Analysis of Hemingway’s Short Story “The Killers” From the Perspective of Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle

Abstract

The spiritual enjoyment that literature brings to you is not only due to the beauty of the words, the twists and turns of the plot, but also due to the skillful writing of the author, as can be seen from Hemingway’s many short stories. The novel "The Killer" is full of character dialogue, without too much environmental and psychological description, and Hemingway’s iceberg theory is shown vividly in it. From the perspective of pragmatics, this paper analyzes the characters’ dialogues, interprets the characters’ images and reveals the themes of the novel by using the principles of cooperative and politeness.