The Adaption of Grice’s Maxims in Wole Soyinka’s Discourse in The Strong Breed

Abstract

This study tries to find the adoption of Grice’s Maxims in Soyinka's discourse in The Strong Breed (1962). In addition to, it seeks to find in which mutual conversations of all parts of drama the writer obeys Grice’s principles. Soyinka in this drama depicts how ritual and superstitious beliefs cover the social life.In Yoruba the village where the events occur; the villagers believe that before each New Year one strong and strange person should sacrify to purify the society for arriving in New Year.This idea conveys among the characters by reciprocal conversation. Since this play focuses on the real social issue,this paper attempts to concentrate on the conversations in order to find in which dialogues the writer adapted discourses of his characters by Grice’s Maxims (Quality, Quantity, Relation, Manner). Regarding theses principles,centre on discourses's principles this research tries to find the characteristics of these Maxims. As a matter of fact, Maxim of Quantity centres on an equal amount of words which convey the idea in aproper way. In Maxim of Quality Grice concentrates on thetruth that the dialoguess hould be taken correctly and truly.To Grice another principle is Maxim of Relation with regard to the relationship between the subject and content. Besides, Maxim of Manner converges on four avoidances; to mention a few, obscurity, ambiguity, briefly and orderly. With reference to these principles this research attempts to apply these Maxims on The Strong Breed in order to find adoption of reciprocal conversations by Soyinka. Regarding it tries to look for the dialogues which obey Grice’s Maxims.