The Explicit/Implicit Distinction in Pragmatics and the Limits of Explicit Communication

Abstract

This paper has two main parts. The first is a critical survey of ways in which the explicit/implicit distinction has been and is currently construed in linguistic pragmatics, which reaches the conclusion that the distinction is not to be equated with a semantics/pragmatics distinction but rather concerns a division within communicated contents (or speaker meaning). The second part homes in on one particular way of drawing such a pragmatically-based distinction, the explicature/implicature distinction in Relevance Theory. According to this account, processes of pragmatic enrichment play a major role in the recovery of explicit content and only some of these processes are linguistically triggered, others being entirely pragmatically motivated. I conclude with a brief consideration of the language-communication relation and the limits on explicitness.

What‐is‐Said From Different Points of View

“…On the one hand, highlighting the difference between sentence (a syntactic entity) and proposition (a semantic one), literalists adopt the Gricean line of closely associating what‐is‐said to sentence syntax (as in the second definition of what‐is‐said by Grice in above), which has led some of them (e.g., Bach 1994, 2001) to argue that what‐is‐said can fail to be propositional. On the other hand, seeking to remain faithful not so much to the word as to the spirit of Grice’s proposal, which seems to have been to carve out a truth‐evaluable notion of what‐is‐said, contextualists reject the notion of a sub‐propositional what‐is‐said, and either stipulate that what‐is‐said must be propositional and so construed more loosely (e.g., Recanati 1989, 2001), or replace what‐is‐said by other conceptual representations that are propositional (e.g., Carston 1999, 2009; Jaszczolt 2005). 9…”

“…The difficulties with implementing Gricean what‐is‐said have led some contextualists to deny any role for what‐is‐said in a theory of linguistic meaning. Carston (2009) identifies two problems with maintaining a literalist notion of what‐is‐said (such as that advocated by Bach 1994). First, meaning at this level is often subpropositional, because, short of a fully pragmatic process (one geared to the recovery of speaker intentions), it is impossible to assign specific referents to demonstrative indexicals such as ‘she’ and ‘that’, something which is required to derive the truth‐conditions of the utterance (2009: 44).…”

The pragmatics of insinuation

“…Several papers by H. P. Grice (1989) have provided the most extensive systematic theoretical account of the relations between the two members of the opposition in terms of what is said vs. what is either conventionally or conversationally implicated (i.e., implicatures), and later studies by Wilson 1986/1995;Carston 1988Carston , 2004Carston , 2009Recanati 1989Recanati , 2004Bach 1994;among others (see Bertuccelli Papi 2000, have further refined the distinction introducing categories, such as explicatures and implicitures, which have reinforced our perception that what is said (whatever preferred meaning we attribute to the word) is hardly ever totally explicit (Bertuccelli Papi 2000Carston 2011). A rich bibliography has made it clear that identifying implicitly communicated meanings involves cognitive processes that may go astray any moment if the right mental context is not selected.…”

Fundamentos para una semántica mínima

“…Así, una proferencia de (17) puede interpretarse como que el escritor empezó a leer un libro o empezó a escribir un libro, entre otras: (17) El escritor empezó un libro 44 El material enriquecido entre corchetes no se encuentra en el ejemplo original de la proferencia. 45 Aquí se están presentando los componentes añadidos como productos de procesos de enriquecimiento, no obstante debe aclararse que Carston (2009) señala que en esta proferencia se combinan el enriquecimiento libre y la modulación. Éste último sería el caso del contenido añadido para drink.…”

“…Así, se acepta en general que los llamados constituyentes inarticulados son constituyentes opcionales y proposicionales. Además, el Pragmatismo (Carston, 2009;Recanati, 2002) caracteriza los constituyentes inarticulados como constituyentes comunicativos. Esto quiere decir que para tomar un constituyente como no articulado debe darse el requisito de que éste sea parte de lo que el hablante tiene en mente y comunica con su proferencia.…”