This paper studies the use of violations of conversation principles in the written dialogue of Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones. The aim is to establish if and how these violations aid in making him seem clever. The character's dialogues are matched against three theoretical principles: Politeness Theory, The Cooperative Principle and Turn-taking Principles. The findings suggest that by breaking basic principles of conversation, Tyrion provides entertaining dialogue and manages to create unexpected solutions to different threatening situations. Results show an even distribution of strategic violations, among the three theoretical approaches, which could suggest that the dialogue is consciously written to help make the audience feel impressed by the character's features. Tyrion's violations of conversation principles is a contribution in what makes him seem witty. This ability in the character seems to be closely linked to a lack of fear for any negative social consequences. The character's ability to act free from rules of social behavior could be considered one of the reasons behind his popularity among fans of the show.

This essay aims to research the writing of George Orwell by analysing the four main pigs in his novel Animal Farm from a linguistic and rhetorical perspective. The paper's purpose is to explore occurrences of chosen phenomena tied to linguistic and rhetorical theory, with the goal to create an understanding of how Orwell portrays his characters exercising leadership and how their communicative strategies differ or coincide. In order to investigate occurrences of linguistic and rhetorical phenomena, the method of qualitative content analysis with a directed approach will be applied. This method of choice leaves room for interpretation based on the chosen theories and can assist in answering the research question. The results incline towards the pigs in Orwell’s novel applying various forms of linguistic and rhetorical strategies, often to persuade, manipulate and/or deceive the animals. Additionally, it is prevalent that there are both similarities and differences in the pigs' use of leadership as well as the use of linguistic and rhetorical strategies. Lastly, the paper will discuss and reflect on the results in order to draw conclusions and answer the research question.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the way the flouting of the Gricean maxims is used to portray a fictional character with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This study analyzes a character named Sam Gardner from the television series Atypical. The study is based on written transcripts from six episodes of the TV series and was carried out qualitatively and quantitatively. The methodology of the study involved transcribing, counting, and analyzing the flouts used by Sam in these six episodes. The results suggest that Sam flouts all the maxims but flouts the maxim of relation most, with a total of 22 flouts, which can cause a problem in communication. Sam does not follow the maxim of relation as he tends to abruptly change the conversational topic to something else. In many cases, he changes the topic to something he is interested in, which is Antarctica and penguins. The second most dominant maxim in all six episodes to be flouted was the maxim of quantity, with a total of 15 flouts, as he gave either too much or too little information to the listener. The results of Sam’s limited pragmatic abilities fall into agreement with Fein’s (2010) claim that ASD individuals have pragmatic language deficits as they struggle to stay on topic and incorporate irrelevant details in conversations. This study further discusses how analyzing neurodivergent characters’ speech patterns can benefit teachers and students in a pedagogical setting.

Anna Šmilauerová: TV Sitcom Friends: Analysis of character humor strategies based on the violation of Grice's Conversational maxims Abstract The purpose of this diploma thesis is the analysis of the humor strategies employed by the characters of Phoebe and Chandler in the TV Sitcom Friends. The discovered prevailing strategies were then compared with the personalities of the two characters. The data analyzed were the written script of five exemplary episodes from the Season 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9, in which the utterances eliciting laughter from the audience were thoroughly analyzed from the point of Grice's Cooperative Principle: only those utterances were considered in which the characters violated one or more of the conversational maxims (quality, quantity, relation and manner). Phoebe was found to violate most often the maxim of relation, thus it is her being non-factual and non-conventional that constitutes her most entertaining quality. As she develops and grows more mature as a character, the frequency counts of this humor strategy evince a descending tendency. Chandler, on the other hand, is mostly being ironic, violating the maxim of quality. His character also gradually changes but his sense of humor remains the same - ironic throughout the show, as follows from the instances of almost fixed frequency....

This essay examines the relation between gender and adherence to Brown and Levinson's Politeness Principle. Women and men tend to use language for different purposes and for the purpose of achieving various goals. In order to examine this relation, a research study was conducted. Two women and three men were observed discussing subjects given by an interviewer. The collected interview data gathered from the conversation was analyzed and related to the Politeness Principle. Aspects from sociolinguistics, such as theories from gender and language studies, and the Cooperative Principle as proposed by H P Grice, were also considered and formed part of the analysis. The results indicate that there is a small difference between women’s versus men’s adherence to the Politeness Principle. More specifically, women tend to use more aspects of linguistic politeness. However, as the sample group of the research study consisted of only five participants, the limits of the study in terms of the generalizability of the results are recognized and suggestions have been made for further research.

