Dissertations / Theses: 'Conversational Implicature'

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Keller, Jill Leslie. "Conversational implicature and higher-order thinking in instructional conversations." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185982.

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Results from curriculum enactment and sociolinguistic research have indicated that lessons are composed of information exchanges consisting of mostly facts and procedures that place little cognitive demand on students. Scholars from these areas have ascribed the characteristics of the school, teacher, student, management and task demands, or linguistic, and/or social context as explanations for those observations. They have not made a direct connection between how teachers and students decide who takes responsibility for providing the intellectual content of lessons and how that decision affects the students' higher order contributions. Consequently, the present study was designed to examine the way teachers and students cooperated for effective information exchanges and how that cooperative effort influenced students' higher order contributions. One hundred twelve chemistry and mathematics tutorials formed the data. The volunteer tutors possessed extensive training in their subject areas and the problems for discussion were designed to make high cognitive demands on the volunteer students. Methods from discourse analysis were used to develop an analytical model to identify, describe, and compare how the tutors and students exchanged information. The model was applied to the data to provide information on the following topics; the roles of the tutor and student, the substance of the exchanges, and the use of mediation strategies. Next, a code of conduct known as Grice's (1975) theory of conversational implicature was used to interpret the results of the analysis. The aim was to link conversational cooperation with students' higher order contributions to the discourse. First, the results indicated a model can be developed to describe, compare, and categorize instructional conversations. Second, tutors and students cooperate to maintain their roles during instruction and mediation strategies support those roles. Third, tutors and students intuitively follow Grice's (1975) conversational code of conduct to support their roles during their information exchanges. This cooperative effort is rooted in the conditions for conversational implicature. It was found when teachers and students explicitly negotiate and accept new intellectual roles before instruction (the conditions for implicature), higher order thinking can be encouraged by teachers and contributed by students to instructional conversations.

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Chen, Rong. "Verbal irony as conversational implicature." Virtual Press, 1990. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/720333.

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This study offers a pragmatic account of verbal irony, arguing that verbal irony can be best treated as a special type of conversational implicature.As the first part of the thesis, Grice's theory of conversational implicature is revised. This is done by 1)an addition to Grice's Maxim of Quality so that this maxim will be able to take presupposition into account; 2)an inclusion of the notion of mutual knowledge in Grice's framework and 3)an establishment of speakers' motivation for violating Grice's Maxims. This motivation is subsumed into three principles--the Politeness Principle (PP) (following previous writers such as R. Lakoff, Brown and Levinson), which embodies the speaker's need and want to be polite to others, the Selfishness Principle (SP), which constrains the speaker to say things that will bring him/her desirable consequences, and the Expressivity Principle (EP), by observing which the speaker will succeed in leaving more propositional and emotional impact on the hearer. Lastly, a heuristic of implicature production and understanding is offered which is believed to be more coherent and explanatory than Grice's original procedures for implicature calculation.Second, the revised theory is applied to verbal irony. Based on the heuristic of implicature production and understanding, a heuristic of irony production and understanding is provided. This heuristic demonstrates that irony is both similar to and different from ordinary conversational implicatures. It is similar in that it results from the speaker's observance of the motivating principles, and thus violation of Grice's maxims. It is different because 1)It is seen as the violation of the Maxim of Quality alone, while in ordinary conversational implicatures, any of the maxims may be violated; and 2)This violation is caused by all the three motivating principles, the PP, the SP, and the EP, whereas an ordinary conversational implicature is usually motivated by one of these three principles. Finally, this heuristic is applied to various cases of verbal irony, showing that the revised theory of conversational implicature is better than previous proposals on the subjuct.
Department of English

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Kasmirli, Maria. "Conversational implicature : re-assessing the Gricean framework." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2016. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/16076/.

