A STUDY ON CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES IN THE WORK UNCLE’S TOM CABIN BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Abstract

This study aimed at conducting to study the conversational implicature in the work Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was done with a 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 reading the work Uncle Tom’s Cabin, identifying C.I found in the utterances of the main character Uncle Tom and the other characters in the work. 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 conversational implicatures and particularized conversational implicatures. 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. Lastly, those findings proved that not all the communication was successful. This means that the hearers always manage to get involved in interaction so that meanings are successfully exchanged with other.