An investigation into the ability to understand English conversational implicatures of the fourth year Englisgh majored students at Tay Nguyen university

TAY NGUYEN UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES STUDIES
-----------------

GRADUATION THESIS
TITLE:
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND
ENGLISH CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES OF THE FOURTH
YEAR ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS AT TAY NGUYEN
UNIVERSITY

Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Arts in
English
Supervisor: Hoàng Thi Xuân, M.A
Student: Nguyễn Thị Thúy Phương
Student Code: 13702054
Class: Bachelor of Arts in English course 2013

1


Daklak, June, 2017

TAY NGUYEN UNIVERSITY
FACULTY

OF

FOREIGN

LANGUAGES

STUDIES

-----------------

GRADUATION THESIS
TITLE:
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND
ENGLISH CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES OF THE FOURTH
YEAR ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS AT TAY NGUYEN
UNIVERSITY

Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Arts in
English
Student: Nguyễn Thị Thúy Phương
Student code: 13702054
Class: Bachelor of Arts in English course 2013
Supervisor: Hoàng Thị Xuân, M.A

2


Daklak, June, 2017

3


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the process of completing this graduation paper, I have received a great

deal of help, guidance, and encouragement from supervisors, friends and my family.
I have faced many difficulties, but thanks to their help, I overcame all troubles and
completed my graduation paper.
First of all, I would like to express my grateful thanks to Mrs. Hoang Thi
Xuan, M.A, my supervisor who constantly and tirelessly supported me throughout
this study. During my studying process, she has willingly suggested and given me
valuable advice and detailed comments about my study.
Secondly, I would like to give my sincere thanks to all of teachers in the
Faculty of Foreign Languages Studies at Tay Nguyen University, helping me much
in completing this study and having taught me during four year at Tay Nguyen
University.
Thirdly, I would like also to express my special thanks to the fourth yearth
English majored students at Tay Nguyen University for their enthusiatic cooperation
in my survey. Without their help, this study would have been impossible.
Last but not least, I would like to express many thanks to my family and my
friends and those who has supported me throughout the completion of the thesis.

Daklak, June 4 th, 2017
STUDENT
(Signature, full name)

4


Nguyễn Thị Thúy Phương

ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent the fourth year
English majored students at Tay Nguyen University are able to understand English
conversational implicatures. The subjects of this study were 50 fourth-year students

of the Faculty of Foreign Languages Studies at Tay Nguyen University. They were
asked to do the questionnaire about their opinions about the importance of
understanding conversational implicatures and their understanding of the basis of
the interpretation of conversational implicatures as well. Also, they were required to
do the multiple-choice English conversational implicature exercise.
The result shows that most of students recognized the importance of
understanding conversational implicature. In addition, the students could know
factors that we need to interpret conversational implicatures. However, the result
also reveals that the students did not have enough understanding of conversational
implicatures in English. Also, the results show that cultural knowledge could affect
the students’ ability to understand English conversational implicatures.

5


TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..............................................................................................i
ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS..................................................................................................i
LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS..........................................................................................i
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION...................................................................................1
1.1. Statement of the problem.........................................................................................1
1.2. Objectives of the study..............................................................................................2
1.3. Significance of the study...........................................................................................2
1.4. Outline of the study....................................................................................................3
CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW......................................................................4
2.1. The concepts................................................................................................................4
2.1.1. Conversation............................................................................................................4
2.1.2. Utterance...................................................................................................................5
2.1.3. Implicature...............................................................................................................5

2.2. Cooperative Principle................................................................................................6
2.2.1. What is the Cooperative Principle......................................................................6
2.2.2. The four maxims.....................................................................................................6
2.2.3. The flouting of the Maxims...................................................................................8
2.3. Conversational implicature......................................................................................9
2.3.1. Definition of conversational implicature...........................................................9
2.3.2. Classification of conversational implicature.....................................................9
2.3.2.1. Kinds of conversational implicature...............................................................9
2.3.2.1.1. Generalized conversational implicatures....................................................9


