Inference in Pragmatics

Since the discourse analyst, like the hearer, has no direct access to a speaker’s intended meaning in producing utterance, interpretation for utterance to arrive at an ances. Such inferences appear to be of different kinds (Brown and Yule, 1983: 33). Inference is the collective term for all possible implicit information, which can be derived from a discourse. The term of inference (from the Latin ‘inferre’ meaning ‘to carry in’) is used to denote the phenomenon that discourse summons up knowledge or information which can be used to understand the information (Renkema, 1993: 158).

In addition, Gumperz (1982: 76) states that inference or drawing conclusion is an interpretation process determined by conversational context or situation. The term ‘inference’ covers quite a broad area of meaning. A number of attempts have been made in the literature to develop a classification system. The two main distinctions made are those between ‘necessary’ and ‘possible’ and between ‘forward’ and ‘backward’.

There are three categories of inference will be examined deductive, elaborative and conversational inference. Each of these categories of inference is closely associated with particular areas of enquiry; deductive inferences with logic and semantics, elaborative inferences with psychology and artificial intelligence and conversational inference with pragmatics. However, it will become clear from subsequent discussion that all of these inference, not just conversational inferences, area integral to an understanding of pragmatic phenomena within a multidisciplinary perspective (Cummings, 2005: 75).

Brown and Yule (1983: 256) describe inference as the process which the reader or the hearer must go through to get from the literal meaning of what is written or said to what the writer or the speaker intended to convey. So, the readers or hearers construct meaning by what they take the words to mean and how the process sentences to find the meaning. Further, Brown and Yule (1983: 225) infer unstated meaning based on the social convention, shared knowledge, shared experience, and shared values. For example when the speaker says:

It’s really noisy here with radio turned up.

It means that what the speaker intended to convey is ‘please turn down the radio’.

Furthermore, sometimes there does not even seem to be much point in what people say, until ones draws an inference (Grundy, 2000: 8). In addition, communication is not merely a matter of a speaker encoding a thought in language sending as spoken message through space, or as written message on paper, to a receiver who decodes it. This is clearly insufficient; the receiver must not must not only decode what is received but also draw an inference as to what is conveyed beyond what is stated (Grundy, 2000: 7). Inference cannot be separated from the reference, because both of them are bound tight together. In inference, the writer or speaker uses linguistic forms to enable reader or listener to identify something. Conversely, in inference listener or readers has to infer correctly which entity the speaker intends to identify by using a particular referring expression, since there is no direct relationship between entities and words (Yule,, 1996: 19). When the hearer or writer has no direct access to the speaker’s or writers intended meaning in producing an utterance, he often has to rely on a process of inference to arrive at an interpretation for utterances or for the connections between utterances (Brown and Yule, 1983: 33).