Conversational Implicature

Conversational implicature is any meaning implied by or understood from the utterance of a sentence which goes beyond what is strictly said or entailed. For example it is raining might, in specific context, implicate (alternatively, whoever says might implicate) we cannot go for picnic, we had better close the windows and so on (The Concise Oxford dictionary of linguistic, 1997: Online www.yahoo.com).

Grice as quoted by Levinson (1992:126) distinguished conventional implicature into generalized and particularized conventional implicature. He asserts that generalized conversational implicature is implicature that arise without any particular context or special scenario being necessary in addition, Gruncy(2000:81-82) says that generalized conversational implicature arise respective of the context in which it occurs and it has little or nothing do with the most relevant understanding of an utterance; it derives entirely from the maxims, typically from the maxims of quantity and manner. Therefore, generalized conversational implicature is inferable without reference to a special context.

In contrast with the generalized conversational implicature, particularized, conversational implicature require such specific context (context-bound). Besides, all implicature that arise from the maxim of relevance are particularized for utterance whichare relevant only with respect to the particular topic or issue at hand. In addition, most of the exploitation or flouting maxims can be categorized as particularized implicature (Levinson, 1992; 126).

In short, those implicature have a special importance for linguistic theory, since, it is in particular will be hard to distinguish from the semantic content of linguistic expression, because such implicature will be routinely associated with the relevant expression in all ordinary context.