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Conversational implicature is (roughly) the practice of conveying one thing by saying another. Philosophical and linguistic work on the topic has been dominated by the approach proposed by Paul Grice — the Gricean framework, as I call it — according to which implicatures can be calculated from principles of cooperative behaviour. The framework faces numerous objections and counterexamples, however, and this thesis reassesses it in the light of recent work in the area. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the topic, provide a detailed exposition of the Gricean framework, and highlight a problem concerning the role of speaker intentions in implicature. Chapter 3 sets out some problems for Grice’s approach and argues that we can address them by reinterpreting his framework as a normative one. It proposes some revisions to the framework to make it more compatible with this reading and shows how the tension in Grice’s view of speaker intentions can be resolved. Chapter 4 then argues that, despite its attractions, the revised theory has a serious flaw, being unable to establish norms of implicature that are speaker-independent. The chapter proposes instead an intention-centred account, which abandons the requirement of calculability and allows a direct role for speaker intentions, while still preserving a normative element. Chapter 5 looks at neo-Gricean theories, which use Gricean principles to explain a range of supposedly context-independent implicatures. It sets out some problems for neo-Griceanism, comparing it with rival approaches and surveying relevant experimental evidence. The chapter concludes that implicature is more context-sensitive than neo-Griceanism allows and that general principles have at best a limited role in its explanation. Chapter 6 draws some conclusions, arguing that implicature is less rational than Grice supposed and more dependent on context and speaker intention. It also offers some speculations about the social role and ethics of implicature.

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Winn, Kerry Lynn. "Gunsmoke: An investigation of conversational implicature and Guns & Ammo magazine." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2002. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2069.

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Pagin, Amos. "Exploring the conjunction fallacy in probability judgment: Conversational implicature or extension neglect?" Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Psykologiska institutionen, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-149346.

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According to the conjunction rule of probability theory, a conjunction of events cannot be more probable than either conjunct. However, participants often violate this rule in experimental settings, thus committing the conjunction fallacy. Why do participants commit this fallacy? One hypothesis suggests that participants interpret a task-critical statement designating the event A as designating the event A&notB. If so, participants do not commit the conjunction fallacy. Another hypothesis suggests that participants fail to take task-relevant relations of set inclusion into account when judging probabilities. Both hypotheses were tested in an experiment utilizing a between-subjects design with 145 participants. The results, analyzed using Bayes factors, provide evidence for the null hypothesis in both cases, thus suggesting that neither hypothesis explains the fallacy. However, the unexpectedly low prevalence of the fallacy in the baseline group may have masked the true effects of the manipulations.

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Mazzaggio, Greta. "Reading between the Lines: Conversational Implicature Processing in Typical and Atypical Populations." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Trento, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/11572/315670.

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This thesis' aim is to add some pieces to the complex puzzle on the mechanism behind the comprehension of conversational implicatures. To do so, in a series of experiment we manipulated both the type of implicatures (scalar vs. ad-hoc) and the population under investigation (typical vs. atypical; children vs. adults).

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Welker, Katherine Alice. "Plans in the common ground : toward a generative account of conversational implicature /." The Ohio State University, 1994. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487861396025341.

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Sinnott, Sarah T. "Address Forms in Castilian Spanish: Convention and Implicature." The Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1275449503.

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Blažytė, Ingrida. "Nekontekstinė ir kontekstinė implikacija." Master's thesis, Lithuanian Academic Libraries Network (LABT), 2005. http://vddb.library.lt/obj/LT-eLABa-0001:E.02~2005~D_20050531_215131-10387.

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The process of communication involves two types of meaning: explicit and implicit. An attempt is made to draw a distinction between two carriers of implicit meaning- presupposition and implicature. It is argued that presupposition is what the speaker assumes before making an utterance, and implicature is what the addressee infers from a linguistic structure used in an appropriate linguistic context. Implicature is of two types: non-contextual (or non-situational) and contextual (or situational). Although both types of implicature are determined by the context, they are generated using different types of context. Non-contextual implicature arises in contexts which are familiar to the addressee, while contextual implicature arises in contexts (situations) which are new to the addressee. Pragmatic competence is the ability to discover implicit meaning. Thus, of great importance is the description of the mechanism that carries implicit meaning. There are two such mechanisms: 1) linguistic structures used in appropriate linguistic contexts and 2) linguistic structures used in appropriate situations. The first mechanism is responsible for the generation of non-contextual implicature while the second mechanism is responsible for the generation of contextual implicature. Both types of implicature contribute to the economy of language. However, of the two types of implicature, the more important in the respect is contextual implicature- it makes possible to use one and the same... [to full text]

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Szczepanski, Peter. "Flouting the maxims in scripted speech : An analysis of flouting the maxims of conversation in the television series Firefly." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och interkultur, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-38455.

