Abstract
The standard position in pragmatics to date has been that cancellability is useful way of differentiating implicatures from logical implications, semantic entailments and the like. In recent years, however, there has been considerable debate as to whether implicatures are in fact always cancellable, or indeed whether they are cancellable at all, amongst linguistic pragmaticians and language philosophers. In this chapter, it is suggested that cancellability encompasses a range of actions that play out in different ways depending on whether we are analysing inferences that can lead to implicatures or the implicatures themselves. In this way, we can see how analysts have often underplayed the contingency of inferences as well as the inherent indeterminacy of implicatures in such debates. It is concluded that cancellability should be the subject of further empirically-driven analyses in order to provide a solid foundation for the theorization of implicature.
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Notes
- 1.
It is worth noting that this debate has also been extended to the relevance theoretic concept of explicature (see Burton-Roberts 2010; Capone 2006, 2009, 2010; and Carston 2002, 2010 for further discussion). However, those debates are only touched upon here to the extent they make reference to the (neo-)Gricean notions of particularised and generalised conversational implicatures.
- 2.
The same limitations also face appeals to strict logic-based analyses that are implicit to the notion of defeasibility as will be discussed further in Sect. 3.
- 3.
Another point worth noting in passing is that in discussing this example in regards to its cancellability, Capone (2009) makes reference to the notions of “retract”, “revise”, “deny”, “disintegrate” and “unimplicate”, although these are clearly not equivalents. This suggests that “cancellability” encompasses different kinds of processes and actions, as discussed further in Sects. 3 and 4.
- 4.
Cf. Sperber and Wilson (1995) who claim that implicatures vary in their degree of determinacy, that is, from strongly determinate (strong implicatures) through to weakly determinate (weak implicatures).
- 5.
We can further distinguish between defeasible inferences that are monotonic and those that are non-monotonic. Monotonicity refers to the property of inferences whereby the addition of new information does not reduce the set of what is known, and so no matter what further premises are added to a given premise set (provided none of the existing ones are erased), the set of conclusions can only increase. Non-monotonicity, on the other hand, refers to inferences where their present reasonability may be lost upon the addition of new information.
- 6.
Cf. Levinson (1983: 115; fn. 15) who analyses this as an instance where the speaker is not committed to the truth or falsity of the implicature (so-called “suspension” of implicature).
- 7.
We might add a third category, namely, “emergent implicature” (cf. Haugh 2008a, 2009), where implicatures are interactionally achieved across speaker-recipient dyads, but further consideration of this must await another time, as whether one accepts the validity of such a notion does not substantively impact on the points being made here.
- 8.
Cf. Capone (2009) on social versus individual intentionality.
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Haugh, M. (2013). Implicature, Inference and Cancellability. In: Capone, A., Lo Piparo, F., Carapezza, M. (eds) Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01011-3_6
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