Conversational implicatures in english drama and their role in teaching critical literacy: a pragmatic analysis

Abstract

This study was carried out to explore the role of conversational implicatures in English drama in developing students’ critical literacy. Grice’s pragmatic theory of Cooperative Principle and its maxims were used to identify and interpret conversational implicatures in the selected drama texts. The Luke and Freebody’s four resources model of critical literacy was then used to study the role of conversational implicatures in English drama in developing students’ critical literacy. The data were collected from the implicatures conveyed by the characters of four selected drama texts. These are Family Abuse by Bernard Mersier (38 pages), The Edge by Simona Loe (59 pages), Ethnicity by Bernard Mersier (26 pages), and The Unmitigated Consequence by K.R. Boxberger (117 pages). 94 conversational implicatures were identified from these texts. These implicatures were categorized into types basing on the four conversational maxims, and each conversational implicature was taken as data. Using Grice’s interpretive model and the social context of the drama, what the characters implied by their utterances were explained together with the reasons that made them create implicatures in their conversations. The study concluded that conversational implicatures in English drama develop students’ critical literacy by enabling them to study a drama text from a social angle and evaluate the social aspects that may have influenced the meaning of the characters ‘utterances. Conversational implicatures also allow students to be active meaning makers by deconstructing the text through an analysis of various viewpoints and meanings. With all these, students do not only deal with comprehension and vocabulary exercises, but they are also offered opportunities to become critical thinkers in reading texts and take action in their communities by using the knowledge from the texts to play a greater role in their positive transformation. Therefore, it was suggested that drama texts should be used in language teaching and learning as they ease the teaching of conversational implicatures which can foster the development of students’ critical literacy. It was also suggested that teachers should not deal with comprehension and vocabulary practices only, but they should also provide students with practices that enable them to exercise their critical faculties.