Conversational implicature

Implicature is a technical term in the pragmatics linguistics, coined by H. P. Grice, which refers to what is suggested in an , even though neither expressed nor strictly implied (that is, entailed) by the utterance. As an example, the sentence "Mary had a baby and got married" strongly suggests that Mary had the baby before the wedding, but the sentence would still be strictly true if Mary had her baby after she got married. Further, if we append the qualification "not necessarily in that order" to the original sentence, then the implicature is now cancelled even though the meaning of the original sentence is not altered.

"Implicature" is an alternative to "implication", which has additional meanings in logic and informal language.

Conversational implicatures are implicatures that arise during conversation, where the speaker voluntarily flouts, or violates, one of maxims in the maxims of conversation that create an implied meaning to the addressee. These conversational implicatures have many uses in creating an additional meaning to a given utterance.

     1. "So where do you want to eat? Applebee's has a huge selection of burgers, appetizers, salads, and drinks! Everything is super affordable, too."
     As seen here, this utterance flouts the maxim of quantity because of the extra amount of information given about the types of options and pricing. giving examples about the types of options at the restaurant and mentioning their prices gives much more information than needed in reference to a name of a restaurant. Also, this example flouts the maxim of relevance because the name of a restaurant is not directly relevant to a list of food items and prices.

     2. "Who's driving?" and the addressee responds, "Well, my car only fits 3 people." In this context, the addressee is flouting the maxim of relevance, because the question of who is driving is not directly related to the amount of people that someone's car can fit. Also, the use of only is a quantity maxim that semantically flouts that there is a maximum amount of people that can fit in the car; and, that the amount of people present exceeds this limit.

     3. "What items on your menu are dairy free?" and the addressee responds, "The lobster mac and cheese." In this example, the addressee is flouting the maxim of quality because the utterance of mac and cheese is known to not always be dairy free. Since this utterance is not true, we can conclude that the maxim of quality is being violated.

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