Implicatures by Sandrine Zufferey, Jacques Moeschler, and Anne Reboul

Abstract

Reviewed by: Implicatures by Sandrine Zufferey, Jacques Moeschler, and Anne Reboul Stavros Assimakopoulos Implicatures. By Sandrine Zufferey, Jacques Moeschler, and Anne Reboul. (Key topics in semantics and pragmatics.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 251. ISBN 9781107125650. $116 (Hb). It may sound like an overstatement, but what Zufferey, Moeschler, and Reboul set out to do in Implicatures truly is an ominous task. There are very few theoretical concepts within the broader field of linguistics, let alone specifically in semantics and pragmatics, that have been as hotly debated as that of implicature. Ever since Grice (1975) coined the term almost fifty years ago to describe a phenomenon that so routinely permeates verbal communication, there has been general agreement about its vital importance when it comes to discussing meaning, but the question of how it should best be approached—or even how many different types of implicature can ultimately be identified, for that matter—remains a point of debate to this day. A main reason for this has been that the general category of implicatures was originally postulated from a philosophical perspective, but eventual discussions, mainly pioneered by relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson 1995 [1986]), have focused in equal measure on its psychological instantiation. The extent, then, to which the authors of this monograph manage to not only provide an introduction to the topic that is accessible even for newcomers in the field but also masterfully synthesize the two perspectives on implicature is certainly admirable. The book is divided into three well-balanced parts, with the first laying the theoretical foundations for the discussion to follow, the second in turn dealing with each of the three types of implicature that Grice distinguished between, and the third going into empirical research on the topic. The same balance is also present across individual chapters, each of which notably includes a very useful summary, some discussion questions to help the reader monitor their understanding, and a section with pointers to essential further readings. The starting point for any discussion of implicature is bound to be the original Gricean exposition of the term, and the book at hand is no exception in this regard. Through the use of well-thought-out examples, the introductory chapter lays out this account, underlining its pivotal role, alongside speech-act theory, in the overall establishment of the field of inferential pragmatics. In doing so, it situates Grice’s theory of implicature within his broader account of meaning, it justifies the distinction between conventional and conversational implicatures, and it goes on to succinctly outline the properties of the latter category, which has, after all, received the most attention from scholars. In a section that is often missing from even textbooks of pragmatics, the chapter concludes with a very insightful discussion of a number of criticisms that the Gricean account has received, especially in view of its overarching presumption of cooperativeness. Having pinpointed the central role that implicature has played in ‘the delimitation of a very precise and well-circumscribed domain of pragmatics’ (22), the authors move on in the second chapter to discuss the place of this domain within contemporary linguistic theory—in my view, one of the absolute highlights of this book, given its originality. Here, ZM&R examine the role that inferential pragmatics can be seen to play not only in formalist approaches in the Chomskyan tradition, but also in functionalist ones within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics. Their coverage of so many topics, ranging from the competence/performance distinction to construction grammar and Ray Jackendoff’s (2002) conceptualist approach to semantics, in such a limited amount of space is nothing short of impressive. Following this comprehensive review, the upshot of the argumentation in this chapter is that none of the aforementioned frameworks can fully accommodate the inferential model of communication that Grice’s original proposal brought to the fore of current theorizing. Against this backdrop, Ch. 3 turns to relevance theory, which not only further capitalized on the inferential model of communication by extending Grice’s original rationale, but also directly [End Page 635] challenged the Gricean account and reevaluated pragmatic theory with a view to meeting the criterion of psychological plausibility. Again...