implicature

Implicature is the pragmatic mechanism by which speakers convey meaning beyond the literal content of their utterances, relying on shared conventions, contextual inference, and the listener's capacity to recover intended implications. It operates through conversational maxims (quality, quantity, relation, manner) that listeners use to infer what is meant but not said. The parameters of implicature are: (1) a literal utterance that under-specifies the speaker's intent, (2) shared background assumptions between speaker and listener, (3) an inferential process that bridges the gap, and (4) the distinction between what is said (explicit content) and what is implicated (implicit content). Implicature persists through the teachable rules of conversational inference — the conventions by which communities learn to read between the lines. [formal: implicatura | substrate: mind | horizon: a moment | explicit: no | epoch: 0.20]