Application of the Cooperative Principle to Political Talk-shows and Interviews in Pakistani Context

Abstract

Political discourse has been recently considered as a rich area for discourse analysis. In this regard, interviews of the politicians in TV talk-shows appear more interactive than newspaper articles. Conversational analysis of this genre may yield different interpretations –both implicit and explicit—as there is much to comprehend than what is said. The Cooperative Principle (CP hereafter) proposed by Paul Grice (1975) offer a deep insight into such chunks of conversation. The present study is an attempt to critically analyze the studies using the framework of Gricean Maxims in investigating Pakistani political discourse taking place in TV interviews and talk-shows. It enlists various implications of observing and violating CP, the reasons behind these two different tendencies, and its significance. The study also hints at many gaps during the review that are worth-researching for in the future.