Concept
Implicature
Overview
In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly saying everything we want to communicate. The philosopher H. P. Grice coined the term in 1975. Grice distinguished conversational implicatures, which arise because speakers are expected to respect general rules of conversation, and conventional ones, which are tied to certain words such as but or therefore. Take for example the following exchange:
A (to passerby): I am out of gas.
B: There is a gas station 'round the corner.
Here, B does not say, but conversationally implicates, that the gas station is open, because otherwise his utterance would not be relevant in the context. Conversational implicatures are classically seen as contrasting with entailments: they are not necessary or logical consequences of what is said, but are defeasible (cancellable). So, B could continue without contradiction:
B: But unfortunately it's closed today.
An example of a conventional implicature is "Donovan is poor but happy", where the word but implicates a sense of contrast between being poor and being happy.
Later linguists introduced and refined different definitions of the term, leading to somewhat different ideas about which parts of the information conveyed by an utterance are actually implicatures and which are not.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Every proposition consists of three parts: the Subject, the Predicate, and the Copula. The predicate is the name denoting that which is affirmed or denied. The subject is the name denoting the person or thing which something is affirmed or denied of. The copula is the sign denoting that there is an affirmation or denial; and thereby enabling the hearer or reader to distinguish a proposition from any other kind of…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
States what Implicature is.
No more can logic kill the pragmatist's behavior: his act of utterance, so far from contradicting, accurately exemplifies the matter which he utters. What is the matter which he utters? In part, it is this, that truth, concretely considered, is an attribute of our beliefs, and that these are attitudes that follow satisfactions.
William James, The Meaning of Truth
Close in meaning to Implicature; the term itself is not named.
The speaker must mean to assert the proposition either as a universal or as a particular proposition, though he has failed to declare which: and it often happens that though the words do not show which of the two he intends, the context, or the custom of speech, supplies the deficiency. Thus, when it is affirmed that “Man is mortal,” nobody doubts that the assertion is intended of all human beings; and the word…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Implicature is.
Philosophers who discussed Implicature
Related ideas
- Ad hoc
- Hyperbole
- Referent
- Metaphor
- Irony
- Linguistics
- Semantics
- Logical form
- Paul Grice
- Pragmatics
- Tautology (logic)
- Truth condition
- Reductionism
- Premise
- Proposition
- Utterance
- Performative utterance
- Moore's paradox
- Kent Bach
- Relevance theory
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.