论文总字数：26985字

摘 要

在现代教育领域, 尤其在大学里，英语教学占据着越来越重要的地位。对于很多大学生而言，听力是最难学好的课程，而听力又是英语教学中尤为重要的一块。因此，掌握英语听力技巧非常关键。我们都知道，大部分听力材料是以会话形式呈现的。因此，不妨可以说，会话是英语听力内容的最佳载体。因此在本文中,笔者试图从会话含义的角度分析如何进行英语听力教学。很多情况下，为了不同的目的，人们在会话中通常会运用会话含义理论。因此，把会话含义这一理论应用于分析大学英语听力材料，对于帮助学生提升分析对话的能力很有用，进而提高学生的听力理解能力。

关键词：大学英语听力教学；会话；会话含义

Contents

1. Introduction 5

2. Literature Review 5

3. Theories related to conversational implicature 3

3.1 Grice’s theory of implicature 3

3.2 Cooperative Principle and maxims of conversation 3

3.3 Violation of the Maxims 4

4. The Application of Conversational Implicature in College English Listening Teaching. 5

4.1 The Traditional Way of Listening Teaching in College English 6

4.2 An Analysis of the Listening Materials in College English 7

4.3 Applying Conversational Implicature to College English Listening Teaching 7

4.4 Some other suggestions for listening 11

5. Conclusion 12

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

With the development of global economy, English is playing a more and more important role in International communication. Thus, it is very important to learn English well. However, for so many years, English teaching in China has mainly focused on only pronunciation，vocabulary, sentence patterns and grammatical rules. Although both teachers and students have devoted their efforts to teaching and learning English, they usually could not reach the goal they had aimed at. The main reason for this lies in the fact that teachers mostly help their students learn knowledge about English, not how to use English effectively. We know that the purpose of our learning English is to communicate competently. To master a language，it is not enough to learn its pronunciation，vocabulary and grammar only．We should learn something more，such as various relations between language and language users．We should be aware of not only the literal meanings of all expressions，but also their implied meanings. Mastering this learning strategy will be of great benefit for the students to improve their listening comprehension.

In China, many English learners encounter miscommunications when they are involved in the conversations with native speakers. The occurrence of miscommunications is usually attributed to misinterpretations of the speaker’s real intentions. This is due to their lack of necessary communicative competence．

In this paper, the author will make an analysis on applying conversational implicature to college English listening teaching. In the course of communication，if the hearer has some knowledge about conversational implicature，he can often infer the meaning of the speaker’s utterance and communicate successfully．

Thus, mastering conversational implicature is very crucial in improving students’ listening comprehension.

2. Literature Review

H.P. Grice，the American philosopher，develops the concept of conversational implicature，which is an essential theory about how people use language. After that, some linguists showed great interest in Grice’s new theory and did further study on conversational implicature. Being one important theory of pragmatics, the conversational implicature has been the research focus of many linguists in China. And the researches on conversational implicature are fruitful.

As early as 1979, Xu Guozhang translated Austin’s How to do things with words. And In 1989, Chen Rong described the concept, features, formation and inference of Conversational Implicature in the article on Grice’s Conversational Implicature Theory. He pointed that to communicate successfully, it is not enough for students to master only language knowledge. They also need pragmatic competence to a certain extent. The three articles written by Xu Shenghua: Pragmatic Inference(1991), New Gricean Theory of Conversational Implicature and Pragmatic Inference(1993) discussed conversational implicature and its new development. The paper by Zhong Baichao entitled The Development of Neo-Gricean Theory of Conversational Implicature in China, summarized Xu Shenghua’s three articles, and made a thorough conclusion of the new development of conversational implicature in China. However, uptill now, few scholars have highlighted the application of conversational implicature in English teaching, in particular, English listening teaching. Therefore, this paper is intended to explore Grice’s conversational implicature and its application in college English listening teaching for the purpose of cultivating students’ competence of inferring conversational implicature, as well as improving their listening comprehension.

