IMPLICATURE

A: How did the M.U. played?

B: They won : they played brilliantly
: they played poorly.
The linguistic philosopher Paul Grice drew a distinction between natural and
non-natural meaning of utterances like They won. The natural meaning is
conventional, entailed ; whenever we engage in conversation, we intend to be
cooperative and one way of being cooperative is giving as much information as its
being required. The non-natural meaning is variable and depends on the context; it
is not part of the conventional meaning of the expression.
Because they won in the first context is more than the addressee was
expecting and in the second less, in each case it gives rise to a non-conventional
meaning which was called by Grice implicature. He coined this word o cover any
non-conventional meaning that is implied, conveyed indirectly through hints and
understood implicitly without ever being explicitly stated.
According to Grice, there is a set of assumptions which guide the conduct of
conversational Xs and which can be formulated as guidelines for efficient use of
language in conversation to further cooperative ends. He identified as guidelines 4
basic maxims of conversation which jointly express a general cooperative principle:
make your contribution such as is required at the stage at which it occurs,
by the accepted purpose of the talk X in which you are engaged. The 4 maxims
are:
A m of quantity: make our contribution as informative as it is required.
: do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
B m of quality: make your contribution one that is true; do not say what you
believe to be false & do not say that for which yu lack adecquate evidence.
C m of relation : be relevant

D m of manner: be perspicuous; avoid obscurity of expression, avoid ambiguity, be

brief, be orderly.
Speakers may choose to not obey one of these maxims. When talk does not
precede these specifications, speakers assume that at a deeper level, these
maxims are nevertheless followed.
The inferences that arise to preserve the assumption of cooperation are
called by Grice conversational implicature. There are 2 ways for conv. Implicature
to arise: when the speaker follows the maxims ( inferences are called standard
implicative) od when the speaker does no follow the maxims ( the speaker exploits).
He further dinstinguished between generalized and particularized conversational
implicatures. Generalized conv impl arise irrespective of the context in which they
occur, aise without a particular context. ( ex: I walked into a house -> the house is
not mine). Particularized conv implic are derived not from the utterance alone but
from the utterance in context ( ex: the dog looks very happy -> perhaps he has
eaten the roast beef). Generalized implic are inferred orrespective of the context
of utterance and result from the existence of the Quantity and Manner maximx.
Particularized conv impl are inferred in relation to a context and result from the
existence of the maxim of Relation.
Conversational implicatures can also be created when the speaker flouts: ex:
if he does it, he does it the speaker flouts the maxim of quantity and implicates
its not of our business. Flouting in the maxim of quality gives place to irony : ex:
how smart you are! implicates you failed the exam.