The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Conversational Implicatures Are Still Cancellable

På svenska

Author

Summary, in English

Is it true that all conversational implicatures are cancellable? In some recent works (Weiner 2006, followed by Blome-Tillmann 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 paper 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.

Department/s

Publishing year

2013

Language

English

Pages

321-327

Publication/Series

Acta Analytica

Volume

28

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Languages and Literature

Keywords

  • Conversational implicatures
  • Cancellability hypothesis
  • Implication by irony

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0353-5150
  • DOI 10.1007/s12136-012-0177-x