从合作原则看英语委婉语的使用

　　"We may decide to withhold whatever information wepossess:’ No comment!’ We may inadvertently infringe a maximor we can secretly violate a maxim—e.g. A could maliciouslyand falsely tell B that Janet had walked in the oppositedirection from the post office. Or – more importantly – we canmake a blatant show of breaking one of the maxims (Grice termsthis flouting a maxim), in order to lead the addressee to lookfor a covert, implied meaning."[22] . For examples,(3) "At the time of recording, all the members of the castwere members of The BBC Players. ( Implicature: One or more ofthem are no longer members of The BBC Players.)"[23]

　　Generally speaking, "in Grice’s analysis, the speaker’sflouting of a maxim combined with the hearer’s assumption thatthe speaker has nor really abandoned the co-operativeprinciple leads to an implicature"[24]. One thing thatdeserves our attention is that the four maxims, expressed inthe imperative mood have sometimes been misunderstood asinstructions for a speaker to behave in conversation.

　　5.Possible violating the Cooperative Principle in the use ofeuphemismsIn the light of the foregoing literature review and thetheoretical bases, we know that euphemisms or euphemisticexpressions are important and people often use them incommunication. In reality, it can be found that thesediplomats and statesmen etc. also use euphemisms oreuphemistic expressions in the question-answer patterns. Thesestatesmen make sharp things or unpleasant things soundpleasant etc. otherwise the use of euphemisms may even causemisunderstandings. So the next we will talk aboutcommunication with the theories of Cooperative Principle. Forexample, to be specific, diplomatic euphemisms of pressconferences are mainly chosen as the substitution of anagreeable or inoffensive word or expression for one that isharsh, indelicate or unpleasant to the other side. They arechosen from both the lexical approach and the rhetoricalapproach.