COOPERATION AND
IMPLICATURE
Cooperation and Implicature
When people talk with each other,
they try to converse smoothly and
successfully. Cooperation is the
basis of successful conversations.
The concept and the function of
cooperation
and
implicature
are
fundamentally linked.
"This sense of cooperation is simply one
in which people having a conversation are
not normally assumed to be trying to
confuse, trick, or withhold relevant
information from each other" (Yule, 1996:
35).
Cooperation can be understood as an
essential factor when speakers and listeners
are interacting, in other words, it is the
expectation that the listener has towards the
speaker. The speaker is supposed to
convey true statements and say nothing
more than what is required.
Implicature can be considered as an
additional conveyed meaning (Yule,
1996: 35).
It is attained when a speaker intends to
communicate more than just what the
words mean. It is the speaker who
communicates something via
implicatures and the listener recognizes
those communicated meanings via
inference.
Implicatures are inferred based on the
assumption that the speaker observes or
flouts some principles of cooperation (different
authors have identified different principles),
The most famous one: Grice – 4 principles (so
called “maxims”)
Literal Meaning & Implicature
A: How is C getting on in his job?
B: Oh quite well, I think; he likes his colleagues
and he hasn’t been to prison yet.
>>C is the sort of person likely can’t control
himself from the temptation of his occupation
>> C’s colleagues are very unpleasant etc.
To understand what was said know (1) the
meaning of the words, (2) the identity of he, (3)
the time of utterance.
A : How did you like the guest speaker?
B : Well, I am sure he was speaking English.
What B implied or meant is that the content of
speaker’s speech is very confusing, it makes B
don’t understand.
A : Where is Mr. Ashuri?
B : He is either in the canteen or in the Mr.
Dedi’s room.
What B meant is that B wants not give
ambiguous or false information, that the
speaker does not have the evidence to give a
specific location where he believes Mr. Ashuri is.
A : Will Michael be at the meeting this
afternoon?
B : His car broke down.
What B implemented or meant is that Michel
will not come to the meeting, because he got
some troubles with his car, or Michael may
come late to the meeting.
A : Will you come to the John’s graduation
ceremony?
B : If I were not sick, I would come there.
What B meant is that B will not come to the
John’s graduation ceremony because B is sick.
A : I would rather my brother go home now.
What A meant is that her brother doesn’t go
home now.
A : Will you go to the party?
B
: If only I were healthy, I would be able
to go the party.
What B meant is that B is not healthy, so B is
not able to go to the party.
A
: Do you know where I can get some gas?
B
: There is a gas station around the corner.
What B implemented or meant is that the gas
station is open and someone can probably get the
gas there.
Mrs. Rosita acts as if she were a rich woman.
It means that she is not a rich woman.
Even if Dona runs quickly, she won’t catch the bus.
It means that Dona will never catch the bus, because
it is very fast.
A : Can you tell me the time?
B : Well, the milk man has come.
In this short conversation, A asks time to
B, but B gives answer indirectly. It
indicates that B may also not know the
accurate time, but B is in fact giving a
rough time.
A : Mr. Joe is really an old bag.
B : The weather has been quite delightful this
summer, hasn’t it?
What be implemented, suggested, or meant is
that A has said is too rude, so it means that the
topic must be change.
A : Has Mike had a wife?
B : He has been making a lot of trips to
Malaysia lately.
What B implied or meant is that B believe that
Mike may have a wife in Malaysia.
A : Where is Peter?
B : The light in his office is on.
What B implied or suggested or meant is that
Peter is in office.
A : If you don’t mind, would you accompany me
going to hospital?
B : Oh sure, but I have much homework today.
What B implied or suggested or meant is that he
cannot accompany A to go to hospital.
PAUL GRICE
• Grice’s aim was to understand how “speaker’s
meaning” rises from “sentence meaning” ( Speaker
meaning = Sentence meaning + What is implicated)
• Grice proposed that many aspects of “speaker’s
meaning” result from the assumption that the
participants in a conversation are cooperating in an
attempt to reach mutual goals – or at least are
pretending to do so!
Conversation is a cooperative behaviour,
and therefore proceeds by rules of
cooperative conduct.
Grice called this the Cooperative
Principle.
The linguistic meaning of what is said
+
The information from the context
(shared knowledge)
+
The assumption that the people
speaking are observing the cooperative
principle
=
Conversational implicature
Implicature interpretation requires both
Speaker and Hearer to be collaborative
Ex:
A. Where did you go?
B. Out.
A: Where does Arnold live?
B: Somewhere in southern California.
Jokes are a good example and often rely on the
hearer’s knowledge of the rules of conversation
for their humorous effect.
In the following joke, the woman is violating the
maxim of relevance:
I came home last night, and there’s a car in the
dining room. I said to my wife: “How did you get
the car in the dining room?” She said: “It was
easy. I made a left turn when I came out of the
kitchen.”
Conventional implicatures
not based on cooperative principle or maxims
encoded in the lexicon or grammar
not dependent on context for their
interpretations
Ex:
George is short but brave. (contrast)
Sue and Bill are divorced (conjunction)
He jumped on his horse and rode away. (sequence)
I dropped the camera and it broke (consequence)
Conventional implicature is part of the meaning of
a word or construction but not part of its truthconditions.