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Although conversations in television shows are supposed to mimic and represent everyday natural speech, they are written for a specific purpose. The aim of this paper is to find out what maxims are flouted the most in the television series Firefly and analyse what the effects of these flouts are. Presented here is an analysis of how scripted conversation in the aforementioned television show is constructed. By applying Grice's cooperative principle and his theories on flouting and implicatures, certain patterns emerge that show recurring uses of flouts for specific effects. The results are based on a study of three episodes of the television series Firefly. The results show that the maxim of quality is flouted the most and that the distribution of flouts between characters is somewhat uneven. This suggests that the use of flouts has to do with the personalities of the different characters.

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Dornerus, Emma. "Breaking maxims in conversation : A comparative study of how scriptwriters break maxims in Desperate Housewives and That 70’s Show." Thesis, Karlstad University, Division for Culture and Communication, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-19.

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When we converse we constantly fail to observe the rules of conversation in order to simplify and make dialogues more effective. The scriptwriters who work with TV shows use non-observances of maxims in order to evoke different feelings from their viewers. The aim of this paper was to investigate how frequently non-observances of maxims occurred in the TV shows Desperate Housewives and That 70’s Show. I examined where and why they were used as well as how often flouting was used compared to violations. The base of the study was a drama and a comedy show.

Research has shown that the maxim of relevance is most frequently used to create different comical or dramatic situations. The scriptwriters have their characters ignore what is relevant to the situations in order to make them come off as flustered, odd and stupid in humorous situations and as mysterious, cowardly, respectful or bold in dramatic situations. Also research shows that flouting occurs more frequently than violations when it comes to breaking maxims. Violations occur most often with the maxim of quality when the characters lie to mislead in order to direct blame away from him/herself. In Conclusion, this investigation has shown that non-observances of maxims are important for scriptwriters in order to create humorous and dramatic situations in verbal interaction.

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García, Odón Amaia. "Presupposition projection and entailment relations." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/94496.

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In this dissertation, I deal with the problem of presupposition projection. I mostly focus on compound sentences composed of two clauses and conditional sentences in which the second clause carries a presupposition. The central claim is that the presupposition carried by the second clause projects by default, with the exception of cases in which the presupposition entails the first clause (or, in disjunctive sentences, the negation of the first clause). In the latter cases, the presupposition should not project, since it is logically stronger than the first clause (or its negation). Thus, in conjunctions, if the presupposition projected, the speaker’s assertion of the first clause would be uninformative. As for conditionals and disjunctions, if the presupposition projected, the speaker would show inconsistency in his/her beliefs by showing uncertainty about the truth value of the first clause (or its negation). I argue that, in conditionals, this uncertainty is conversationally implicated whereas, in disjunctions, it results from the context’s compatibility with the first disjunct. I maintain that, in cases where projection is blocked, the presupposition is conditionalized to the first clause (or its negation). I demonstrate that the conditionalization is motivated in a straightforward way by the pragmatic constraints on projection just described and that, contrary to what is defended by the so-called ‘satisfaction theory’, presupposition conditionalization is a phenomenon independent from local satisfaction.
En esta tesis, trato el problema de la proyección de presuposiciones. Me centro mayoritariamente en oraciones compuestas de dos cláusulas y en oraciones condicionales cuya segunda cláusula contiene una presuposición. El argumento central es que la presuposición contenida en la segunda cláusula proyecta por defecto, con la excepción de casos en los que la presuposición entraña la primera cláusula (o, en las oraciones disyuntivas, la negación de la primera cláusula). En estos últimos casos, la presuposición no debería proyectar, puesto que es lógicamente más fuerte que la primera cláusula (o su negación). Por tanto, en las oraciones conjuntivas, si la presuposición proyectase, la aseveración de la primera cláusula por parte del hablante no sería informativa. En cuanto a las oraciones condicionales y disyuntivas, si la presuposición projectase, el hablante mostraría inconsistencia en sus creencias al mostrar incertidumbre acerca del valor de verdad de la primera cláusula (o su negación). Sostengo que, en oraciones condicionales, esta incertidumbre es implicada conversacionalmente mientras que, en las oraciones disyuntivas, resulta de la compatibilidad contextual de la primera cláusula. Mantengo que, en casos en los que la proyección es bloqueada, la presuposición es condicionalizada a la primera cláusula (o su negación). Demuestro que la condicionalización es motivada de manera directa por las restricciones de tipo pragmático descritas arriba y que, contrariamente a la idea defendida por la así llamada ‘teoría de la satisfacción’, la condicionalización de la presuposición es un fenómeno independiente de la satisfacción local de la misma.

