with cockney accent, Eliza Doolittle, into a duchess in six months。 Although, we can see the same scene to the mythology, where a man named Henry Higgins does everything he can do to transform a ragged cockney girl into a duchess, and actually is satisfied with his creation。 At the same time, there are also many differences which are reflected in character, a girl named Galatea in the mythology is created into human being with affection, while a girl named Eliza Doolittle is tried to be created into a beautiful doll by the man Henry Higgins。 Therefore, we can clearly know that why George Bernard Shaw decides to use Pygmalion as the title of his drama。

Pygmalion includes five acts, which will be explained to the readers one by one in details。 In the first act it describes a scene that a heavy summer rain makes two main characters Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins encounter each other due to running for shelter into the portico of St Paul’s church。 Eliza Doolittle seizes the opportunity to sell her flower, while Henry Higgins is wholly preoccupied with a notebook and writing something, a series of dialogue arise when people find Henry Higgins noting their talking, especially taking down every word what Eliza Doolittle speaking to a gentleman。 At first, Eliza Doolittle mistakenly regards him as a detective and is very worried about that she is charged or drove on the streets for speaking to a gentleman。 So the excessive sensibility of Eliza Doolittle yells through crowd to the Henry Higgins that she is a respectable girl and she never speak to the gentleman except to ask him to buy a flower off her。 The sounds of the flower girl is such depressing and disgusting that the Henry Higgins has to explain to her gentlemanly but with overbearing behavior。 Henry Higgins explains that he is a phonetic professor and he can place any man according to their accents。 What Higgins says cannot be understood by the flower girl, but attracts attention of a gentleman named Colonel Pickering, who is an Indian dialects linguist and writes a book called Spoken Sanskrit。 The two men feel a brief encounter and make a deal to talk about academic problems in a day。 Then the first act of play is over。