2.3.2.1.2. Particularized conversational implicatures..............................................11
2.3.2.2. Types of conversational implicature..............................................................11
2.4. The basis of the interpretation of conversational implicature.......................14
2.5. The importance of conversational implicature..................................................16
CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY...............................................................................17
3.1. Subjects of the study................................................................................................17
3.2. Scope of the study.....................................................................................................17
3.3. Research questions...................................................................................................17
3.4. Research methods....................................................................................................18
3.4.1. Instrument..............................................................................................................18
3.4.2. The data collection produre................................................................................19
3.5. Summary....................................................................................................................19
CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION........................................................20
4.1. The students’ opinions about the importance of understanding
conversational implicatures...........................................................................................20
4.2. The students’ ability to understand conversational implicatures.................21
4.2.1. The students’ understanding of the basis of the interpretation of
conversational implicatures...........................................................................................21
4.2.2. The students’ understanding about English conversational implicatures

through the exercise........................................................................................................23
4.2.2.1. The students’ ability to understand the relevance implicatures..............24
4.2.2.2. The students’ ability to understand the Pope Q implicatures.................24
4.2.2.3. The students’ ability to understand the minimum requirement
implicature........................................................................................................................25
4.2.2.4. The students’ ability to understand the Sequence implicature...............25
4.2.2.5. The students’ ability to understand the Indirect Criticism implicature25


4.2.2.6. The students’ ability to understand the Irony implicature......................26
4.2.3. The effect of cultural knowledge on the students’ ability to understand
conversational implicatures in English.......................................................................27
4.3. Summary....................................................................................................................30
CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS..........................32
5.1. Conclusion..................................................................................................................32
5.2. Recommendations....................................................................................................33
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................35
APPENDIX A...................................................................................................................37
APPENDIX B...................................................................................................................39
SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS...................................................................................45


LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS
Table 1: The four maxims
Table 2: The students’ responses about the importance of understanding
conversational implicatures
Table 3: The students’ interpretation of conversational implicature through the
exercise
Table 4: The interpretation of the students about relevance implicature
Table 5: The interpretation of the students about Pope Q implicature

Table 6: The interpretation of the students about the minimum requirement
implicature
Table 7: The interpretation of the students about Sequence implicature
Table 8: The interpretation of the students about Indirect Criticism implicature
Table 9: The interpretation of the students about Irony implicature
Table 10: Responses of the students about item (11)
Table 11: Responses of the students about item (12)
Table 12: Responses of the students about item (13)
Table 13: Responses of the students about item (14)
Chart 1: The students’ responses about the factors that the hearers need to
understand conversational implicatures


CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1 is composed of four sections. The first section mentions the
reason why the topic is chosen or the statement of the problem. The second one is
about the objectives of the study. The third section is about the significance of the
study. The last one is the outline of the study.
1.1. Statement of the problem
In the today’s world, English is used in a majority of countries all over the
world and it is used in teaching in school from primary schools to universities since
it plays a very considerable role in social life. English creates great opportunities
for jobs. Also, it is one of the most important languages that enables us to
communicate with other people in many different countries around the world.
For English majored students at Tay Nguyen University, besides learning
grammar, phonetics and phonology, we have to learn semantics and pragmatics.
They are new subjects in the curriculum. They, however, brings us excitement and
challenges. It really attracts us in the studying these subjects especially about
conversational implicatures because they are related to interaction in the life.
According to Lee (2002), “successful communication can be achieved when

interlocutors adhere to similar pragmatic rules that govern how language is used and
interpreted” (p.1). Or we can say that in spoken interaction, it is useful when the
speakers are good communicators being good at saying and conveying what they
want the listeners to be able to find understandable. In addition, the listeners have to
know what is said and what conveys so that they can get success in communication.
Misunderstanding what the interlocutors convey is a cause of the conversation
broken out and this may lead to unexpected things in job, love, relationships, and so
on. Understanding what the speakers mean is, therefore, very crucial in
communication.
In addition, according to Taguchi (2005), understanding what a native
speaker wants to convey means that students have to realize intended meaning of


the speaker in order for accurately making an inference about the speaker’s
communicative purpose.
It is, therefore, very significant for Tay Nguyen University’s English
majored students to be able to understand, namely to interpret conversational
implicatures in English so that they can achieve success in communicating with
native speakers of English. In other words, it is essential that learners of English at
Tay Nguyen University are able to understand native speakers’s intended meaning.
For those reasons, “An Investigation into the Ability to Understand English
Conversational Implicatures of the Fourth Year English Majored Students at Tay
Nguyen University” is implemented.
1.2. Objectives of the study

