Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics
- Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Fundamentals of Sociopragmatics
- 2 Sociopragmatics
- 3 Inference and Implicature
- 4 Speaker Meaning, Commitment and Accountability
- 5 Social Actions
- 6 Stance and Evaluation
- 7 Reflexivity and Meta-awareness
- 8 Participation and Footing
- 9 Conventionalization and Conventions
- 10 Synchronic and Diachronic Pragmatic Variability
- 11 Activity Types and Genres
- 12 Social Groups and Relational Networks
- Part II Topics and Settings in Sociopragmatics
- Part III Approaches and Methods in Sociopragmatics
- Index
- References
3 - Inference and Implicature
from Part I - Fundamentals of Sociopragmatics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2021
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics
- Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Fundamentals of Sociopragmatics
- 2 Sociopragmatics
- 3 Inference and Implicature
- 4 Speaker Meaning, Commitment and Accountability
- 5 Social Actions
- 6 Stance and Evaluation
- 7 Reflexivity and Meta-awareness
- 8 Participation and Footing
- 9 Conventionalization and Conventions
- 10 Synchronic and Diachronic Pragmatic Variability
- 11 Activity Types and Genres
- 12 Social Groups and Relational Networks
- Part II Topics and Settings in Sociopragmatics
- Part III Approaches and Methods in Sociopragmatics
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter covers the notions of inference and implicature from a broad pragmatic and sociopragmatic perspective. Starting from the fact that inference has wide applicability also in psychology and logic, while implicature is limited only to pragmatics, it opens by drawing three distinctions: (1) between inference in a broad and in a narrow sense, (2) between inference and implicature and (3) between inference and implicature as both product and process. It then discusses processes of implicature generation within Gricean and post-Gricean accounts. While the general position taken is that 'speakers implicate, hearers infer', this position is also problematized by drawing on sociopragmatics research that challenges the notion of the speaker’s intention and explores how (else) meaning can be generated.
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- The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics , pp. 30 - 47Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
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