1.3.3.

Implication and implicature

The third sort of complication mentioned in 1.3.1 was that
information is often conveyed by sentences using devices other
than the expression of propositions. We will not be able to set aside
this feature of language once and for all. Instead, we will now begin
to develop means for dealing with it, and we will apply and further
extend these ideas at several points later in the course.
In cases where a conclusion is drawn from a single assumption,
the term implies serves as a good ordinary English synonym for
our technical term entails. Thus we can say that the sentence My
class was taught this morning implies A class was taught. The
philosopher H. Paul Grice employed the term implicates to
capture a different idea that is sometimes expressed by the
ordinary use of the term implies. It is not uncommon for
information to be suggested by a sentence even though it is not
entailed and thus is not part of what the sentence literally says.
For example, my assertion of the sentence My class was taught
this morning would, in most contexts, suggest that I did not teach
the class myself. However, this is not part of what I said, so My
class was taught this morning implicates I did not teach my class
this morning but does not imply it.
The term suggest, which is used here as a contrast to say, could
be misleading. It is not intended to convey the idea of subjective
association. What a sentence implicates can be as much the
product of rules of language as what it implies; but the rules
leading to implicature are not (or are not only) rules assigning
truth conditions. To see what they might be, let us consider an
extension of our simple model of language use that accommodates
implicature; in its outlines, it is due to Grice.
Although we are often exhorted to listen critically, language
would scarcely serve us if we did not assume in most cases that
people know what they are talking about and that they speak
honestly. To employ a term that has come to be used in this
connection, we accommodate our beliefs to what people say. For
example, according to the model of language described in 1.2.4 ,
when someone makes an assertion, we assume that the actual
world is among the possible worlds in which that assertion is true.
To account for implicature, we extend the scope of accommodation
to include not only the truth of assertions but also other features
to include not only the truth of assertions but also other features
assertions ought to have. The maxim Speak the truth! is no doubt
the key rule governing assertions, but other maxims, such as Be
informative! and Be relevant!, also play a role. Someone who
assumed I was obeying all maxims of this sort when I said, “My
class was taught this morning,” might reason as follows:
Although Helman’s assertion My class was taught this
morning would be perfectly true if he had taught his
class, it would be a strange thing to say. The proposition
expressed by I taught my class this morning would have
contained more information and information that is
equally relevant. So if he had taught his class, he ought to
have said so; and I will therefore assume he did not teach
the class.
Let us adopt some further current terminology and say that an
assertion is appropriate when it is in accord with all maxims
governing language use and that it is otherwise inappropriate.
An assertion could be inappropriate even though true, and we
usually accommodate our beliefs about the world to the
assumption that the assertions others make are not only true but
appropriate for the context in which they are made.
These ideas can be used to state contrasting definitions for
implication and implicature. We know already how to define
implication because we know how to define entailment. Applying
our definition of entailment to the case of a single premise and
restating it somewhat to help in giving a parallel definition of
implicature, we have this:
φ implies ψ if and only if φ cannot be true when ψ is false.
To define implicature, we employ the more general concept of
appropriateness.
φ implicates ψ (in a given sort of situation) if and only if φ
cannot be appropriate (in that sort of situation) when ψ is
false.
That is, while implications are conditions necessary for truth,
implicatures are conditions necessary for appropriateness. (Here
we follow the grammatical pattern of implication and use the term
implicature for the things a sentence implicates as well as for the
relation between a sentence and these things.) When it is defined
relation between a sentence and these things.) When it is defined
as it is above, implicature subsumes implication: a sentence
implicates whatever it implies though it may implicate things that
it does not imply. This is a convenient way of relating the two
ideas, but there is no consensus about using the terms in this way.
Many would use implicature more narrowly to cover only those
conditions necessary for appropriateness that are not necessary for
truth.
In the example used to introduce the idea of implicature, the
implicature was a product of the context in which the sentence was
used. For, if it was well known that I had made a bet that I could
avoid using the word I for the next 24 hours, no one would have
been misled by my failure to refer to myself as the teacher of the
morning’s class. But there are cases where the implicature attaches
to particular words in a way that makes it unavoidable. Consider,
for example, this bit of dialogue:
Q: Was the movie any good?
A: Yes. Even John was laughing.
The assertion Even John was laughing has a number of
implicatures that depend on the conversational setting (e.g., that
John was at the movie and, perhaps, that it was a comedy), but it
also has one that derives from presence of the word even. This
implicature is easier to recognize than to state, but it comes to
something like the claim that it is hard to make John laugh.
Implicatures attaching to particular words can be especially
troublesome because they have the same sort of independence of
context that holds for the implications we want to study. One test
that can be used to distinguish them from implications is to ask a
yes-no question. When asked Was even X laughing? about
someone X who had laughed at the movie but who laughed easily,
we would not answer with a simple “No” but rather say something
like, “Yes, but he’ll laugh at anything.” Such yes-but answers
indicate that the sentence we were asked about is true but
inappropriate. Other qualified affirmative answers can play a
similar role and we will refer to them also as yes-but answers. To
simply answer “Yes” in cases where a sentence is true but has a
false implicature could mislead our audience into thinking that the
sentence is entirely appropriate and thus that the implicature is
true. Indeed, a true sentence with a false implicature could be
true. Indeed, a true sentence with a false implicature could be
described as “true but misleading.” Yes-but answers acknowledge
the truth of such a sentence while correcting its misleading
suggestions. (There are further tests that can be used to distinguish
implicatures and implications, and we will consider some others in
4.1.2 .)
Glen Helman 25 Aug 2005