PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED DISCOURSE IN DUL JOHNSON'S ACROSS THE GULF

Abstract

In communication, a listener infers or deduces a speakers' intended meaning from utterances beyond the semantic context of the sentence uttered. This type of meaning cannot be captured only from the simple and semantic rules but also with the use of pragmatic principles like Grice's cooperative principles which are not culture bound but universal in interpreting meaning. This paper is a Pragmatic Analysis of selected discourses in Dul Johnson's Across the Gulf. The source of data is the primary text under review. The talks-exchanges were extracted to examine the dialogue collected for analysis. The paper examines utterances in the text arranged in a dialogue form in order to determine and interpret adherence or violation to Grice's maxims using Grice's (1975) cooperative maxims and their implicatures, based on the theoretical framework adopted for the study. The findings show that violation of Grice's maxims is often unintentional as writers make effort through content to capture the realities of life in writing. The study concluded that analysis of a dialogue in a prose work brings a clearer picture of interlocutors' use of language in a practical form and makes the implicature easier to interpret. The paper therefore recommends that creative writers should be encouraged to write as they are inspired but the knowledge of Grice's maxim will be of great advantage to them.