Infelicitous cancellation: the explicit cancellability test for conversational implicature revisited (original) (raw)
Related papers
Conversational Implicatures and Cancellability
In this paper I argue against a criticism by Matthew Weiner to Grice’s thesis that cancellability is a necessary condition for conversational implicature. I argue that the purported counterexamples fail because the supposed failed cancellation in the cases Weiner presents is not meant as a cancellation but as a reinforcement of the implicature. I moreover point out that there are special situations in which the supposed cancellation may really work as a cancellation. Keywords: Conversational implicature, Cancellability, Matthew Weiner, Paul Grice
Conversational Implicatures Are Still Cancellable
Acta Analytica, 28: 321-327, 2013
Is it true that all conversational implicatures are cancellable? In some recent works (Weiner Analysis 66(2):127–130, 2004, followed by Blome-Tillmann Analysis 68(2):156–160, 2008 and, most recently, by Hazlett 2012), the property of cancellability that, according to Grice (1989), conversational implicatures must possess has been called into question. The aim of this article is to show that the cases on which Weiner builds his argument—the Train Case and the Sex Pistols Case— do not really suffice to endanger Grice’s Cancellability Hypothesis. What Weiner has shown with his examples is that a conversational implicature cannot be cancelled if the speaker, whose utterance gives rise to the implicature, does not intend to cancel it. To implicate is an intentional speech act and, therefore, cancelling an implicature must also be intentional and must be performed by the same speaker whose utterance gives rise to the putative implicature.
Implicature, Inference and Cancellability
Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy, 2013
The standard position in pragmatics to date has been that cancellability is useful way of differentiating implicatures from logical implications, semantic entailments and the like. In recent years, however, there has been considerable debate as to whether implicatures are in fact always cancellable, or indeed whether they are cancellable at all, amongst linguistic pragmaticians and language philosophers. In this chapter, it is suggested that cancellability encompasses a range of actions that play out in different ways depending on whether we are analysing inferences that can lead to implicatures or the implicatures themselves. In this way, we can see how analysts have often underplayed the contingency of inferences as well as the inherent indeterminacy of implicatures in such debates. It is proposed that cancellability should thus be the subject of further empirically-driven analyses in order to provide a solid foundation for the theorization of implicature.
Journal of Pragmatics, 2013
Cancelability is one of the main tests to identify conversational implicature in general, and scalar implicatures in particular. Despite this fact, cancelability itself is a phenomenon rarely looked at. This paper presents an account of when the cancellation of a scalar implicature is an acceptable discourse move and provides experimental evidence to support our proposal.
Ironic implicature strength and the test of explicit cancellability
Intercultural Pragmatics, 2018
In this paper, the Gricean notion of explicit cancellability Grice’s original spelling is “cancelability”. is used as a testable characteristic, able to indicate different degrees of strength for different types of (ironic) implicatures. According to the definition adopted for this analysis, implicature strength is determined by the likelihood of retrieval of an implicature in a specific context and, essentially, by the degree of certainty that the hearer maintains about the correctness of the inferred interpretation. Ironic implicature strength is considered the product of various factors (“factors of implicature strength”), some of which are always present (such as the type and strength of assumptions on which a derivation is based), while others are optional and appear in tandem with specific irony strategies. Irony strategies are categorized into two general types (meaning reversal and meaning replacement), which are expected to show different degrees of implicature strength, be...
To investigate the fact that the theory of Conversational Implicature proposed by Austin and later on extended by Grice can be universal and can be applied to all languages of the world, an idiolect from the Arabic language in this case.