8.2: Conversational implicatures

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Let us begin by considering the simple conversation in (2):

(2) Arthur: Can you tell me where the post office is?
Bill: I’m a stranger here myself.

As a reply to Arthur’s request for directions, Bill’s statement is clearly intended to mean ‘No, I cannot.’ But the sentence meaning, or semantic content, of Bill’s statement does not contain or entail this intended meaning. The statement conveys the intended meaning only in response to that specific question. In a different kind of context, such as the one in (3), it could be intended to convey a very different meaning: willingness to engage in conversation on a wider range of topics, or at least sympathy for Arthur’s situation.

(3) Arthur: I’ve just moved to this town, and so far I’m finding it pretty tedious; I haven’t met a single person who is willing to talk about anything except next week’s local elections.
Bill: I’m a stranger here myself.

When the same sentence is used in two different contexts, these are two distinct utterances which may have different utterance meanings. But since the sentence meaning is identical, the difference in utterance meaning must be due to pragmatic inferences induced by the different contexts. As mentioned above, Grice referred to the kind of pragmatic inference illustrated in these examples as conversational implicature. Examples (2–3) illustrate the following characteristics of conversational implicatures:

The implicature is different from the literal sentence meaning; in Grice’s terms, what is implicated is different from “what is said”.
Nevertheless, the speaker intends for the hearer to understand both the sentence meaning and the implicature; and for the hearer to be aware that the speaker intends this.
Conversational implicatures are context-dependent, as discussed above.
Conversational implicatures are often unmistakable, but they are not “inevitable”, i.e. they are not logically necessary. In the context of (2), for example, Bill’s statement is clearly intended as a negative reply; but it would not be logically inconsistent for Bill to continue as in (4). In Grice’s terms we say that conversational implicatures are defeasible, meaning that they can be cancelled or blocked when additional information is provided.

(4) Arthur: Can you tell me where the post office is?
Bill: I’m a stranger here myself; but it happens that I have just come from the post office, so I think I can help you.

Conversational implicatures are not something strange and exotic; they turn out to be extremely common in everyday language use. Once we become aware of them, we begin to find them everywhere. They are an indispensable part of the system we use to communicate with each other.