-

The research aims:
to find out the fourth year English majored students’ opinions about the

-

importance of understanding conversational implicatures.
to find out to what extent the students understand English conversational

-

implicatures.
to find out factors influencing the skill English majored students in

-

understanding English conversational implicature .
to suggest some solutions to help the learners to improve their ability to
understand English conversational implicatures.

1.3. Significance of the study
First of all, theoretically, it provides learners of English, not excluding the
researcher, with the useful knowledge of conversational implicature.
Secondly, practically, the findings reported reveals the students’ opinions
about the importance of understanding conversational implicatures, the students’
understanding of the basis of the interpretation of conversational implicatures and
offers the clear picture of to what extent the students can understand conversational
implicatures in English through the exercise as well as the factor that impacts their
pragmatic’s competence in term of conversational implicature in English.
Thirdly, it also suggests solutions for improving the ability to understand
conversational implicatures in English of the students.


1.4. Outline of the study

This research contains five chapters:
Chapter 1 : INTRODUCTION. This chapter establishes the rationale of the
study, the aims of the study, the significance of the study, and the outline of the
study.
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. This chapter consits of four sections.
Section 1 reveals about concepts of conversation, utterance, and implicature.
Section 2 introduces Cooperative Principle with the definition of Cooperative
Principle, the four maxims, and the flouting of the maxims. Section 3 focuses on
conversational implicature. This part consists of definition, and classsification of
conversational implicature. The next part reveals about the basis of the
interpretation of conversational implicature. The last section reveals about the
importance of conversational implicature.
Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY. This chapter includes such four parts as
subjects of the study, scope of the study, research questions, and research methods.
Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. This chapter presents the results
of the study.
Chapter 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS. This chapter
gives a summary of the study and gives some suggestions after the findings of the
study


CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter is produced to give some different viewpoints on implicature
in general and conversational implicature in particular as well as the importance of
conversational implicature. It is divided into five parts. The first part presents the
concepts of conversation, utterance, and an implicature. The second part introduces
about Cooperative Principle, including what Cooperative Principle is, the four
Maxims, the flouting of the Maxims. The third part focuses on conversational
implicature, namely including the definition of conversational implicature,
classification of conversational implicature. The fourth one reveals about the basis

of the interpretation of conversational implicature. The last one is about the
importance of conversational implicature.
2.1. The concepts
As Grice (1975) has stated that in order to interpret a conversational
implicature, the speaker as well as the hearer must share knowledge of the utterance
from which conversational implicature occurs. Therefore, it can be said that
conversational impliature occurs from an utterance of the interlocutor. The
followings are concepts of conversation, utterance, and implicature.
2.1.1. Conversation
Conversation can be defined as a talk, especially an informal one, between
two

or

more

people,

in

which

news

and

ideas

are

exchanged.

( />The follwing is an example of a conversation between two people:
A: Is Brad a talker?
B: Is the Pope Catholic? (Bouton, 1994, p. 101)
Or a conversation among three people presented as follows:
Kate: I wish we didn’t have that test next Friday. I wanted to leave for
Florida before that.
Jake: Oh, I don’t think we’ll really have that test. Do you?


