IMPLICATIVE STRUCTURES IN LITERARY DISCOURSE: INTERACTIONS OF LOGIC LANGUAGE AND PRAGMATICS

Abstract

This article examines implicature as a multilayered semantic-pragmatic category underlying the formation of implicit meaning in literary texts. It proposes a three-level model distinguishing logical implication, linguistic implication and pragmatic implication, and argues that these levels correspond respectively to the system of thought, the system of language and the process of speech. Logical implication is treated, after Lyons and Horn, as a strict, context-independent relation between propositions; linguistic implication, after Levinson, as content encoded within the semantic potential of language units through grammatical markers, lexical presupposition and semantic valency; and pragmatic implication, after Grice, Levinson and Sperber and Wilson, as inferential meaning produced through the Cooperative Principle and conversational maxims in context.