Are There Non-Propositional Implicatures

Bibliographic Data

ID10691358
AuthorsArthur Sullivan (0000-0001-8161-3404, Memorial University of Newfoundland, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume73
Issue2
Pages580-601
Publication date2023-03-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Philosophical Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8094 • E-ISSN: 1467-9213
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/pq/pqac043
OpenAlexW4294714117
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited37

Could there be an implicature whose content is not propositional? Grice's canon is somewhat ambivalent on this question, but such figures as Sperber & Wilson, Davis, and Lepore & Stone presume that there cannot be, and argue that this causes glaring failures within the Gricean programme. Building on work by McDowell and Buchanan, I argue that, on the contrary, the notion of non-propositional implicature is very much worth investigating. I show how the notion has promise to illuminate the content of many sorts of complex utterance—from the cases of verbal irony, metaphorical usage, slurring, insinuation, and (some kinds of) humour, to various others which involve expressive or evaluative content

Ambivalence · Content (measure theory) · Counterfactual conditional · Counterfactual thinking · Epistemology · Grice · Implicature · Irony · Linguistics · Pragmatics · Psychoanalysis · Utterance · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation