4.5 Dialogues between Forrest Gump and Jenny 10

4.6 Dialogues between Forrest Gump and the President 11

4.7 Dialogues between Forrest and Reporters 11

5. Conclusion 12

Works Cited 14

1. Introduction

The American movie Forrest Gump is a world-famous classical work. Just as Roger Ebert (1994) declared: “What a magical movie.” and the Chinese scholar Li Yimaing (1997) viewed it as among contemporary American cultural classics. The film is also one of my favorites so I attempt to do some researches on its language, in other special words, on characters’ lines from the perspective of pragmatics. The study will adopt not only qualitative but also quantitative methods. A descriptive study will be conducted to analyze the conversational implicatures of film dialogues in Forrest Gump from the perspective of pragmatics. The theoretical backup of the study is Grice’s theory of Conversational Implicature and Cooperative Principle. The 8 examples analyzed are carefully chosen from the conversations between the main characters in the film Forrest Gump and the target dialogues are all typical because they violate the Cooperative Principle and generate conversational implicatures. The dialogues are arranged according to the time sequence of the character appearing in the movie. The author makes a detailed and thorough analysis on each dialogue with the Grice’s Cooperative Principle so as to find what maxims or sub-maxims of the Cooperative Principle are violated and what the implicatures are produced through such violation, and at the same time to find out whether the implicatures can be understood by the main character Forrest Gump who is somehow mentally retarded and whether the frequencies of his violation of the maxims of the Cooperative Principle are the same as others. Then I present general results of the study that are based on the analysis.

2. Literature Review

Forrest Gump has received wide appreciation from the audience and considerable attention from researchers since it is on screen. This chapter is a literature review in which the author first presents an overview of the film, and then presents a review of the previous studies on it abroad and in China, with the focus on the studies in China.

2.1 An Overview of Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump is an American comedy film that describes the story about a man called Forrest Gump with an IQ of only 75 who leads a most wonderful life. He meets some of the most important figures over the second half of the 20th century including Elvis Presley, President John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, President Richard Nixon, John Lennon and George Wallace. And he is personally involved in many of the most memorable events that take place in American history from the late 1950s until the early 1980s. Meanwhile, as the striking parade of his life goes by, Forrest will never forget Jenny, going on a parallel tour of the counterculture, who is the girl he loved since his childhood. 

With a running time of 142 minutes, the film is first released on 7. 6. 1994 in United States. It is based on the novel Forrest Gump by Winston Groom. The screenplay adapted by Erick Roth differs greatly from the novel. Robert Zemeck, the director of the film, whose films are featured by an interest in state-of-the-art special effects, and here computerized visual legerdemain is used to place Gump in historic situations with actual people. Besides, the film is with great background music to let the audience has a strong impression. The main characters Forrest Gump, Jenny, Mrs. Gump, Lieutenant Dan, and Bubba are played respectively by Tom Hanks, Robin Wright Penn, Sally Field, Gary Siniese, and Mykelti Williamson.

2.2 Studies Abroad on Forrest Gump

Since its release in 1994, the film Forrest Gump has never stopped to be widely admired for its vivid characterization and its inspiration to soul. The reviews and criticisms on Forrest Gump have been numerous in number and various in approaches. This section will be a review of previous studies on the film abroad and in China. Specific to say, some influential criticisms abroad are presented and the major studies in China are surveyed and classified.