Mark: Professor Schmidt said he wasn’t going anywhere this vacation. What
do you think Kate? Will he really give us that test? Do you think we have to stay
around until Friday?
Kate: Does the sun come up in the east these days?
(Bouton, 1994, p. 96)
2.1.2. Utterance
Hurford & Heasley (1983) defines an utterance as follow:
“ An utterance is any stretch of talk by one person, before and after
which there is a silence on the part of the person. It is the use by a particular
speaker, on a particular occasion, of a piece of language, such as a sequence
of sentence, or a single phrase, or even a single word” (p. 15).
The following are examples of utturances:
“Hello”, “Not much”, “Not at all”, “Can you close the door?”, “ Could you
give me a hand?”
2.1.3. Implicature
The term “implicature” is used by Grice (1975) to account for what a
speaker can imply, suggest, or mean, as distinct from what the speaker literally says.
(Brown & Yule, 1983, p. 31). The following is an example of implicature:
John and Cathy are talking about a mutual friend, David, who is now

working in a bank.
John: How is David getting in his job?
Cathy: Oh, quite well, I think; he likes his colleages, and he hasn’t been to
prison yet. (Grice, 1975, p. 43)
From a conversation above, John might inquire what Cathy was implying,
what she was suggesting, or what she meant by Cathy’s saying that David had not
yet been to prison. It meant that colleagues of David were not friendly and helpful.
They were distasteful and deceitful people. Of course, it might be unessential for
John to make an inquiry of Cathy. In this context, the answer was being clear. It was
obviously that what Cathy implied, suggested, or meant...was different from what
Cathy said. What Cathy wanted to convey was not that David had not been to prison
yet. In this case, Cathy used an indirect speech which is called an implicature,
namely conversational implicature.


2.2. Cooperative Principle
According to Jia (2008), linguistists as well as other researchers doing
pragmatics has believed that cooperation is very necessary for a conversation to
occur. It can be said that in order for a conversation to be successful, the
interlocutors should keep a cooperative attitude. In other words, they should be
cooperators.
In addition, Yule (1996) has shown that “in most circumstances, the
assumption of cooperation is so pervasive that it can be stated as a cooperative
principle of conversation, and elaborated in four-sub principles, called maxims”. (p.
37)
2.2.1. What is the Cooperative Principle
The main branch of conversational implicature is Cooperative Principle. In
1975, an American linguistic philosopher Herbert Paul Grice showed the theory of
Cooperative Principle as follow: “Make your conversational contribution such as is
required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the

talk exchange in which you are engaged” (p. 45). Or we can say that the
interlocutors should be co-operaters so that their utterances can be relevant to each
other. From that, they can infer what the speaker wants to convey and then can
make their communication effectively/.(extracted from Haiyan Wang, 2011)
The Cooperative Principle, according to Grice, consists of four maxims
with their own regulation respectively presented in the next part.
2.2.2. The four maxims
Maxims of conversation are Grice’s theory which reveals about the way
people use language. There are four maxims accordance with the Cooperative
Principle. The four maxims are Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner. Properly,
Gricean maxims are presented as follows:

The maxim of Quantity

- Make your contribution as informative as is
required (for the current purposes of the
exchange).
- Do not make your contribution more informative
than is required.


The maxim of Quality
The maxim of Relation
The maxim of Manner

- Do not say what you believe to be false.
- Do not say that for which you lack of adequate
evidence.
- Be relevant.
- Avoid obscurity of expression.

- Avoid ambiguity.
- Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
- Be orderly.
Table 1: The four maxims

The following is an example about the four maxims.
Father : Where are the children?
Mother: They are in the garden or in the play room, I’m not sure which.
(J. Thomas. Conversational Maxims cited in Peter V. Lamarque, 1997 (Eds),
Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language, p. 389)
In the situation above, mother has told clearly (manner) and truthfully
(quality). In addition, she has given just the right amount of information (quantity),
has directly addressed her husband’s purpose in asking the question (relation), and
has said exactly what she meant, no more and no less. It means that the mother has
given relevant information in a way that is easy to understand. She has observed the
four maxims: quantity, quality, relation, and manner. There is no distinction between
what the mother has said and what she meant. In other words, there is no
implicature in the conversation between father and mother.
In brief, we can say that good speakers in general often try not to give
comparatively unspecific answers to questions, not to give information which the
listener already knows, not to give irrelevant information to the conversation’s
topic. A good speaker tries to give information in a way that is not difficult to
understand and can avoid illusory statements.
2.2.3. The flouting of the Maxims
Nguyen Thi Tu Anh (2012) has stated that in normal communication,
interlocutors actually need to follow the Cooperative Principle and all the four
conversational maxims. There are, however, some situations in which they do not
follow all the four maxims. That are circumstances in which people do not observe
one of the four maxims. It can be seen that they flout one of the four maxims. The