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Vik, Frida. "Breaking maxims in a crime drama : A study on non-observances of maxims in crime drama Blindspot." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Institutionen för språkstudier, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-184990.

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The conversational maxims are guidelines to how a conversation should be conducted, but sometimes these maxims can be broken for different reasons. The aim of this thesis is to identify breakings of the conversational maxims in the crime drama Blindspot and to study which maxims are broken, for what purpose the maxims are broken and if there are any changes to the number of maxims broken between different seasons of the series. The results show that the maxim of quantity is most frequently broken in the episode from season one and the maxim of quality is broken most frequently in the episodes from season three and five. Some of the reasons for the breakings are sarcasm used for a comedic effect, not giving enough information to keep the viewers in suspense and as a way to change the subject or focus of a conversation.

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Andresen, Niclas. "Flouting the maxims in comedy : An analysis of flouting in the comedy series Community." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och interkultur, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-31687.

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This paper explores how flouting of the Gricean maxims is used to create comedy in the television series Community. The aim of the paper is to find out what maxims are flouted the most to create comedy and what maxims the different characters flout in order to create comedy. The paper examines the use of flouts in different situations and explores in what situations the different characters flout the maxims for comedy. The paper is based on transcription of eight episodes of the series. The results show that the maxim of quantity was flouted most often, and some characters used more flouts than others. These results suggest that the use of flouts has to do with their different personalities, which is why some characters did not use as many flouts in order to create comedy, since it would not be in line with their personality.

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Omara, Salma. "The comprehension of conversational implicatures : a cross- cultural study." Virtual Press, 1993. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/862271.

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Research shows that L2 learners' communicative problems are often pragmatic in nature. Pragmatic competence has been defined as the ability to recognize the force and the intended meaning of an utterance by making judgments about its appropriateness (Thomas 1983). Studies on interlanguage pragmatics have provided evidence that conversational strategies differ cross-linguistically and cross-culturally. Also, recent studies on the way native and nonnative speakers of English comprehend and understand conversational implicatures (Bouton 1988, 1989, 1990) have revealed that non-native speakers of English do not interpret implicatures the way native speakers do and that this is due to cultural differences.This study investigated the way native speakers of Arabic and (American) English interpret and comprehend implicatures. It was hypothesized that, as a part of their communicative competence, the Arab speakers' ability to interpret implicatures in English may be influenced by four variables: 1) overall proficiency level in English (measured by standardized ESL tests); 2) length of exposure to American culture; 3) level of motivation to learn English andattitudes toward Americans and American culture; and 4) strategic interference due to the differences in pragmatic functions between Arabic and English.136 subjects (61 Arabs and 75 Americans) participated in this study, which employed three empirical instruments: 1) an implicature questionnaire designed in the form of a multiple-choice test to test the native and nonnative subjects' comprehension of implicatures; 2) a motivation/attitudes questionnaire to measure the non-native subjects' motivational levels for learning English and their attitudes towards American culture and people; and 3) the Michigan Proficiency Test, a standardized test of grammar, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. In addition, a post-test interview was used to gather information from non-native speakers regarding the choices made on each implicature question.Statistical analyses of the results revealed significant differences between native and nonnative speakers in their comprehension and interpretation of implicatures. In a multiple-regression, length of stay was found to be a significant predictor of non-native speakers' comprehension of implicatures.
Department of English

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Chemla, Emmanuel. "Présuppositions et implicatures scalaires : études formelles et expérimentales." Paris, EHESS, 2008. http://www.theses.fr/2008EHES0164.