This thesis consists of five parts. The first part is the introduction. It mainly deals with the background and the purpose of the study. The second part is a review of some scholars’ researches on conversational implicature. The third part gives an elaborate description of theories about conversational implicature. The fourth part is the body part which makes an analysis of several roles that conversational implicature plays in college English listening teaching. This section first briefly analyzes the traditional method employed in English listening teaching, and points out some problems existing in the traditional way of English listening teaching. Then it discusses on listening materials in college English. At last, it focuses on the application of conversational implicature in college English listening teaching. This paper also presents some other suggestions for English listening teaching. The last part is the conclusion. Based on conversational implicature theory, this thesis utilizes some examples to illustrate the constructive role such a theory exerts in English listening teaching.

3. Theories related to conversational implicature

3.1 Grice’s theory of implicature

It has been noted that in the course of conversation people do not always express themselves literally; instead, sometimes they do it in an implied way. The implication occurs when people don’t observe the cooperative principle in the course of conversation. Grice took great interest in how implied meanings are generated and understood. Thus he develops the concept of implicature. To know more about implicature, it’s necessary to learn something about the cooperative principle first.

3.2 Cooperative Principle and maxims of conversation

H.P. Grice, an American linguist and philosopher once made a thorough analysis on the course of natural conversations which are often involved in the implied meaning. “In Grice’s view, to converse with each other, the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate, otherwise, it would not be possible for them to carry on the talk.”(Dai Weidong amp; He Zhaoxiong 2010：86) This generally acknowledged principle is called Cooperative Principle(CP). There are four maxims under this principle:

The maxim of quantity

Make your contribution as informative as is required, but don’t make it more informative than is required.

The maxim of quality

Say what you believe to be true, and don’t say what is false or lack of adequate evidence.

The maxim of relation

Be relevant

The maxim of manner

1．Avoid obscurity of expression．

2．Avoid ambiguity．

3．Be brief(avoid unnecessary prolixity)．

4．Be orderly. (Dai Weidong amp; He Zhaoxiong 2010：87)

In short，the four maxims specify what participants have to do in order to converse in a maximally efficient, cooperative way. To achieve this goal, the speaker should speak sincerely and clearly so as to provide sufficient information．Most of the time, people are cooperative in conversation, but sometimes they may not cooperate, in which case the maxims are violated, then the conversational implicature occurs.

3.3 Violation of the Maxims

Grice noted that while conversation participants nearly always observe the CP, sometimes they may violate the maxims deliberately and these maxims can be violated for various reasons. There are cases when people flout one or two maxims in conversation in order to convey implied meaning. The following four conversations illustrate the violation of the four maxims and the resultant implicatures respectively.

1. Violation of Quantity Maxim

Example 1:

A:When is Susan’s farewell party?

B:Sometime next month.

According to quantity maxim，the contribution should be as informative as required．In this example, B is withholding some of the information required. The sequent implicature is “I do not wish to tell when the party is going to be held.”

2．Violation of Quality Maxim

Example 2：

A：What will you do if you fail the exam?

B：I’ll eat my hat．

Obviously, B violates the quality maxim because“hat”cannot be eaten．From the words we can infer that：B will not fail this exam definitely. From this example, we may get the conclusion that utterances expressed with rhetorical question usually belong to the violation of quality maxim．

1. Violation of Relevance Maxim：

Example 3：

A：Did you enjoy the play?

B：Well，I thought the ice creams they sold in the interval were quite good.

It is obvious that B’s answer has nothing to do with what A asks，that is，it violates the relevance maxim. But if A has some knowledge of conversational implicature, he can immediately work out B’s overtone：The play is terrible．

4．Violation of Manner Maxim

Example 4：

A：What did your sister buy at Sears yesterday?

B：She bought a red dress，she bought a green dress，and she bought a blue dress．

B answers the question by repeating a certain sentence structure, which violates the maxim that the contribution should be brief, and endows the utterance with the implicature that the hearer’s sister was always buying dresses that day．

From the examples above, we can find that by deliberately flouting the four maxims, speakers can often succeed in conveying more than what they say---implied meaning . Knowing the purpose of violating the cooperative principle can help college students enhance their comprehension in English listening class.

4. The Application of Conversational Implicature in College English Listening Teaching.

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