flouting of the conversational maxims creates conversational implicatures that
contribute to a conversation greater.
J. Thomas (in Peter V. Lamarque (1997) (Eds), Concise Encyclopedia of
Philosophy of Language, p. 390) states that “ a ‘flout’ occurs when a speaker
‘blatantly’ fails to observe a maxim at the level of what is said, with the deliberate
intention of generating an implicature”. In other words, there are several cases when
a speaker fails a maxim or some maxims in a conversation with the purpose of
conveying additional meaning. The speaker seems to flout the maxim deliberately
and the speaker assumes that he/she still observes the maxims but perhaps at a
deeper level. The speaker infringes the maxims to make the hearer pay more
attention to what they imply, suggest, or mean which is called implicature as Grice
(1975) has proved. Let’s take a look at the following example:
Leila has just walked into Mary’s office and noticed all the work on her
desk.
Leila: Whoa! Has your boss gone crazy?
Mary: Let’s go get some coffee.
(Yule, 1996, p. 43)
Firstly, there is no reason to assume that Mary does not follow the
Cooperative Principle if she does not want Leila to think of the additional meaning.
Secondly, Mary knows that she must give the required information and she knows
that Leila can know the assumption that Mary’s boss is nearby. Mary, therefore,
appears to flout the maxims of relevance to avoid answer Leila’s question.
2.3. Conversational implicature
2.3.1. Definition of conversational implicature
Grice proposes the four maxims (quantity, quality, relation, manner) to
define conversational implicatures which are the preponderant part of his theory. He
suggests,
A man who, by saying that p has implicated q, may be said to have
conversationally implicated that q, provided that (1) he is presumed to be

observing the conversational maxims, or at least the Cooperative Principle;
(2) the supposition that he is aware that, or thinks that, q is required in


order to make his saying or making as if to say p, consistent with this
presumption; and (3) the speaker thinks (and would expect the hearer to
think that the speaker thinks) that it is within the competence of the hearer
to work out, or grasp intuitively, that the supposition mentioned in (2) is
required .
(Grice, 1975, p. 49)
2.3.2. Classification of conversational implicature
2.3.2.1. Kinds of conversational implicature
According to Grice (1975), there are two main kinds of conversational
implicature: generalized implicature and particularized implicature.
2.3.2.1.1. Generalized conversational implicatures
Generalized conversational implicature is defined as “those that arises
without any particular context or special scenario being necessary” (Levinson 1983,
p. 126).
Furthermore, Yule (1996, p. 41) states that “when no special knowledge is
required in the context to calculate the additional conveyed meaning”, as in an
example follow, it is called a generalized conversational implicature.
Doobie: Did you invite Bella and Cathy?
Mary: I invited Bella.
From an instance above, Doobie has to assume that Mary is operating and
that Mary used the maxim of quantity to show that she did not invite Cathy. In this
case, no special background knowledge of the utterance’s context is required to
infer what Mary means.
According to Yule (1996), one common example in English involves any
phrase with an indefinite article of the type “a/an X” which is typically interpreted
according to the generalized conversational implicature that: an X means “not

speaker’s X” as shown in the following instance.
I was sitting in a garden one day. A child looked over the fence. (Yule, 1996,
p. 41).