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L'objectif de cette thèse est de mettre en parallèle deux types d'inférences pragmatiques : les implicatures scalaires et les présuppositions. Dans une première partie, j'étudie les interactions possibles entre les deux phénomènes : les anti-présuppositions. Dans une deuxième partie, je m'intéresse au problème de la projection : comment prédire les présuppositions (ou les implicatures) d'une phrase complexe à partir des présuppositions (ou des implicatures) de ses parties ? J'établis de nouvelles données empiriques et psychologiques et présente une réponse unifiée à la question pour les deux phénomènes, ainsi que pour les inférences dites de "libre choix"
The goal of this work is to compare two types of pragmatic inferences: scalar implicatures and presuppositions. First, I study the interaction between the two phenomena: ant-presuppositions Second, I consider the projection problem: can we predict the presuppositions (or the implicatures) of a complex sentence from the presupposition (or the implicatures) of its sub-parts? I reveal new emipirical and psychological data and I exhibit a unified answer to the problem for both phenomen, as well as for so-called free choice inferences

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Dekavalla, Georgia. "Terror and Evil in Iraq : A Study of Political Discourse." Thesis, Växjö University, School of Humanities, 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:vxu:diva-2631.

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This paper aims to determine the validity of the hypothesis that the effective and eloquent use of language can result in shaping beliefs and altering people’s perception of certain phenomena. In order to explore this hypothesis, a speech given by George W. Bush concerning the Iraq war is examined, followed by a brief study of two corpora, the Time Magazine Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English, where the collocationpatterns of the words Iraq, evil and terror are examined. The paper starts by presenting the main concepts upon which this study is based, i.e. mental frames, the co-operative principle and conversational maxims and finally, various rhetoric devices. An analysis section follows, where George Bush’s speech is examined with the help of the concepts mentioned above and the analysis continues with the corpora-study. One of the conclusions drawn in this study is that, indeed, it is possible that language can be successfully used in order to achieve political means, and that there seems to be a shift in the American public’s perception of concepts such as Iraq and terror, visible in the use of language. However, it cannot be said with certainty whether the Bush Administration has managed to dominate public discourse, through a study as minor as this one.

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Lebedeva, Ekaterina. "Expression de la dynamique du discours à l'aide de continuations." Phd thesis, Université de Lorraine, 2012. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00783245.

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This thesis develops a theoretical formalism of formal semantics of natural language in the spirit of Montague semantics. The developed framework satisfies the principle of compositionality in a simple and elegant way, by being as parsimonious as possible: completely new formalisms or extensions of existing formalisms with even more complex constructions to fit particular linguistic phenomena have been avoided; instead, the framework handles these linguistic phenomena using only basic and well-established formalisms, such as simply-typed lambda calculus and classical logic. Dynamics is achieved by employing a continuation-passing technique and an exception raising and handling mechanism. The context is explicitly represented by a term, and, therefore, can be easily accessed and manipulated. The framework successfully handles cross-sentential anaphora and presuppositions triggered by referring expressions and has potential to be extended for dealing with more complex dynamic phenomena, such as presuppositions triggered by factive verbs and conversational implicatures.

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Hung, Catherine, and 洪佑瑄. "Exploring Taiwanese EFL College Students’ Listening Comprehension of Conversational Implicature." Thesis, 2008. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7784a6.

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碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
英語學系
96
Despite increasing interest in Interlanguage Pragmatics ILP) research, much of the work in ILP, to date, has been limited to L2 learners’ production of speech acts. Research on the comprehension of pragmatic function, however, has been scarce, particularly in the area of conversational implicature. Although conversational implicature as a conversational strategy is well known, it is not clear whether it is a useful conversational strategy for EFL learners. Therefore, this study attempts to explore the extent to which EFL learners can comprehend conversational implicature from the context in terms of accuracy of comprehension, inferential strategy use, and potential difficulties during comprehension process. Fifty-eight Taiwanese college students, ranging in proficiency from low-intermediate to advanced level, completed a 21-item computerized implicature listening test, measuring their comprehension of seven types of conversational implicature. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were also conducted to elicit learners’ inferential strategy use and their comprehension difficulties. Regression analyses revealed a positive L2 proficiency effect on learners’ implicature comprehension. Among the seven types of conversational implicature, learners comprehended significantly differently in six types of conversational implicature. Learners with different proficiency levels were observed to demonstrate different preferences for strategy use: High-proficiency learners were found to employ more top-down strategies, whereas low-proficiency learners relied more on bottom-up strategies. During comprehension process, both high-proficiency and low proficiency learners shared similar comprehension difficulties: Learners reported that their difficulties existed in less relevant implicature type, habitual use of literal interpretation and their assumptions. Low-proficiency learners reported that their difficulties mainly arouse from inadequate language proficiency, failure to recognize speaker intention and specific types of Formulaic-based implicature. To conclude, this study is important in laying the groundwork for understanding the nature of EFL learners’ comprehension process of conversational implicature and providing implications for acquisition and instruction on conversational implicature.

