Philosophy Pragmatics Questions Long
Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory is a pragmatic framework that aims to explain how communication works by focusing on the concept of relevance. According to this theory, speakers communicate with the intention of providing relevant information to the hearer, and the hearer's task is to infer this intended meaning based on the available contextual cues.
Implicature is a crucial concept in relevance theory as it refers to the additional meaning that is conveyed indirectly or implicitly in a communication act. It occurs when the speaker intends to communicate more than what is explicitly stated, and the hearer is able to infer this additional meaning based on the context and the principle of relevance.
Sperber and Wilson argue that implicatures arise from the hearer's inference process, which involves the recognition of the speaker's intention to be relevant. When a speaker communicates, they provide a set of contextual cues that guide the hearer's interpretation. These cues can be linguistic, such as the choice of words or sentence structure, or non-linguistic, such as gestures or facial expressions.
The hearer's task is to identify the most relevant interpretation of the speaker's utterance by considering the contextual cues and their own background knowledge. This process involves a search for cognitive effects, which are the mental representations that result from the interpretation of the speaker's intended meaning.
Implicatures can be categorized into two types: conventional and conversational implicatures. Conventional implicatures are derived from conventional meanings associated with certain words or phrases. For example, when someone says "John is a bachelor," the conventional implicature is that John is unmarried.
Conversational implicatures, on the other hand, are derived from the cooperative principle, which is a fundamental principle of communication. The cooperative principle states that speakers should make their contributions as informative, truthful, relevant, and clear as required by the context. When a speaker violates this principle, the hearer infers a conversational implicature.
Grice's maxims, which are specific guidelines for cooperative communication, play a significant role in the derivation of conversational implicatures. The maxims include the maxim of quantity (provide enough information), the maxim of quality (be truthful), the maxim of relevance (be relevant), and the maxim of manner (be clear and avoid ambiguity).
For example, if someone asks, "Do you have any plans for the weekend?" and the hearer responds, "I have a lot of work to do," the implicature is that the hearer does not have any plans for the weekend. This implicature is derived from the maxim of relevance, as the hearer's response is not directly answering the question but is still relevant to the context.
In summary, implicature is a key concept in Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory. It refers to the additional meaning that is conveyed indirectly or implicitly in a communication act. Implicatures arise from the hearer's inference process, where they identify the most relevant interpretation of the speaker's utterance based on contextual cues and their own background knowledge. Implicatures can be conventional or conversational, with conversational implicatures being derived from the cooperative principle and Grice's maxims.