Implicature

Implicature is a technical term in the pragmatics sub-field of linguistics, coined by H. P. Grice, which refers to what is suggested in an utterance, 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.

Paul Grice identified three types of general conversational implicatures:

1. The speaker deliberately flouts a conversational maxim to convey an additional meaning not expressed literally. For instance, a speaker responds to the question "How did you like the guest lecturer?" with the following utterance:

If the speaker is assumed to be following the cooperative principle, in spite of flouting the maxim of relevance, then the utterance must have an additional nonliteral meaning, such as: "The content of the lecturer's speech was confusing."

2. The speaker’s desire to fulfill two conflicting maxims results in his or her flouting one maxim to invoke the other. For instance, a speaker responds to the question "Where is John?" with the following utterance:

In this case, the maxim of quantity and the maxim of quality are in conflict. A cooperative speaker does not want to be ambiguous but also does not want to give false information by giving a specific answer in spite of his uncertainty. By flouting the maxim of quantity, the speaker invokes the maxim of quality, leading to the implicature that the speaker does not have the evidence to give a specific location where he believes John is.

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