Wuri Syaputri: Conversational Implicature

Levinson writes what I believe are the most instructive 70-something pages on the subject of conversational implicature. He is, from the very beginning, anxious to point out not only the great many advantages which the concept brings but also the puzzles it gives rise to. “Implicature,” he writes, “stands as a paradigmatic example of the nature and power of pragmatic explanations of linguistic phenomena” (p. 97) The main output of such a theory is that – as Grice in fact pointed out in Prolegomena to Grice (1989) – that over and beyond the stable semantic core there is an unstable, contextual layer of meaning. This layer of meaning may be seen as “the set of possible implicatures”. As long as we are able to define and predict the usage of this set, the theory itself might turn out to be profitable. Before we go further, it might perhaps be handy to stress that this level-division is also present in the nature of the four maxims (Quality, Quantity, Relation & Manner): they are, indeed, maxims – not rules. They express maximally co-operative communication and thus function not as conventions but as putting into practice a rationale for co-operative exchange. As a matter of fact, one of Grice’s powerful arguments was the fact that the same maxims or some derivates of them seem to operate also within non-linguistic behavior.

I’m not sure what to make of Levinson introduction of the term standard implicatures. He is not quoting anybody when introducing the term, not giving it a precise definition. From what I can understand, he means the more comprehensive category, of which the generalized implicatures are only a part. In this case, I’m not sure if particularized implicatures – according to his terminology – are to be opposed to the generalized or the “standard” ones. Whatever is the case, one can still make the Gricean distinction between implicatures which arise from (merely) observing a maxim (call them generalized or standard, the point is they don’t need a special context), and those implicatures which arise from flouting (at least) one maxim. In principle, each maxim can generate each type of implicature (examples are taken from pp. 105-108, the sign “+>” is for “implicates”):

Maxim	Utterance	Implicature	Type
Quantity	John has two PhDs	+> I believe he has +> I have adequate evidence for it	Generalized
Quantity	Is your name John?	+> I don’t know your name +> I want to know if your name is John	Generalized
Quantity	John has 4 kids	+> He has only 4 kids +> He has kids	Generalized
Quantity	The flag is white	+> The flag has no other colours	Generalized
Relevance	Pass the salt	+> Pass the salt now	Generalized
Manner	John packed and left	+> John first packed and then left	Generalized
Quality	A: How’s the whether in Britain? B: Oh, you know Britain. All sunny and blue skies…	+> It’s an awful weather, as it generally is here in Britain	Flouting
Quality	That gimnast is made of plastic!	+> She’s not made of plastic, she’s as if she’s made of plastic, she’s flexible	Flouting
Quantity	War is war	+> “terrible things always happen in war, that’s its nature and it’s no good lamentig that particular disaster” (p. 111)	flouting
Quantity	Either he’ll come or he won’t	+> “calm down, there’s no point in worrying about whether he’s going to come because there’s nothing we can do about it” (p. 111)	Flouting
Relevance	Johnny: Hey Sally let’s play some tennis Mother: How’s your homework getting along, Johnny?	+> you may not be free to play yet	Flouting
Manner	Miss Singer produced a series of sounds corresponding closely to the score of an aria from Rigoletto	+> Miss Singer is a bad singer	Flouting