In this example, the implicature is that it was not the speaker’s garden. Also,
it was not the child of the speaker since if he/she was aware of being more
specific, the speaker would have said “my garden” and “my child”
Yule (1996) aslo states another type of generalized conversational
implicature, called a scalar implicature.
Certain information is always communicated by choosing a word
which expresses one value from the scale of values. This is particularly
obvious in terms for expressing quantity, as shown in the scale below, where
terms are listed from the highest to the lowest value.
< All, most, many, some, few>
<Always, often, sometimes>.
Let’s consider the following examples.
a, I’m studying Maths and I’ve completed some of the given excercises.
b, I sometimes go to the beach with my friends.
In example (a), the speaker uses the word “some” to create an implicature. It
implies that he has not complete all the given excercises. Also, by using
“sometimes”, the speaker means that he does not often or not always go to the
beach with his friends.
According to Yule (1996, p. 41), a scalar impicature can be defined that
when saying “some of the given excercises”, the speaker perhaps make such other
implicatures as “not most”, “ not many”). Futhermore, by using “sometimes”, the
speaker creates implicatures “not always, not often).
Yule (1996) also states that there are cases a scalar implicature created by the
use of expression that may not be part of any scale as shown in an example follow:
Peter says: “ It’s possible that they were delayed”. In this case, by using the

word “possible”, Peter means “not certain”.
Through examples presented above, we can see that in order for the hearer to
infer a generalized conversational implicature, he/she can rely on such articles or
words showing the scale of values or words showing the scale of frequency and so
forth.


2.3.2.1.2. Particularized conversational implicatures.
Particularized conversational implicature is implicature that arises on
particular context of the utterance (Levinson, 1983).
Moreover, particularized conversational implicature, according to Yule
(1996) is an implicature which take places in a specific context during a
conversation. Let’s have a look at the following example.
Ann: Where are you going with the dog?
Sam: To the V-E-T
In this context, Sam knows that the dog will recognize the place where Ann
takes him to is Vet. Sam supposes that the dog hates being there, so he answers
more evabolately by spelling out ‘V-E-T’. His response implicates that he does not
want the dog to discover the answer to Ann’s question. In this case, Sam appears to
flout the maxim of manner.
2.3.2.2. Types of conversational implicature
There are different types of conversational implicatures presented as
follows:
a. Indirect criticism implicature is an implicature that is often used in a response
to a request for a judgement of something. When the speaker uses this
implicature, he/she means a negative assessment. However, the speaker will
give a compliment about insignificant feature of the thing that he/she is asked to
judge (Bouton, 1994). Let’s take a look at the following example.
Two teachers are talking about a student’s term paper yet?
Mr. R: Have you finished with Mark’s term paper yet?

Mr. M: Yes, I have. I read it last night.
Mr. R: What did you think of it?
Mr. M: Well, I thought it was well typed.
(Bouton, 1994, p. 96)
In the example above, Mr. M flouted the maxim of quantity as Grice has
stated to mean that he did not like Mark’s term paper yet.


b. Pope Q implicature is an implicature that answers a question by using another
question. Bouton (1994) has showed that the hearer must assume that the
answer of the first question and the answer of the second question is the same.
For example:
Ceila and Ron are discussing their boss, who is very unpleasant
Ceila: So, do you think Mr. Stinguy will give me a raise?
Ron: Do cows fly?
(Eli Hinkel, 1999, p. 68)
What does Ron mean?
In this case, Ron’s response is not “yes” or “no” answer but Ceila must
assume that Ron is cooperating and Ceila considers Ron’s pope question as the
obvious answer “no”. Ron’s response seems to flout the maxim of relevance - Be
relevant, according to Grice. On the other hand, Bouton (1994) called it “Pope Q
implicature.
c. Sequense implicature is an implicature that can be seen easily in the
perculiarity of sequence of events implied by statements. The example about
this is as follows:
Two friends are talking about what happened the previous evening.
Maria: Hey, I hear that Sandy went to Philadelphia last light and stole a car.
Tony: Not exactly. He stole a car and went to Philadelphia.
Maria: Are you sure? That’s not the way I heard it.
(Bouton, 1994, p. 97)

What actually happened is that Sandy stole a car in Philadelphia last
night. Which of the two has the right story then?
In this situation, we must assume that the events being described happen
according to the order in which they are expressed (What actually happened is that
Sandy stole a car in Philadelphia last night). It means that Maria told the right story.
d. Minimum Requirement implicature is an implicature happening “when it is
clear from the context that the only information that is desired by the addressee
is whether a certain minimum requirement has been met” (Bouton, 1994) . Let’s
consider the following instance.


