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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. [ 7 ] Later linguists introduced refined and different definitions of the term, leading to somewhat different ideas about which parts of the information conveyed by an utterance are ...
Perhaps Grice's best-known example of conversational implicature is the case of the reference letter, a "quantity implicature" (i.e., because it involves flouting the first maxim of Quantity): A is writing a testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a philosophy job, and his letter reads as follows: "Dear Sir, Mr. X's command of English ...
Grice, the originator of the concept of implicature, draws a distinction between explicit and contextual cancellation. [2] He calls an implicature p explicitly cancellable if it is possible to cancel it by adding a statement to the effect of "but not p" to the utterance which would otherwise implicate it. For example: There's beer in the fridge.
For example, in the exchange A (to passer by): I am out of gas. B: There is a gas station round the corner. A will assume that B obeyed the maxim of relation. However, B's answer is only relevant to A if the gas station is open; so it has the implicature "The gas station is open." [1]
If speaker and addressee know that Susan is a sore loser, an implicature of (5) could be (7) Susan needs to be cheered up. The distinction between explicature and implicature is not always clear-cut. For example, the inference (8) He drank a bottle of vodka and fell into a stupor. → He drank a bottle of vodka and consequently fell into a stupor.
In pragmatics, scalar implicature, or quantity implicature, [1] is an implicature that attributes an implicit meaning beyond the explicit or literal meaning of an utterance, and which suggests that the utterer had a reason for not using a more informative or stronger term on the same scale. The choice of the weaker characterization suggests ...
For example, the vernacular, or everyday language, may be used among casual friends, whereas more formal language, with respect to grammar, pronunciation or accent, and lexicon or choice of words, is often used in a cover letter and résumé and while speaking during a job interview. As a discipline, stylistics links literary criticism to ...
1975, Paul Grice, giving an example of conversational implicature: A professor is writing a testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a philosophy job, and his letter reads as follows: "Dear Sir, Mr. X's command of English is excellent, and his attendance at tutorials has been regular. Yours, etc." [9]