Implicature

Implicature for speakers is meaning one thing by saying something else. Semantic implicatures are part of sentence meaning, whereas conversational implicatures depend on the utterance context. Conventional forms of conversational implicature include figures and modes of speech like irony and relevance implicature. A sentence has an implicature when speakers conventionally use sentences of that form with the corresponding implicature. Speakers implicate things for many reasons. Some apply to saying (communication, self-expression, record creation), others do not (verbal efficiency, misleading without lying, veiling, good social relations, style, and entertainment). A sentence has an implicature today because that use became self-perpetuating. The dependence of implicature on intention and convention, and the variety of conflicting goals implicature serves, show that implicatures cannot be derived from conversational principles. Interpreting implicatures is largely the automatic exercise of a competence acquired with one’s native language rather than calculation.