•Joe is poor but happy
Assertion (pernyataan yang jelas): Joe is poor.
The implicature is that not all of poor people are
happy.
This sentence implies poverty and happiness are
not compatible but in spite of this Joe is still happy.
The word of “but” create implicature of sense of
contrast.
•Alfie is a baby, but he is quite.
The truth is that Alfie is baby. Then, the
implicature is that babies are not usually quite.
•Bill is still swimming.
Assertion: Bill is swimming
The implicature is that Bill was swimming
earlier.
•John is Englishman but cowardly
Assertion: John is English and John is cowardly
The implicature is that John is being cowardly is
unexpected given his being an Englishman.
•Michael is Englishman, he is, therefore, brave
Assertion: Michael is English and Michael is
brave.
The implicature is that John’s being brave is a
consequence his being an Englishman.
•Mike can read German. Moreover, he can write
poems in this language.
Assertion: Mike can read German and Mike can
write poems in this language
The Implicature is that the word “German” means
a language (German Language). Therefore, besides
mike can read a text in German language he is also
able to write a poem in German language.
•He is a Chinese, he therefore uses chopsticks.
Assertion: He is Chinese and he uses chopsticks
The implicature: using chopsticks is Chinese
habit when they were eating.
•Mr. Smith leaved his office at 06.00 pm, and
Gina leaved her office late too.
Leaving office at 06.00 pm is late to leave some
works in the office, because the time work for an
employee is end at 05.00 pm.
•Marry manage to answer her young sister
question.
Assertion: Marry answers her young sister question.
Implicature: Marry found difficulty in answering her
young sister question.
Conversational implicatures
• Inferred via the cooperative principle or
maxims (observed, violated or flouted)
Ex:
A: I am out of petrol.
B: There is a garage on the corner.
According to Grice, utterance
interpretation is not a matter of
decoding messages, but rather
involves
(1) taking the meaning of the
sentences together with contextual
information,
(2) using inference rules
3) working out what the speaker means on
the basis of the assumption that the
utterance conforms to the maxims. The
main advantage of this approach from
Grice’s point of view is that it provides a
pragmatic explanation for a wide range of
phenomena, especially for conversational
implicatures--- a kind of extra meaning that
is not literally contained in the utterance.
Ex. (1)
Husband: Where are the car keys?
Wife: They’re on the table in the hall.
The wife has answered clearly (manner)
and truthfully (Quality), has given just the
right amount of information (Quantity)
and has directly addressed her
husband’s goal in asking the question
(Relation). She has said precisely what
she meant, no more and no less.
(2) Budi says,” He is a tiger.”
Example (2) is literally false, openly against
the maxim of quality, for no human is a tiger.
But the hearer still assumes that the speaker
is being cooperative and then infers that he
is trying to say something distinct from the
literal meaning. He can then work out that
probably the speaker meant to say that “he
has some characteristics of a tiger”.
(3) someone says “Tom has wooden ears”.
Sentence (3) is obviously false most
natural contexts and the speaker in
uttering it flouts the first maxim of
quality.
Generalized conversational
implicatures
•
independent of the context
Ex.: Indefinites
A car collided with John’s foot. (not John’s car /
not the speaker’s car)
the speaker is assumed to follow the maxim of
quantity, if he wanted to be more
specific/informative he would have said my
car or John’s car
–Generalized implicature: inferred
without a special reference to context:
•John walked into a house yesterday.
Infer that the house was not John’s
house
Yesterday there was a naughty boy
throwing my windows by stones.
–Particularized implicature – inferred only
due to a special context between particular
speaker and hearer.
A: Can you tell me the time?
B: Well, the milkman is here.
It must be the time when the milkman
comes.
•Particularized implicature dependens on a
specific context
Ex.:
Rick: Hey, coming to the party tonight?
Tom: My parents are visiting. (flouting relevance)
Ann: Where are you going with the dog?
Sam: To the V.E.T. (veterinarian/ahli
hewan)/(flouting manner)
Bert: Do you like ice-cream?
Ernie: Is the Pope Catholic? (flouting relevance)
Other type of Implicature
Scalar Implicature
Lexical (and logical) scales:
all, most, many, some
Numbers
According to the cooperation
principles, the speaker must use the
right member of the scale
Scalar
implicatures
communicated
by
choosing a word expressing a value from a
scale (quantity, frequency, etc.)
I’m studying linguistics and I’ve completed
some of the required courses (not all)
If the scale is all, most, many, some, few....,
the use of some implicates that all the
higher items in the scale are to be
considered negative.
Examples of Scalar Implicature
Bill has got some of Chomsky’s papers
Infer that Bill does not have all the
Chomsky’s papers
There will be five of us for dinner tonight
Infer that there will not be more than five of
us for dinner tonight
What is actually Paul Grice aiming at?
An outline of a systematic theory of
language use which tries to bridge the gap
between the truth-conditional interpretation of
expressions (along the lines of a formal logic)
and the wider meaning (what is said + what is
implicated) which they take on in everyday
conversation.
.