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say: and normally implicates one particular order of succesion, or normally implicates
exclusion of one of the disjuncts; if-then normally implicates consequentiality between
antecedent and consequent, and so on. We can see that implicature cannot be part of what
is being said, by considering the fact that it can be cancelled out. I can say A happened
and B happened, but not in that order, where but not in that order obviously cancels out
the implication of succession of and.
To illustrate what is meant by implicature, and to show that it is quite distinct from
what is said, Grice introduces a third notion, namely non-conventional implicature.
This differs from conventional implicature in that it is very obviously distinct from what
is being said. Grice (1975, p. 43) gives an example:
A and B are talking about a mutual friend, C, who is now working in a
bank. A asks B how C is getting on in his job, and B replies, Oh quite well
I think; he likes his colleagues, and he hasn‘t been to prison yet.
Whatever is implicated here obviously depends on many fact about A, B, C, and their life
histories, and is thus in no sense conventionally implicated.
There is, however, a subclass of non-conventional implicature which has aspects of
conventionality in it, and it is this class of implicature which has been so influential in
pragmatic theory—it is what Grice calls conversational implicature. Conversational
implicature is essentially connected with certain general features of discourse, and these
general features of discourse arise from the fact that if our talk exchanges are to be
rational, they must consist of utterances which are in some way connected to each other.
What guarantees this connection is called the cooperative principle: make your
contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose
or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.
In order to comply with this principle, speakers need to follow a number of
subprinciples, which fall into four categories, of quantity, quality, relation, and manner:
I Maxims of quantity (which relate to the amount of information to be provided):
1 Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the
exchange.
2 Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
II Maxims of quality Supermaxim: Try to make your contribution one that is true.
More specifically:
1 Do not say what you believe to be false.
2 Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
III Maxim of relation: be relevant. (Grice is, of course, aware of the difficulty of
deciding what is relevant when. Smith and Wilson (1979, p. 177), suggest that one
remark is relevant to another if the two remarks together, along with background
knowledge, provide new information which could not have been derived from either of
the remarks alone, along with background knowledge. See also Sperber and Wilson
(1986), and Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1987, 10, pp. 697–754).
IV Maxims of manner (which concern not so much what is said, but how it is said):
Supermaxim: Be perspicuous.