Conversational Implicature versus Conventional Implicature

Conversational Implicature and Its Characteristics

The paradigmatic kind of reasoning on the part of the hearer for the determination of implicatures, according to Grice, follows this pattern: “He has said that p; there is no reason to suppose that:

ü he is not observing the maxims, or at least the CP;

ü he could not be doing this unless he thought that q;

ü he knows (and knows that I know that he knows) that I can see that the supposition that he thinks that q is required;

ü he has done nothing to stop me thinking that q;

ü he intends me to think, or is at least willing to allow me to think, that q; and so he has implicated that q” [8, p. 31].

Applied to the earlier example, about the banker, A would reason in the following way: B has said that C has not been to prison yet (p);

· he is apparently flouting the maxim of manner, but I have no reason to suppose that he is opting out CP;

· his violation of the maxim would only be apparent if he is thinking that C is potentially dishonest (q);

· B knows (and knows that I know that he knows) that I can figure out he is thinking that q; so he has implicated that q.

Conversational implicatures have the following characteristics:

1. They are cancelable: “a putative conversational implicature that p is explicitly cancelable if, to the form of words the utterance of which putatively implicates that p, it is admissible to add but not p, or I do not mean to imply that p, and it is contextually cancelable if one can find situations in which the utterance of the form of words would simply not carry the implicature” [7, p. 44].

2. They are non-detachable: “it will not be possible to find another way of saying the same thing, which simply lacks the implicature in question, except where some special feature of the substituted version is itself relevant to the determination of an implicature (in virtue of one of the maxims of manner)” [8, p. 39].

3. They are calculable: “the presence of a conversational implicature must be capable of being worked out; for even if it can in fact be intuitively grasped, unless the intuition is replaceable by an argument, the implicature (if present at all) will not count as a conversational implicature” [8, p. 31].

This last property is what Grice considers crucial for distinguishing between conversational and conventional implicatures.

Conventional implicature is independent of the cooperative principle and its maxims. A statement always carries its conventional implicature. Consider the following statement: “Joe is poor but happy”. This sentence implies poverty and happiness are not compatible but in spite of this Joe is still happy. The conventional interpretation of the word ‘but’ will always create the implicature of a sense of contrast. So, “Joe is poor but happy” will always necessarily imply “Surprisingly Joe is happy in spite of being poor”. Conventional implicatures are generated by the meaning of certain particles like ‘but’ or ‘therefore.’ Consider the difference between (1) and (2):

1. He is an Englishman, therefore he is brave.

2. He is an Englishman, and he is brave.

3. His being brave follows from his being English.

According to Grice, a speaker has said the same with (1) as with (2). The difference is that with (1) he implicates (3). This is a conventional implicature. It is the conventional meaning of ‘therefore,’ and not maxims of cooperation, that carry us beyond what is said.

Grice's concept of conventional implicatures is the most controversial part of his theory of conversation for many followers, for several reasons. According to some, its application to particular examples runs against common intuitions. By using the word ‘therefore’ is the speaker not saying that there is some causal connection between being brave and being English? Isn't he saying and bot merely implying that one's being brave follows from one's being English. Moreover, the category of conventional implicatures blurs the distinction between what is said, usually conceived as determined by the semantic conventions of language, and what is implicated, usually thought of as a matter of inference as to a speaker's intentions in saying what he or she does. Conventional sentence meaning contributes crucially to what is said, which is considered essentially different from implicatures; but now we have the result that some elements of conventional meaning do not contribute to what is said but to implicatures (albeit conventional). Finally, it places the study of the conventional meaning of some expressions within the realm of pragmatics (study of implicatures), rather than semantics, usually conceived as the home of conventional meaning.

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