Explicatures and implicatures

It is obvious that the hearer’s interpretation of an utterance involves linguistic decoding. What may be less apparent is that most if not all utterances are underspecified; the linguistic output only provides evidence of the speaker’s thoughts. It is up to the hearer to work out the speaker’s intent by integrating all relevant contextual signals during inferential interpretation. This is done not just by decoding linguistic output and disambiguating referents (e.g., temporal such as now and tomorrow, personal such as pronouns he and I, and situational such as near and home) but accessing relevant background knowledge to enrich the utterance and form reasonable conclusions. Our experience with language certainly helps with this process. For instance, individuals develop expectations for how language is used in specific situations and how it may progress given this use. We also form expectations or assumptions about other interlocutors, such as their opinions, interests, preferences and background knowledge. According to the relevance-theoretic framework all comprehension is inferential.100 _{Inference requires the ability known as theory of mind: to make} assumptions about others and metarepresent their thoughts and intentions (e.g., Harry knows that I think he’s angry). Individuals use these reasoning abilities to understand relevant aspects of their environment and experiences; that is “when we observe some phenomenon, we try to think of a reason why that phenomenon might be the way it is” (LaPolla, 2015: 31). Sperber (1995: 192, internal quotation in original) explains that “‘[i]nference’ is just the psychologists’ term for what we ordinarily call ‘reasoning.’” Individuals intuitively and automatically apply reasoning skills when presented with ostensive communication, i.e., inferentially interpret what was communicated, why it was communicated in that way and on this occasion using those paralinguistic cues, how all of it interacts with previous communication, memories and beliefs, etc. Thought about in this way,

100 _{Since linguistically encoded communication underdetermines the propositional meaning, no utterance}

can be entirely interpreted by linguistic decoding alone; pragmatic inference is required to fill-in the gaps between the speaker’s intended meaning and her linguistically packaged utterance.

inferencing is a process of forming reasonable conclusions, relative to one’s worldview, by integrating contextual factors with the various semantic-pragmatic codes presented.

During communication, the speaker communicates propositions that are either explicatures or implicatures; these two types of propositions are discrete, but both are contextually constrained, and both prompt the hearer to use reasoning abilities while making pragmatic assumptions (Sperber & Wilson, 1995; Wilson & Carston, 2007; Carston, 2016a; Wilson, 2016b: 11). Explicatures are ostensively communicated and linguistically encoded within the utterance (i.e., constrained by combined semantic-pragmatic meaning and context). Implicatures, although also ostensively communicated, may be triggered by linguistic and/or paralinguistic cues and are constrained by contextual assumptions alone (i.e., no semantic constraints), in particular, by those assumptions triggered and retrieved from encyclopaedic memory. The hearer inferentially interprets only those implicatures that are perceived and that the speaker could have intended (in other words, reasoning/inferring will not occur unless the hearer is given cause). Like all inferential interpretation, the hearer follows the path of least effort in realising both explicatures and implicatures and will stop when he has found a satisfactory interpretation. Relevance theory claims that since utterances typically underspecify the speaker’s intended meaning or thoughts, pragmatic meaning derived through contextual factors are believed to carry more weight during interpretation – i.e., more than semantic meaning – as linguistic decoding cannot alone resolve underspecification. Consequently, both explicatures and implicatures must be automatically and pragmatically adjusted in context. In this way, “we manage to communicate much more than we [linguistically –AG] encode and decode, and not just occasionally, but all the time” (Sperber, 1995: 191). This pragmatic adjustment process that incorporates contextual factors during interpretation is essential in determining relevance and forming reasonable conclusions that metarepresent the speaker’s intentions. The sections below describe what is meant by degrees of explicitness and the differences between higher-level explicatures and contextual implicatures.

Since linguistic expressions underspecify speaker intentions and all communication involves inferential interpretation, no verbal proposition is entirely explicit. The speaker relies on the hearer’s ability to resolve underspecifications when creating an utterance that is both meaningful and relevant (i.e., its cognitive effects outweigh the required processing effort). The recovery of explicatures relies, to varying degrees, on linguistic decoding and inference. The degree to which an explicature is explicit is determined by the amount of inference relative to the amount of linguistic decoding during interpretation. In other words, an explicature is more explicit the less inference is required to recover the proposition and less explicit the more inference is required.

