A study of conversational implicatures in titanic film

Abstract

The research was conducted to study the conversational implicatures in Titanic film. This study was done within the scope of discourse analysis and pragmatics. Conversational implicature (C.I) is an interesting thing where it is not a matter of a sentence but instead of an utterance's meaning. The researcher is interested in watching Titanic film, identifying C.I found in the utterances of the two main characters Jack and Rose. Then the researcher analyzed the C.I to find out the types of C.I, the reasons for C.I and the effects of producing them. The researcher used Grice's theory of conversational implicature as the basis of the analysis of the study. The utterances containing implicatures fall into two categories: generalized and particularized conversational implicatures. From the findings, the writer found 98 implicatures in which there are 67 particularized conversational implicatures taking a bigger percentage, namely 67.7% while 31 generalized conversational implicatures are found occupying 31.6%. The study reveals that one single utterance can have two types of C.I. Next, the theory of an indefinite article of the type “a/an X”, is typically interpreted according to the generalized conversational implicature that: an X +> not speaker's. X cannot be generalized in this study since it can be interpreted as the speaker's X. This fact, indeed, contradicts with the theory proposed by Yule (1996). Moreover, the researcher found out 9 reasons for producing C.I, 5 of which can be added to the list of reasons for C.I by Cao Xuan Hao. Lastly, those findings proved that in majority (96.9%), the communication was successful. Only 3.1% of the total number of the conversational implicatures caused misunderstanding. This means that the hearers always manage to get involved in interaction so that meanings are successfully exchanged with others.