Lecture 9.

IMPLICATURE
Plan:
1. General aspects of implicature
2. Conversational implicature
3. Features of implicatures
4. Hedges
Key words: implicature, conversation, speaker, linguistic expression, addressee, communication,
hedges, maxim, conversational implicature, process, meaning, content, information, situation.
General aspects of implicature
The process of communication is a process whereby the speaker conveys his or her
meaning to the addressee. The speaker’s situation is much easier: he or she puts his/her meaning
into a code, i.e. gives it appropriate linguistic expression. The addressee has to decode the linguistic
structure. The task of the addressee is often made more difficult when the speaker’s linguistic
structure means more than it says literally. To put it in pragmatic terms, the decoding process is
made more complicated by implicature, which is generally defined as a meaning a sentence may
have that is distinct from what the sentence says literally. Of such sentences we say that they
communicate more than they actually say. In other words, implicature is a meaning imposed by
the speaker on the literal meaning of the sentence. Consider:
A. Are you going to Paul’s party?
B. I have to work.
Speaker B implies that he or she is not going to Paul’s party. However, the sentence I have
to work does not say it, i.e. speaker B does not say he or she is not going to Paul’s party. He or she
only says he/she has to work. 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. Why so? An indirect response is a more
considerate one; psychologically it is more acceptable than a direct one.
Language philosophers argue that implicatures can be dependent on conversational
context or context in general and can be part of sentence meaning, e.g. Even John came to the
party. The sentence implies that John’s coming to the party was unexpected, a surprise. Figures of
speech (e.g. metaphor, irony, sarcasm) are examples of sentence implicature: they also
communicate more than they actually say, e.g. She was besieged by suitors. Instead of directly
saying She had many suitors the speaker says She was besieged by suitors using a war term which
implies that she had a lot suitors trying hard to win her heart. Here the choice of a metaphor (an
indirect way of expressing the situation) helps the speaker to describe the situation vividly and
thus impress the addressee.
The term implicature was coined by the language philosopher Grice. He classified
implicatiures and developed an influential theory to explain and predict conversational
implicatures and described how they are interpreted in the sentence. A central role is played here
by the Cooperative Principle and associated Maxim’s.let us return to the dialogue discussed.
A. Are you going to Paul’s party?
B. I have to work.
The implicature “I am not going to Paul’s party” is said to be conversational: it depends on the
conversational context whose key feature is the question “Are you going to Paul’s party?”
Grice distinguished between a conversational implicature and a conventional implicature
by which he meant one that is part of the meaning of the sentence used. Consider an example:
e.g. He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave.
The discourse deictic therefore: creates the implicature “His being an Englishman means that he
is brave”. If an implicature is conventional, we say that the sentence carries that implicature
irrespective of the context in which it is used. Consider another example: It’s an old car but it’s
very reliable. According to the classical theory of implicature, but; besides,be to, expressing a
connection between two propositions, communicate an additional meaning, viz. a contrast,
unexpectedness or surprise. The same analysis can be extended to Even John came. The particle
even means in addition/too/as well. The conventional implicature is “John’s coming was the least
expected”. If we consult a dictionary, we will find that all these additional meanings are dictionary
ones, not situational (pragmatic). A dictionary includes all non-situational meanings. Only
meanings that are generated in the situation by the speaker are the object of pragmatics proper- the
field of linguistics concerned with the situational meanings of linguistic structures. Such being the
case, the so-called conventional implicature should be the object of clause semantics, not sentence
(contextualized clause) semantics.
Conversational implicature
As already known, the author of the implicature theory is Grice (1913-1988), an Anglo-
American philosopher who developed a theory of meaning based on the communicative intentions
of the speaker. His most substantial contribution was a series of lectures on “Logic and
Conversation” delivered in 1967, which proposed a theory of implicatures and maxims of
conversation to account for them. They were not published fully until the end of his life (only in
1989). According to Grice, effective communication requires cooperation 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:
1)Maxim of Quality: Make your contribution true; so do not convey what you believe false or
unjustified.
2) Maxim of Quantity: Be as informative as required.
3) Maxim of relation: Be relevant.
4) Maxim of manner: Be perspicuous (clear in expression); so avoid obscurity and ambiguity, and
strive for brevity and order.
Implicatures arise when speakers violate (flout or show a disregard for) the maxims. The
violation of a maxim, however, does not mean that the speaker does not cooperate; he or she does;
only he or she does it indirectly. Consider a dialogue:
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. What the speaker really must have implied is that he or she is not
going to Paul’s party, or he or she must have implied that he or she is going (irony): all depends
on the speaker’s intentions. In view of this, the Cooperative Principle is not violated: the speaker
only answers indirectly. Grice uses the term flouting instead of violatingwhen the speaker
expresses irony. Other language philosophers use this term for any violation of the maxims.
The most influential alternative to Grice’s theory is the “Relevance Theory” developed by
Sperber and Wilson (1995). Grice’s maxims, according to the said theory, can be replaced by a
single principle of relevance: in interpreting or decoding the message contained in a linguistic
structure, the addressee takes into account information relevant to the message. Consider an
example:
Have you seen my book?
To understand this structure, the addressee must use certain information which would
enrich the propositional content of the utterance. The information that does it is called an
explicature. An explicature is, as it were, the full (extended) propositional form of the utterance.
So what is or are the explicatures relevant to the prospositional meaning of the said utterance? The
addressee may have been the speaker’s friend; he may have been in the habit of taking books from
the speaker without his or her permission, etc. these are relevant explicatures; their role is to help
the addressee to recover an implicature in the situation. To sum up, implicatures are recorded on
the basis of explicatures which are formalized as explicating proipositions, the motivation for
which is the indeterminacy of language.
