Implicature

Pragmatics Course
The process of
communication is a
process whereby the
speaker conveys his or
her meaning to the
addressee by putting
his/her meaning into a General Aspects
code What is implicature in general way?

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Example

Literally Co-text
A. Are you going to Paul’s party? A. Are you going to Paul’s party?
B. I have to work. B. I am not going to Paul’s
party.

Speaker B implies that he or she is not going to Paul’s party. Thus the implicature that we can
derive from the co-text is ‘I am not going to Paul’s party’. Of course, speaker B could have
responded directly by “No, I am not”, but he or she gave preference to an indirect response.

An indirect response is a more considerate, because psychologically it is more acceptable

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Conversational Implicature

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Conversational Implicature
According to Grice, effective communication requires
cooperation (joint effort, willingness to do what one
asks you to do) between speakers: any answer the
speakers make should be interpreted on the basis of
the Cooperation Principle. Grice showed how people
‘cooperate’: people generally follow rules for efficient
communication.
These rules he named maxims. He distinguished four
such maxims:
• Maxim of Quality: Make your contribution true; so do
not convey what you believe false or unjustified.
• Maxim of Quantity: Be as informative as required.
• Maxim of Relation: Be relevant.
• Maxim of Manner: Be perspicuous (clear in
expression); so avoid obscurity and ambiguity, and
strive for brevity and order
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Example

A. Are you going to Paul’s party?

B. I don’t like parties. Vs. No, I am
not.

If we know that speaker B likes parties, we could reason that if he or she meant
what he or she said, it would be a lie and then the maxim of quality would be
violated. So he or she must have meant (implied) something else.

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 In the process of communication, the speaker
often wishes to avoid being categorical and thus
evade responsibility for what he or she says.

Hedges are classified according to the maxims,

i.e. they are tied to the maxims of the Principle:

1) Quality hedges, e.g. as far as I know:

2) Quantity hedges, e.g. as you probably know:
3) Relation hedges, e.g. oh, by the way
Hedges 4) Manner hedges, e.g. this may be a bit
confusing, but

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Implicature is what the sentence implicates
apart from what it says literally. For
example, if one says ‘The Queen of
England is very popular’, one presupposes
the existence of the Queen of England; the
presupposition is the proposition ‘There is a
Queen of England’.

If one says ‘It is cold in here’, one may

imply that ‘the heating should be turned Summary
up’. The implicature is the proposition ‘You
should turn up the heating’.

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Thank
You