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Šmilauerová, Anna. "Televizní seriál Přátelé: Analýza humorných situací vzniklých porušováním Griceových maxim." Master's thesis, 2012. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-310909.

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Anna Šmilauerová: TV Sitcom Friends: Analysis of character humor strategies based on the violation of Grice's Conversational maxims Abstract The purpose of this diploma thesis is the analysis of the humor strategies employed by the characters of Phoebe and Chandler in the TV Sitcom Friends. The discovered prevailing strategies were then compared with the personalities of the two characters. The data analyzed were the written script of five exemplary episodes from the Season 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9, in which the utterances eliciting laughter from the audience were thoroughly analyzed from the point of Grice's Cooperative Principle: only those utterances were considered in which the characters violated one or more of the conversational maxims (quality, quantity, relation and manner). Phoebe was found to violate most often the maxim of relation, thus it is her being non-factual and non-conventional that constitutes her most entertaining quality. As she develops and grows more mature as a character, the frequency counts of this humor strategy evince a descending tendency. Chandler, on the other hand, is mostly being ironic, violating the maxim of quality. His character also gradually changes but his sense of humor remains the same - ironic throughout the show, as follows from the instances of almost fixed frequency....

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BEAUDIN, CURT MICHAEL, and 柯博登. "A Study of English Majors' Comprehension of Conversational Implicatures." Thesis, 2019. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/yxc4bc.

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博士
國立高雄師範大學
英語學系
107
This study investigated the ability of English majors to comprehend implicatures of varying types. More specifically, a comparison was made between freshmen and seniors on their ability to complete a listening comprehension test that consisted of four types of implicatures. Furthermore, the English proficiency level of the students was also used to try and determine if proficiency level would be a strong predictor for success on comprehending implicatures. Finally, the difficulty level of each type of implicature was evaluated and compared based on the number of years enrolled in university and also on proficiency level in English. The participants of the study were 139 undergraduates from a public university in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Of the 139 students, 70 were freshmen and 69 were seniors. The participants were also separated into low- and high-proficient students based on English proficiency. The participants were given a listening proficiency test at the beginning of the study. Following the proficiency test, all of the participants were given a listening comprehension test that consisted of four different types of implicatures. The implicatures that were tested were Indirect Refusals, Relevance-Based, Pope-Q, and Irony. Based on the data collected, the findings from this study are as follows: 1.The participants of this study were able to successfully comprehend implicatures of varying types. 2.The seniors scored significantly higher than the freshmen did on all types of implicatures. 3.For the freshmen, the order of difficulty from the simplest to the most difficult was: Indirect Refusals, Relevance-Based, Irony, and Pope-Q. The mean difference between Irony and Pope-Q was not statistically significant. For the seniors, the order of difficulty was the same, with no significant difference between the mean values of Relevance-Based and Irony. 4.Listening proficiency was a strong predictor of success on the implicatures used in this study. There was a strong correlation between proficiency in English and success on the comprehension test. 5.For the low-proficient students, the order of difficulty from the simplest to the most difficult was: Indirect Refusals, Relevance-Based, Irony, Pope-Q. There were no significant differences between the mean values of Relevance-Based and Irony, and between Irony and Pope-Q. For the high-proficient students, the order of difficulty was the same with no significant differences between the mean values of Indirect Refusals and Relevance-Based, Relevance-Based and Irony, and Pope-Q and Irony. Based on the findings of this study, the following pedagogical implications are proposed: 1.Implicatures should be taught explicitly to learners of English at the university level. 2.Teachers need to provide their students with numerous examples with ample opportunities to practice. 3.Form-focused instruction of implicatures should be used to assist comprehension of implicatures and to foster the growth of their pragmatic competence. 4.All implicature types should be taught in a contextualized manner in order to assist comprehension as well as teaching the students how to respond in an appropriate manner.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Conversational Implicature'

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