LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 12 : 7 July 2012
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIAL

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2012
M. S. Thirumalai
Custom Search

Conventional Implicatures

Iftikhar Haider Nagra, Ph.D. Student

Conventional implicature remains a controversial domain. While it continues to be invoked to handle non-truth conditional aspects of lexical meaning, this tends to constitute an admission of analytic failure, a label rather than true explanation of the phenomenon in question. (Horn, 2004: 6)

Conventional Implicature: A controversial Term

This paper discusses and highlights different aspects of conventional implicatures (CIs). Conventional Implicature is a highly controversial term that is viewed in different ways by different pragmatics theorists. According to Horn (2004), CI can be defined as, an implicature that is part of the stored meaning of a lexical item or expression in the mental lexicon. CIs are not part of the truth conditions of the sentence that contains it, and they cannot be derived from the principles of language use, i.e. they are independent of the cooperative principle and its maxims (Grice, 1975).

The Roots of the Concept

Many theorists in the field of pragmatics hold different views about conventional implicature. The roots of this concept can be traced back to the work of Locke and Frege. Grice was a pioneer who introduced the term conventional implicature, and due to his initial work this term gained some popularity among other theorists. Grice failed to provide a clear definition of this class of meaning, and similarly failed to elaborate upon whether it is part of semantics or pragmatics. This lack of information about Grice’s take on conventional implicatures has given rise to contradictory views by different theorists. According to Feng (2010), Grice’s treatment of conventional implicatures is “incoherent, inadequate and thus vulnerable” (2010: 74).

This paper will discuss details of different theories about conventional implicatures to help us understand the views of those who accept or reject Grice’s traditional conception of CIs.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Iftikhar Haider Nagra, M.Phil., M.A. TESOL, Ph.D. Student
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
2101-203 Hazelwood Drive Apartment#203
Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
linguain3@gmail.com
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.