Abstract

This explores the phenomenon of implicature in more detail, considering why speakers or writers might choose to convey information implicitly as well as explicitly, and assessing how these choices may affect the relationship between speaker and hearer or writer and reader. It considers what has been said about this relationship in linguistics, and also in literary theory, where various approaches labelled ‘reception theory’ or ‘reader response theory’ seem to have much in common with pragmatic theories of meaning. It assesses ways in which the relationship established between narrator and reader might be said to be different in ‘realist’ and in ‘modernist’ literary texts. This chapter also offers an account of stylistic work on the presentation of speech and thought.

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