Implicature

The concept of implicature is usually attributed to the Oxford philosopher H. P.Grice. Within the Gricean theory of pragmatics, there are two types of implicature: conversational and conventional. While conversational implicature is considered by Stephen Levinson to be one of the single most important ideas in pragmatics, the notion of conventional implicature is taken to be less coherent. Furthermore, conversational implicature has been playing a very important role in all aspects of human communication including the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of the pragmatic facets of human language disorders, whether developmental or acquired. This entry concentrates on conversational implicature.