On Relevance Theory’s Explicature/Implicature and Grice’s ‘What Is Said’/Implicature

Abstract

Grice’s ‘what is said’/implicature and relevance theory’s explicature/implicature are two prominent views of utterance meaning. With the help of specific examples, this paper compares and studies the definitions of the two theories in detail, as well as their impact on the process of implicature deducing. It is found that Grice’s view can indeed explain the generation process of implicature in some simple sentence patterns, but the relevance theory is obviously of wider application value. After discussion, the paper proposes that relevance theory still needs to be further explained in the decoding of utterance, which should be paid attention to in future related research.