UNIT 2 - IMPLICATURE

IMPLICATURE, CONTEXT.

Grice’s Cooperative Principle and Theory of Implicature:

One of the basic concepts in Gricean Pragmatics is speaker meaning. Grice makes a distinction between natural meaning, which is devoid of human intentionality , and non-natural meaning (meaning –nn), which has to do with intentional communication.

There is a second intention which is implicit in the definition of meaning -nn, i.e. the recognition, on the part of the addressee, of the speaker’s communicative intention. For instance, if a person is invited to go to the movies and her answer is: “I have to study for an exam”, we will most probably understand it as a rejection of the invitation, even though she did not say “no” in a direct way. This type of “hidden” meaning is intimately related to another crucial concept in Gricean Pragmatics: that of conversational implicature.

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ImplicatureThe concept of conversational implicature is considered to

be one of the single most important ideas in Communication. This notion has provided linguistic analysts with an explicit account of how it is possible to mean more than what is actually “said”. Normally, what a speaker intends to communicate is far richer than what s/he says or directly expresses, and thus s/he exploits pragmatic principles that the hearer can invoke in order to bridge the gap between what was said (the literal content of the uttered sentence, determined by its grammatical structure) and what was meant (i.e. what was really communicated).

Thus, conversational implicatures are a kind of inference that can be derived from an utterance in order to work out the “meant” from the “said”, and they are related to what Grice called the Cooperative Principle and its Maxims. Given the fact that our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks (and would not be rational if they did), the remarks are characteristically cooperative efforts and each participant recognizes in them a mutually accepted direction (Grice). Speakers are assumed to be cooperative and to follow the maxims of quality, quantity, relevance and manner.

THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE

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.

1)THE MAXIM OF QUANTITYi) Make your contribution as informative as is required

(for the current purposes of the exchange).ii) Do not make your contribution more informative

than is required.

2) THE MAXIM OF QUALITYTry to make your contribution one that is true,

specifically:i) Do not say what you believe to be false.ii) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

3) THE MAXIM OF RELATIONBe relevant.

4) THE MAXIM OF MANNERBe perspicuous, and specifically:i) Avoid obscurity of expression.ii) Avoid ambiguity.iii) Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).iv) Be orderly. (Grice, 1975)

But… do speakers always follow the Maxims to the letter?

The answer to this question is “no, sometimes speakers intentionally ‘flout’ one or more of the maxims”, but the hearer nevertheless assumes that the speaker is trying to be cooperative, and looks for meaning at a deeper level than the literal one. In doing so, the hearer makes an inference of the type called conversational implicature.

Conversational vs. Conventional implicatures

Grice also characterized another type of implicature which is derived from the conventional meaning of the words or expressions used. For instance, if someone says:

He is poor, but honest

By using the connector “but”, the speaker is committing himself to supporting the notion that poor people are normally not honest, and s/he cannot say s/he didn’t mean it, because it is implied in the conventional meaning of the word “but”. So conventional implicatures deal with detachable but not cancellable aspects of meaning, and they are akin to pragmatic presuppositions.

So, what is the difference between conventional and conversational implicatures?

Conversational implicatures, as opposed to conventional implicatures, are CANCELLABLE, a concept that Grice explained in the following manner:

“To the form of words of the utterance of which putatively implicates that p, it is admissible to add “but not p”, or “I do not mean to imply that p”, and that it is contextually cancellable if one can find situations in which the utterance of the form of the words would simply not carry the implicature.” (1978).

Conventional implicatures, on the other hand, are NOT cancellable, and are therefore entailments .

Flouting the Maxims: ExamplesMAXIM OF QUALITY:Being ironic is one of the prototypical strategies which flout the Maxim of Quality. Consider this utterance, said by a woman to her friend after the friend said something stupid:

What a clever idea!

by means of which the woman implies that the idea was just the opposite, i.e., rather stupid or NOT clever at all.

MAXIM OF QUANTITY

Example:

A: I think Sam and Chloe are not being honest with me, and I believe dishonest people are losers.B: Well, I think Chloe is honest.

By not including Sam in her utterance, B may be conversationally implicating that Sam is dishonest, and that consequently, Sam is a loser.

MAXIM OF MANNER

Example:

A: Have you ever met Richard?

B: No, what’s he like?

A: Well, he’s not what one would call ‘handsome’.

In her last utterance, A may be implicating, by being a bit obscure, that Richard is ugly or not very good-looking.

MAXIM OF RELATION

Example:

A: Would you like to come to London with me on Tuesday?

B: I have a medical appointment on Tuesday.

B’s utterance does not exactly answer A’s question by saying “yes” or “no”, and it might seem irrelevant at first sight, but any competent speaker of English can work out the implicature that B’s answer is negative, because one would expect B not to miss his medical appointment on Tuesday.

Implicature in the real worldGeorge Carlin (1937-2008) was a comedian who liked to reflect

upon language use. One of his favourite topics was the use of euphemisms. Listen to this part of an interview in which he mentions the use of the euphemism “the golden years”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KITIt2O3Z8Q

There are many more video clips which you can watch where he speaks about euphemisms in real life, which I invite you to watch in order to reflect upon the workings of inferences, as well as to have a lot of fun.

You have now enough information to try Unit 2 activities.