Grice Maxims Flouting and Stylistic Devices of a Selected Dramatic Text: A Pragma-stylistic Study

Abstract

This study examines the pragmatic and stylistic elements of M. Crimp's play Attempts on Her Life. It focuses on how pragmatic elements and stylistic devices are applied to literary works, particularly dramatic text. This study aims at demonstrating how Grice's cooperative principle is flouted, highlighting the maxims that are most often flouted at both levels of interaction to achieve stylistic effects, and identifying which figures of speech are most frequently employed in the play. The study focuses on Grice’s Cooperative Principle and the way it influences the stylistic devices represented by the figures of speech across two levels of interaction. It concludes that the maxims of quantity and manner are flouted more than the other maxims. Repetition and simile are the most dominant figures of speech in the play at the levels of character-character interaction and narrator-reader interaction.