Conversational Implicature in English Listening Comprehension

Abstract

Some English learners find it hard to understand a sentence when they are given a piece of listening material although they have a good master of vocabulary and grammatical rules. In order to improve the ability of listening comprehension, it’s necessary for English learners to introduce some basic Pragmatics theories. Grice’s Conversational Implicature Theory is one of the most important contents of Pragmatics. The theory focuses its attention on the phenomenon of conveying more than what is said. Therefore, the English listeners can and should master the theory of Grice’s Conversational Implicature, learn how to infer implicature to guide their learning and lead in such theories in listening comprehension. This thesis attempts to examin the relationship between them and state the roles played by the conversational implicature in listening comprehension.