Conversational Maxims and Implicature in Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel and Zulu Sofola's Wedlock of the gods

• Main Author: Olusegun Jegede
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: KARE Publishing 2020-09-01
• Series: Applied Linguistics Research Journal
• Subjects: cooperative principle; conversational maxims; conversational implicature
• Online Access: https://www.journalagent.com/z4/download_fulltext.asp?pdir=alrj&un=ALRJ-93685

The study focused on conversational maxims and Implicature in Wole Soyinka's The Lion and The jewel and Zulu Sofola's Wedlock of the gods. This study adopted content analysis as its research design. The data for the study were extracted from Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel and Zulu Sofola's Wedlock of the gods. The conversational maxims were identified in the data and interpreted, bearing in mind the context in which the maxims were used, and the implicature generated as a result of the violation of the maxims were examined and discussed. The findings revealed that the authors of the texts had a definite purpose for flouting the conversational maxims at some point, thereby generating conversational implicature. The findings also showed that there is a connection between the conversational maxims and conversational implicature because it makes the characters dialogue more effective, realistic and persuasive. The study concluded that the characters in the texts showed a high degree of cooperativeness in their expressions by employing the four conversational maxims, and regularly also, they violated the maxims in other to achieve their conversational goals.