Implicature

Implicature is a technical term in the linguistic branch of pragmatics coined by Paul Grice. It refers to what is suggested in an utterance, even though not expressed nor strictly implied (that is, entailed) by the utterance.^[1] For example, the sentence "Mary had a baby and got married" strongly suggests that Mary had the baby before the wedding, but the sentence would still be strictly true if Mary had her baby after she got married. Further, if we add the qualification "— not necessarily in that order" to the original sentence, then the implicature is cancelled even though the meaning of the original sentence is not altered.

Types of Implicature

Conversational Implicature

Paul Grice identified three types of general conversational implicature:

1. The speaker deliberately flouts a conversational maxim to convey an additional meaning not expressed literally.

For instance, a speaker responds to the question "How did you like the guest speaker?" with the following utterance:

Well, I’m sure he was speaking English.

If the speaker is assumed to be following the cooperative principle, in spite of flouting the Maxim of Quantity, then the utterance must have an additional nonliteral meaning, such as: "The content of the speaker’s speech was confusing."

2. The speaker’s desire to fulfill two conflicting maxims results in his or her flouting one maxim to invoke the other. For instance, a speaker responds to the question "Where is John?" with the following utterance:

He’s either in the cafeteria or in his office.

In this case, the Maxim of Quantity and the Maxim of Quality are in conflict. A cooperative speaker does not want to be ambiguous but also does not want to give false information by giving a specific answer in spite of his uncertainty. By flouting the Maxim of Quantity, the speaker invokes the Maxim of Quality, leading to the implicature that the speaker does not have the evidence to give a certain answer to where John is.

3. The speaker invokes a maxim as a basis for interpreting the utterance. In the following exchange:

Do you know where I can get some gas? There’s a gas station around the corner.

The second speaker invokes the Maxim of Relevance, resulting in the implicature that “the gas station is open and one can probably get gas there”

Conventional Implicature

Conventional implicature is independent of the cooperative principle and its maxims. A statement always carries its conventional implicature.

Joe is happy but poor.

This sentence implies poverty and happiness are not compatible but in spite of this Joe is still happy. The conventional interpretation of the word “but” will always create the implicature of a sense of contrast. So Joe is happy but poor will always necessarily imply “Surprisingly Joe is happy in spite of being poor”

Another form of conventional implicature is also known as a scalar implicature. This concerns the conventional uses of words like “all” or “some” in conversation.

I ate some of the pie.

This sentence implies “I did not eat all of the pie.” While the statement “I ate some of the pie” is still true if the entire pie was eaten, the conventional meaning of the word “some” and the implicature generated by the statement is “not all”

Implicature vs Entailment

This can be contrasted with cases of entailment. For example, the statement "The president was assassinated" not only suggests that "The president is dead" is true, but requires that it be true. The first sentence could not be true if the second were not true; if the president were not dead, then whatever it is that happened to him would not have counted as a (successful) assassination. Similarly, unlike implicatures, entailments cannot be cancelled; there is no qualification that one could add to "The president was assassinated" which would cause it to cease entailing "The president is dead" while also preserving the meaning of the first sentence.

Implicature and implication

The specialized term implicature was coined by Paul Grice as a technical term in pragmatics for certain kinds of inferences that are drawn from statements without the additional meanings in logic and informal language use of "implication".

References

Simon Blackburn (1996). "implicature," The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford, pp. 188-89.

P. Cole (1975) "The synchronic and diachronic status of conversational implicature." In Syntax and Semantics, 3: Speech Acts (New York: Academic Press) ed. P. Cole & J. L. Morgan, pp. 257–288. ISBN 012785424X.

A. Davison (1975) "Indirect speech acts and what to do with them." ibid, pp. 143–184.

G. M. Green (1975) "How to get people to do things with words." ibid, pp. 107–141. New York: Academic Press

H. P. Grice (1975) "Logic and conversation." ibid. Reprinted in Studies in the Way of Words, ed. H. P. Grice, pp. 22–40. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1989) ISBN 0674852702.

Michael Hancher (1978) "Grice's "Implicature" and Literary Interpretation: Background and Preface" Twentieth Annual Meeting Midwest Modern Language Association

John Searle (1975) "Indirect speech acts." ibid. Reprinted in Pragmatics: A Reader, ed. S. Davis, pp. 265–277. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (1991) ISBN 0195058984.

Endnotes

^ (Blackburn, 1996, p. 189)

External links

"Implicature" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Top 10 Misconceptions about Implicature by Kent Bach (2005)

[1] (Blackburn, 1996, p. 189)

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