【Abstract】Grice believes that conversation is governed by certain conventions. Hearers tend to assume speakers are conforming with these conventions and if speakers are not conforming， they have good reasons not to. Cooperative Principle（“CP” in brief hereafter） is the convention that interlocutors follow when starting conversations. However， people don’t satisfy all the demands of the CP and sometimes they deliberately fail to observe a maxim（or maxims） to fulfill different purposes. The use of rhetorical figures is one typical situation of flouting the CP. This paper analyzed the reasons and pragmatic functions achieved by flouting of CP in rhetorical figures.
　　【Key words】 Cooperative Principle； rhetorical figures； flouting
　　1. Introduction
　　To communicate in an accurate and efficient way， both speaker and hearer should take an cooperative attitude. A rough general principle might be formulated which participants will be expected to observe， viz：
　　Make your contribution such as is required， at the stage at which it occurs， by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. One might label this Cooperative Principle.（Grice 1975）
　　Grice’s Cooperative Principle consists of four pragmatic sub-principles or maxims： Quantity； Quality； Relation； and Manner.
　　In Theory of Speech Act， some rhetorical figures are complying with the CP while others violate it on purpose to generate a meaning that is different from the literal meaning， which is known as “conversational implicature” . So， from this perspective， a conversational implicature is a flouting of the maxim of the quality. However， through violating the CP， not only will not the figurative words cause misunderstanding， but also add extra interest， pleasure or politeness in the conversation in the form of providing tone or atmosphere to discourse， illustrating vivid examples to stimulate thought or giving life to inanimate objects， etc. In daily communication， many implicit rhetorical figures produce great pragmatic functions by flouting the CP.
　　2. Literature Review
　　There are a number of problems occurring between cooperating humans. Mey（2001） believes that if the expected cooperative behavior is not forthcoming， conversational implicature is going on. And when people “blatantly fail to observe one or several maxims”（Thomas 1996），， that’s the flouting of a maxim， either semantically or pragmatically. Specifically， Grice （1975） considered figures of speech such as metaphor as the flouting of quality maxim.