人們常因為禮貌或其他因素避免對立的情況發生。然而，異議在我們日常溝通中又扮演了不可或缺的角色。之前，眾多對於異議及其相關語言活動的研究均未曾探究異議內容的本質(對於事實內容的異議或對於議題評估的異議)與異議的建構有何關係。此外，台灣鮮少研究社會因素對異議建構方式的影響。基於上述不足，本研究旨在探討何種異議(內容異議或評估異議)在日常生活中較常出現，不同異議類別的語言形式與語用策略為何，以及年齡是否會影響異議的數量多寡與建構方式。本研究採用言談分析(conversational analysis, CA)作為研究框架，並以言語行為理論(speech act theory),合作原則(Cooperative Principles)及禮貌理論(Politeness Principles)為理論基礎。 本研究以12份日常交談為語料，進行異議分析。在這12份語料中，8組對話者為同齡(4組年長者，4組年輕者)，4組對話者為跨齡。在分析過程中，先依異議的本質進行分類，進而分析討論異議中所使用的語言形式、語用策略、社會因素(年齡)，以及四者彼此之間的互動。 研究結果顯示，第一，人們使用評估異議的頻率為內容異議的兩倍之多。個人主觀式遠多於社會文化評估的異議。第二，就語言形式而言，在異議的建構中，否定句、預告詞及肯定句(依此順序)的使用頻率高於其他語言形式。然而，語言行式的選擇會隨異議的本質而有所改變。內容異議通常使用直接句型，如否定句與肯定句；評估異議則平均使用直接性的否定句與間接性的預告詞。第三，就語用策略而言，更正、解釋與質疑(依此順序)的使用頻率高於其他語用策略。語用策略的選擇亦隨異議本質的不同而有所改變。超過一半的內容異議使用更正策略，但在評估異議中，更正、解釋與質疑的使用頻率相當。第四，在評估異議中，在各個語用策略中，語言形式的種類比內容異議多。這個結果影射著評估異議對面子的威脅程度可能比內容異議來得嚴重。因此，在進行評估異議時，語言形式與語用策略的挑選用必須格外注意。第五，年齡與異議的建構有顯著的相關性。同齡組比跨齡組更容易產生異議。最後，在異議中，聽話者的角色比說話者的角色更具有影響力。 / Although people try to avoid opposition for the sake of politeness or other reasons, disagreement, which may threaten interpersonal relationship and the success of communication, is inevitable in our daily life. Previous studies on disagreement (including dispute, argument, conflict, etc.) have not probe into the nature of the referential content—whether it is content-based (in this study, C-disagreement) or evaluation-based (in this study, E-disagreement), and the influences of social factors on disagreement have rarely been examined in Taiwan. Therefore, the purposes of this study are to see what type of disagreement are most likely to occur in daily conversations and to examine whether age is an influential factor on linguistic choices for in disagreement in Chinese society. This study uses the framework of conversational analysis (CA), and adopts speech act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1975), Cooperative Principles (Grice, 1975) and Politeness Principles (Brown and Levinson’s, 1978, 1987; Leech, 1983) as the theoretical foundations. 12 conversations by speakers of 8 same-age groups (including 4 old groups and 4 young groups) and 4 cross-age groups were examined for disagreement. Related data are categorized, analyzed, and discussed by types of disagreement, linguistic markers, pragmatic strategies, social variable (in this study, age), and the interaction among the four. The results of the data analyses show, first, people adopt nearly twice more E-disagreement than C-disagreement; moreover, E-disagreement based on personal judgment emerges more often than E-disagreement based on socio-cultural evaluation. Second, for linguistic markers, negation, pre-announcement marker, and affirmative (in this order) are adopted more in disagreement. However, preferences for linguistic markers change according to types of disagreement. In C-disagreement, direct syntactic markers, such as negation and affirmative, are used more frequently than the others; however, in E-disagreement, direct negation (syntactic) and indirect pre-announcement (lexical) are used with equal frequencies. Third, among pragmatic strategies, correction, account, and challenge (in this order) are adopted more frequently than the others. The usage of pragmatic strategies varies with types of disagreement. In C-disagreement, correction is highly adopted. But in E-disagreement, correction, account, and challenge are used with equal percentages. Fourth, the fact that more varieties of linguistic markers are used in each pragmatic strategy in E-disagreement than in C-disagreement may imply impoliteness, since face-threatening force is more serious in E-disagreement than in C-disagreement, which, in turn, indicates that more careful manipulation is needed in using E-disagreement. Fifth, age is influential in disagreement. More disagreements are found in the same-age groups than in the cross-age groups. Last, the hearer’s role is found to be more influential than the speaker’s role.

This study examines how people compensate for their inability to accommodate the needs of others in service encounters. Being unable to meet others' needs violates the positive face of one of the participants in a discourse. Many previous studies on speech acts demonstrate how people control their utterances to avoid causing a face-threatening act. However, the language behavior that follows a face-threatening act has not yet received much focus. This paper looks at two different kinds of data in Japan and the United State (hereafter "U.S.") using two different approaches: observation and role-play. In the first, the observational phase, the author acted as a customer in several convenience stores in Japan and asked for an item that they did not carry. In the U.S., a native English speaker interacted with the salesclerk as the customer. (No recording device was used in either situation.) All exchanges were immediately recorded by hand and later coded by semantic formulas. In the second, the role-play phase, native speakers were asked to role-play a parallel situation in which they acted as a salesclerk and had to react to not being able to satisfy customers' requests. The results demonstrate that Japanese sales clerks compensate in the face of their inability to meet another's need (they avoid a direct face-threatening act) whereas most U.S. sales clerks do not attempt to compensate for their inability. These behaviors correlate with social expectations of the participants within both respective service encounters. Moreover, the results also suggest a re-thinking of speech acts and emphasize the importance of natural data.