The more the speaker can assume the hearer will infer the intended meaning (by accessing mutually manifest assumptions), the less explicit the speaker needs to make the proposition (LaPolla, 1997). The distinction between explicit and implicit communication as well as degrees of explicitness leads to two more distinctions regarding explicatures: namely that of basic explicatures, as described above, and a sub-variety known as higher-level (or -order) explicatures (also referred to as propositional attitude (e.g., Ifantidou, 1994: 111, 112; Wilson, 2016b: 18)) and the further distinction between higher-level explicatures and contextual implicatures.

Both basic explicatures (explicatures hereafter) and higher-level explicatures are derived from linguistically encoded items. But while interpreting explicatures requires linguistic decoding in context, the interpretation of higher-level explicatures requires this with the addition of a form of mind-reading, or the ability to use the speaker’s utterance as evidence for understanding the speaker’s connection to that utterance and from that, forming extra-meaning about the speaker’s intentions (Wilson, 1999: 129). Wilson (2016b: 18) explains that this kind of reasoning ability is necessary because higher-level explicatures not only provide cues about the speaker’s thoughts but “carry information about the speaker’s propositional or affective attitude”. In essence, higher-level explicatures encode extra-meaning triggered by linguistic and paralinguistic output and thus guide the hearer in inferring the speaker’s intentions. The extra-meaning requires pragmatic interpretation that involves access to a plethora of contextual assumptions including mutual background knowledge, pragmatic familiarity and accessibility, and mind-reading abilities that enable the hearer to form metarepresentations. Consider for example the utterance in (1).

(1)

It will get cold.

If the speaker combines this utterance with the adverbial unfortunately, as in (2a), the higher-level explicature might be one of regret. By altering the final intonation, as in (2b), it is one of speculation, apprehension or contradiction, depending on the prosodic shape and other paralinguistic cues. And using the parenthetical you know, as in (2c), may trigger any number of higher-level explicatures depending on intonation and context.

(2)

(a) Unfortunately, it will get cold. (b) It will get cold?

A higher-level explicature is extra-meaning embedded within the utterance that guides the inferential process. Higher-level explicatures are not linguistic items but are interpretations triggered by their use (paralinguistic input may also trigger higher-level explicatures). Relevance theory explains that higher-level explicatures such as those represented in (2a) – (2c) are derived inferences that play an important role in the inferential interpretation of all utterances, in part because they efficiently communicate extra-meaning about the speaker or the speaker’s intended meaning with minimal effort.

Like higher-level explicatures, contextual implicatures also are constrained by context and input, require mind-reading ability, and guide the interpretive process. However, contextual implicatures are the interpretive results of combining existing assumptions (i.e., encyclopaedic knowledge) with new input (i.e., contextual effects), or as Wilson and Sperber (2004: 608) state, a contextual implicature is “a conclusion deducible from the input and the context together, but from neither input nor context alone.” Because of this, interpreting contextual implicatures requires the ability to attribute speaker meaning based on contextual assumptions (i.e., combined input and existing assumption(s)).

A contextual implicature is a type of cognitive effect that requires background knowledge to intuitively decipher. Other cognitive effects will either strengthen or weaken assumptions, but Wilson and Sperber (2004: 608) state that contextual implicatures are “[t]he most important type of cognitive effect achieved by processing an input in a context”; presumably this is because they lead the hearer to create entirely new assumptions. Statements (3a) – (3e) are examples of contextual implicatures that may be derived from (1). Since background knowledge is required, let us assume that the existing assumption is that Mary knows that Peter does not like cold soup. Depending on other existing assumptions that are based on how well Peter and Mary know one another, Mary’s utterance may serve as a trigger for Peter to conclude she intended any of the following contextual implicatures.

(3)

(a) Mary wants Peter to stop what he is doing and eat the soup now. (b) Mary is reminding Peter that he will not like the soup if it is not hot. (c) Mary will think Peter dislikes this kind of soup if he does not eat it now.

(d) Mary may assume Peter is angry about something, possibly her, if he does not show some interest in the soup.

As the above examples suggest, interpreting contextual implicatures involve those cognitive processes described in theory of mind. The examples in (3a) – (3e) also illustrate a movement toward progressively weaker implicatures – not in terms of meaning or importance but in accessibility, pointing out that the weaker the implicature, the stronger the need for mutually manifest cognitive environments to process the contextual implicature. Furthermore, it should be noted that at least in some cases the weaker the implicature, the greater the possibility of a richer contextual implicature.

This section has outlined the relevance-theoretic distinctions between explicatures and implicatures, discussed degrees of explicitness and explained higher-level explicatures as compared to explicatures and contextual implicatures.