 But let us return to Grice’s Cooperative Principle and his Maxims. Conversational
implicatures that arise on the basis of Grice’s four maxims are called respectively: 1) quality
implicatures; 2) quantity implicatures; 3) manner implicatures; and 4) relevance implicatures.
Consider: A
A.I hope you brought bread and cheese.
B.Ah, I bought bread.
Speaker B may appear to be violating the quantity maxim: he or she did not give full
information; the implicature is “I did not buy cheese”. Speaker B conveyed more than he or she
said.
B
A. Can you cook?
B.I am French.
“I am French” seems to be irrelevant. But B is cooperative. The implicature is “I can cook” (all
Frenchmen can).
C
A.Who broke the vase?
B.It was one of your two children.
The maxim of manner is violated. The implicature that is then generated is “I don’t want to answer
this”.
D
A. Tell me, how that car crashed into the bus.
B.Well, the traffic was very heavy. A child was crossing the street. The car was turning left. The
bus was in front of the car. It was turning right.
The maxim of manner is violated. The implicature: Speaker B did not see all of the event.
Conversational implicatures also include implicatures based on linguistic structures, such
as the article, tense forms. Consider:
A. What’s he doing over there?
B.He’s talking to a woman.
The indefinite article used with the noun woman may imply that the woman is not the
person’s wife. The inference of the implicature does not require any special background
knowledge of the context of the utterance: any phrase of the same structure is capable of generating
an additional meaning, or an implicature.
Tense forms can also give rise to an implicature. Consider:
A. Where does he live now?
B.He used to live in London.
The past tense form says that he lived in London. If the person in question no longer lives
in London, speaker B should have said so. But speaker B does not say so. Conseqently, the
sentence He used to live in London carries the implicature He no longer lives in London.
Implicatures that do not require a special context are called generalized conversational
implicature. To generalized conversational implicature we could also attribute the so-called scalar
implicatures, e.g.
A.Do your students smoke?
B.Some do.
Some, as a dictionary unit, means “a number of entities”. In this interaction, some has the
additional meaning of “not all”. A scale is a whole range of values, from the highest to the lowest:
all, most, many, some, few, always, often, sometimes. The essence of scalar implicature is that,
when any form in a scale is asserted, the negative of all forms higher on the scale is implicated.
Conversational implicatures that require specific contexts are called particularized
conversational implicatures, e.g.:
A.Hey, coming to the party?
B.My parents are visiting.
The implicature is I am not coming to the party.
 The only difference between generalized and particularized implicatures lies in the amount of
contextual information needed to derive the implicature from the speaker’s speech act. Generalized
implicatures are conventionalized, i.e. they are associated with certain linguistic items serving as
triggers for the automatic process of implicature generation.
Features of implicatures
Implicatures have the following properties:
1) Conventional implicatures cannot be cancelled: they are not determined by the speaker. Consider:
Peter isn’t here yet.
Yet implies that the present situation is to be different at a later time.
2) Conversational implicature, or more generally, contextual implicature, is cancelable. Consider:
You have won five hundred dollars (only five hundred and no more). In fact you have won six
hundred dollars!
Conversational implicatures can be both cancelled and reinforced, e.g.:
He used to live in London, and he still lives there (cancelled). He used to live in London, but now
he lives in Oxford (reinforced).
3)Implicatures (conventional and conversational) are not detachable: implicatures are not lost by
substituting synonymous structures, i.e. any other structure which expresses more or less the same
content will generate the same implicature. Consider:
A.Did John pass the exam?
B.Actually he failed.
The implicature of actually is Although it is hard to believe.
A.Has John got a girlfriend?
B.He has been a regular visitor to Cambridge recently/ He has been paying a lot of visits to London
lately. The implicature is John has got a girlfriend.
Hedges
In the process of communication, the speaker often wishes to avoid being categorical and
thus evade direct responsibility for what he or she says. The linguistic structures that help the
speaker to do it are called hedges. Hedges are classified according to the maxims, i.e. they are tied
to the maxims of the Cooperative Principle:
1)Quality hedges, e.g. as far as I know; I may be mistaken; I guess, etc. they indicate that what we
are saying may not be totally accurate.
2)Quantity hedges, e.g. as you probably know; I won’t bore you with all the details, but, to cut a
long story short, etc. The speaker, using these hedges, indicates that his or her information may be
incomplete.
3)Relation hedges, e.g. oh, by the way, anyway, well, I don’t know if it’s important, but …., not to
change the subject, but…, As for/to; speaking of/ talking of, etc. The speaker using these hedges
indicates that he or she is aware of the maxim of relevance, but wishes to go over to another subject.
4)Manner hedges, e.g. this may be a bit confusing, but…, I’m not sure if this makes sense, but…, I
don’t know if this is clear at al, but… .According to Yule, the speaker using hedges shows that he
or she is not only aware of the maxims, but he or she wants to show that he or she is trying to
observe them.
Hedges are a cautious language; they “protect” the speaker against something unpleasant
or unwanted that may result from being categorical. However, the use of hedges is not always an
advantage. There are situations when the speaker cannot use the hedges: he or she must be
categorical. Imagine a situation where a speaker wishes to tell his/her addressee that the house they
are in is on fire. The speaker would sound strange if he or she informed the addressee using the
following text: “As far as I know, this house is on fire”.
Hedges must be a universal feature of languages. The actual use of hedges is culture-
specific. Hedges are a promising field of study: it can be extended to all functional styles. The
description of hedges in texts belonging to different registers and genres would contribute to a
better understanding of this pragmatic phenomenon. And the description of hedges in different
languages would contribute to the general theory of language.