Understanding what is not said I

CP

conversational principles/maxims

hedges

using phrases or words to signal the intentional violation of a maxim

failing to fulfil a maxim

• violating it

• opting out

• being faced with a clash

• flouting it, blatantly failing to fulfil it

types of implicatures

• conventional

• conversational

conventional implicatures

do not depend on CP, a relation of content comes into being by the use of certain words (therefore, however, etc.)

conversational implicatures

• generalized conversational implicatures

• particularized conversational implicatures

generalized conversational implicatures

no background knowledge needed to understand what is meant

particularized conversational implicatures

require certain background knowledge

features of conventional implicatures

conversational implicata are

• calculable

• cancellable

• nondetachable

• nonconventional

• indeterminate

calculable

can be “worked out”

cancellable

“I don’t mean to imply…”

nondetachable

bound to content of proposition

nonconventional

not part of the meaning of uttered forms

indeterminate

you do not have control over all implicatures and how your words will be received

cognitive relevance

context + proposition → interaction

inference

implicatures are recoverable by reasoning processes

principle of relevance

the speaker tries to be as relevant as possible in the circumstances

cost and benefit

relevance of a proposition increases with number of contextual implications it yields, it decreases with the amount of processing needed to obtain them

ostensive-inferential communication

making someone aware of something without flat-out saying it

comprehension

a combination of linguistic decoding, resolution of linguistic undeterminacies, and inferencing

relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure

follow a path of least effort in computing cognitive effects, stop when your expectations of relevance are satisfied