A Study of Modern American Short Stories from the Perspective of Gricean Maxims

Research Article

Abstract

Communicative interaction between human beings usually takes place by means of linguistic expressions. Pragmatics is the study of the way humans use their language in communication. In order to communicate with readers via dialogues, modern American short story writers have opted for multiple writing techniques such as Rhetorical questions, Understatement, Overstatement, Metaphor, Ambiguity, and Ellipsis. The present research analyses selected modern American short stories from the perspective of Gricean Maxims. Using Paul Grice’s Theory of Conversational Maxims (Quantity, Quality, Relevance, and Manner), the study looks at the selected short stories of Richard Matheson, Jesse Stuart, Ray Bradbury, and Langston Hughes via. Through identifying instances of flouting of Gricean maxims in the dialogues of the selected stories, the research argues that these stories use Gricean maxims as persuasive tools of dialogue and argumentation.