Discussion on Flouting the Gricean Maxims and the Implicature in the “Hills Like White Elephants”

The emphasis of this study is on the investigation of violating co-operative principles had proposed by Paul Grice. Co-operative principles suggest four maxims that participants in a conversation are expected to follow. Sometimes in the conversation, people disobey and flout Gricean maxims purposefully and there is an implicature meaning behind it. This paper tried to use Gricean maxims to analyze the implicature meaning behind the conversation between two persons in the short fiction story of “Hills Like White Elephants”, written by “Ernest Hemingway” (1927).

Keywords:

Co-operative principles , Implicature , Gricean maxims , Maxim flouting