ABSTRACT

The present paper aims to analyze the extent to which the four maxims of cooperative principle are followed or violated/flouted by the central character Iago in Shakespearean tragedy “Othello” by employing Paul Grice’s (1975) cooperative principle in order to come up with different interpretations of a single literacy text.. Furthermore, the reasons for selecting the character ‘Iago’ is to find out why the character ‘Iago’ has been placed as devil mind in the play by critics as it has been argued that “ Evil has nowhere else been portrayed with such a mastery as in the character of Iago’(Bradley, 1951, p.206). Thus, the article investigates how the character uses language throughout the play in general and the four maxims in particular. Though, cooperative principle is helpful for a smooth and effective communication; however, people keep on violating the maxims in order to achieve certain purposes or to hide evil intentions which are in their minds. The findings show that the three maxims i.e. maxims of quantity, quality and relation have been violated by Iago in the play intentionally in order to hide his evil intentions and the character has used language as shelter. Keywords: Pragmatics, cooperative Principle, conversational Maxims, Shakespearean Drama
Publication date: 01/02/2020

https://ijbpas.com/pdf/2020/February/MS_IJBPAS_2020_4840.pdf

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https://doi.org/10.31032/IJBPAS/2020/9.2.4840