Implicature: An introduction

Language is not only a type of verbal communication, but also a system which involves
personal communication. It helps us to perceive essential information in the speech act.
Linguistic expressions are so functional and flexible that we can easily express our
intentions in several ways. One of them are linguistic implicatures, which I am going to
discuss in my pressentation.

Implicature is a part of pragmatics. Before we start analysing it, firstly, we should raise a
question what pragmatics is. The reason why we should look at it with a broader sight is
because the objects of this study are highly related to the implicature. There are several
definitions of pragmatics, and one of them is stated by Ryvityte as it is the area of
linguistics that focuses on how the context complements the meaning; in what way the
communication of the meaning depends not only on the knowledge of language by the
speaker and the listener, but also on the context of an utterance, the knowledge about the
status of interlocutors, inferred intent of the speaker, etc.“ (2011: 8). The American
linguist Crystal has also pointed out that pragmatics has came to be applied to the study
of language from the point of view of the users, especially of the choices they make, the
constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction, and the effects their use
of language has on the other participants in an act of communication. At present, no
coherent pragmatic theory has been achieved, mainly because of the variety of topics it
has to account for – including aspects of deixis, presuppositions, speech acts, discourse
structure and implicatures (Crystal: 2008). To make it clear, Moeschler (2012) points out
that the object of pragmatics is the study of the usage of language in context.

In this paper we will encounter with the particular terminology, which is essential to get
acquainted with the topic. The paper will include such terms as conventional implicature,
conversational implicature, flouting a maxim, inference, implicature, maxims of: quality,
quantity, relevance and manner and speech act.

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The term of implicature used in the pragmatics, as a technical concept, was adopted by
pragmatics theorist and philosopher Paul Grice, who distinguished what is said by a
sentence and what is implicated by an utterance of that sentence. Then we should draw a
line between communication proccess and implicature. As Ryvitytė (2011: 11) stated, in
the communication process, the speaker wants to convey something to the listener. While
the latter one decodes that information with linguistic means, however the aim of the
listener is not as easy as it looks, because the speaker‘s conveyed utterance means more
than implied constituents in particular sentence. What is then a implicature? Probably its
clearest definition is given by Leah (2011): “A certain type of pragmatic inference,
related to the communicative context in which a sentence is uttered, called implicature,
which denotes either the act of meaning, implying, or suggesting one thing by saying
something else, or the object of that act”. Thus, that leads us to perhaps the most accuate
notion of implicature, which is „that of information or content that is communicated by a
speech act over and above the content that determines the utterance’s truth-conditions
(Finlay: 2005). After we get familiar with the basic understanding of implicature, the
paper will start observing implicatures from Grice’s cooperative principle, which is
inevitable when discussing types of implicatures and other elements. To explain the
cooperative principle, Grice formulated the four rules of conversations, which are called
‘maxims’. Without them, there could not be the conversational implicature. The paper
will also discuss another type of implicature, which is a conventional one.

When we speak to each other, we are trying to construct sentences which are more easy
to understand, in other words, sentences with a meaning. Grice’s idea of conversation is
based on that people should obey the general principles of rationality. Thus, he
formulated a Cooperative principle as follows (Grice 1975: 45): “Make your
conversational 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”. In order to
follow this principle, Grice has pointed out four subordinate rules or ‘maxims’:

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1. Maxims of Quantity: 1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the
current purposes of the exchange). 2. Do not make your contribution more informative
than is required.
2. Maxims of Quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true. 1. Do not
say what you believe to be false. 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence
3. Maxim of Relation: Be relevant.
4. Maxims of Manner: Be perspicuous. 1. Avoid obscurity /of expression. 2.
Avoid ambiguity. 3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). 4. Be orderly.

Usually people do not follow these rules in conversations. Ryvityte states (2011: 38) that
“obeying the conversational maxims guarantees effective transmission in speech means.
But the participants of the speech act choose whether they want to follow those maxims,
or not”. Consider the following example:
A: Do you like Manchester United?
B: Do you like moldy bread?
Speaker B deliberately answers the question by an ironical question, which implicates
that he does not like Manchester United team, as usually nobody eats moldy bread. Those
occasions, when people are flouting maxims, are one of the main conversational
implicature aspects.
Research has shown that there are particular types of implicatures, and one of them are
conversational implicatures. Grice considered a conversational implicature as an essential
case of study. The conversational implicature is defined by Leah (2010) as “an inference
that consists of attributing to a speaker an implicite meaning that goes beyond the explicit
linguistic meaning of an utterance”. We should stress that in most cases, a speaker is
trying to induce the listener to search a sense of the particular utterance, which could be
not related with what has been said – a saying comes first, conversational implicatures
come after. The process of generating a conversational implicature is called flouting a
maxim. Speaking about the conversational implicature, according to Grice three features
of it can be identified:

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1. The speaker deliberately flouts a conversational maxim to convey an additional
meaning not expressed literally.
2. The speaker’s desire to fulfill two conflicting maxims results in his or her flouting one
maxim to invoke the other.
3. The speaker invokes a maxim as a basis for interpreting the utterance.
Take a look at the following example: „You shall not wear those shoes today, the
president is coming“. A speaker‘s implication is that is an inappropriate to wear
particular shoes, because of the important person‘s (president‘s) visit.

The second most common type of implicature is a conventional implicature.

Conventional implicature, unlike the conversational one, is not related to Cooperative
principle and it is not based on the conversational maxims. Ryvitytė states that “the
context is not obligatory to convey conventional implicatures. It is related with particular
words and additional meaning is being generated when these words are used.” (2011: 46).
As many sources provide, the most common example is the conjunction ‘but’. For
example, Moeschler (2012) pointed out that the latter example “allows one part of the
meaning of the utterance under consideration to be cancelled“.
Look at the following example:
A: She is a smart woman, but a gold digger
The sentence implies that maybe the woman is smart, but that is overwhelmed by her
negative characteristics (gold digger – is a woman, who only dates wealthy partners).

Reflecting of what has been said previously in the paper, we can draw some conclusions.
Firstly, we found out what the study of pragmatics is and how it is closely related to
implicatures. Moreover, we can state that the term implicature is widely used in
describing speech acts pecularities. Also, a very important aspect of the conversation is
Grice's cooperative principle, which states that people should understand the general
concepts of common sense. This cooperative principle is based on conversational maxims
and conversational implicatures. Altough there is a statement, that people should follow
the rules of conversation, they usually flouting those maxims. Thus, as a result we
generate a conversational implicature. These two last concepts helps to constitute
implicature as a very important element in pragmatics. The paper also discussed another
common type of implicature – a conventional implicature, which deals with the

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cancellability of the utterance. To summarise, it is obvious, that we encounter these
simple conversation processes everyday, and implicatures helps us not only liven up the
speech act, but also to perceive required information in easier and more different ways.
However, we can observe that this area of study has more space to explore, as linguists
could do further research on, for example, the frequency of implicatures use in daily
personal communication, exploration of its coherence with other branchs of pragmatics
and also unexplored area of implicatures in written forms. Finally, there could be another
research done on other types of conversation. To conclude, there are numerous ways to
express your idea in conversation and hopefully this paper helped to find out the general
understanding of implicatures and what is meant by them.