Comparison between the principle of relevance and conversational implicature

The Principle of Relevance of Sperber and Wilson tries to discover the laws of communication according to human's cognitive features.American linguists and philosopher H.P Grice created Conversational Implicature.For successful cross-cultural communication and explanation of pragmatic misuse and communication failure,it is very useful to understand and master the basic opinions of the two theories.In this thesis we will discuss the basic opinions of the two theories and find their differences in relevance and cooperative principle,explicature and implicature,inferential models and contexts.Finally,we'll discuss their shortcomings and defaults.