Mr. Brown is a dairy farmer and needs to borrow money to build a new
barn. When he gose to the bank to apply for the loan, the banker tells him that
he must have at least 50 cows on his farm in order to borrow enough money to
build a barn. The following conversation then occurs.
Banker: Do you have 50 cows, Mr. Brown?
Mr. Brown: Yes, I do.
(Lee, 2002, p. 24)
In this example, the banker wants to know whether Mr. Brown has the
minimum number of cows that proves that he can borrow money from the bank.
Based on the condition, Mr. Brown’s response is that he does have enough cows, at
least 50 – maybe more.
e. Relevance implicature is an implicature that the hearer must assume that the
speaker is saying something relevant to the topic despite the fact that the
speaker is flouting the maxim of relevance (Bouton, 1994). The example is as
follows:
Lars: Where’s Rudy, Tom? Have you seen him this morning?
Tom: There’s a yellow Honda parked over by Sarah’s house.
(Bouton, 1994, p. 94)
What Tom is saying is that…

In this case, Tom seems floutes the relevance maxim. However, Lars must
assume that Tom is being cooperative by finding another meaning relevant to the
topic. It means, Lars must assum that a yellow Honda belonged to Rudy to be able
to understand that Rudy may be at Sarah’s house.
f. Irony implicature is an implicature that the speaker uses to mean something
with irony. Here is an example:
At a recent party there was a lot of singing and piano playing. At one
point Sue played the piano and Mary sang. When Tom asked a friend what
Mary had sung, the friend replied,
Friend: I’m not sure, but Sue was playing a song named “ My Wild Irish
Rose”.
Which of the following is the closest to what Bob meant by this remark?


(Bouton, 1994, p. 97)
In this example, a friend flouted the maxim of quality because he said what
he believed to be false. A friend wanted to convey the ironic meaning that was Mary
sang very badly.
2.4. The basis of the interpretation of conversational implicature
According to Grice (1975, p.50), in order to recognize the exit of
conversational implicature, the listener will depend on the following factors:
1) The conventional meaning of the words used and any references which
2)
3)
4)
5)

may be involved as well.
The Cooperative Principle and its maxims
The context, whether linguistic or otherwise, of the utterance

Background knowledge.
The fact that all relevant elements presented above are available to both
participants in a speech event.

According to Grice (1975, p. 50), the inference method is showed as follow:
He has said that p; there is no reason to suppose that he is not
observing the maxims, or at least the Cooperative Principle; he could not be
doing this unless he thought that q; he knows (and knows that I know that he
knows) that I can see that the supposition that he thinks that q is required; he
has done nothing to stop me from thinking that q; he intends me to think, or
is at least willing to allow me to think, that q; and so he has implicated that
q.
In addition, as Lee (2002) has stated that the listener needs to make
inferences based on shared cultural knowledge and presuppositions and arrive at an
interpretation of the speaker’s message assuming that both parties are adhering to
Cooperative Principle. Let’s consider the following example: [phone ring]
John: Can you get that, Susan?
Susan: I’m in the shower.
Susan does not follow the relevance maxim as she does not give “yes” or
“no” answer. However, John assumes that Susan is cooperating and John infers that
Susan cannot answer the phone based on the context that Susan is in the shower.


Moreover, according to Taguchi (2005), the hearer must use contextual
information to understand implicatures. External context includes sociocultural
factors as physical settings, culture background and interlocutor relationship.
Internal context consists of assumption, beliefs, experiences, or knowledge of the
world. Let’s consider the following example:
An Australian factory supervisor clearly assumed that other factory workers
would know that Easter was close and hence they would all have a holiday. He

asked a Vietnamese worker about her plans:
You have five days off. What are you going to do? (Yule, 1996, p. 87)
The Vietnames worker immediately understand that utterance in term of
being laid off rather than having a holiday. Yule (1996) has showed that “something
good in one person’s schema can sound like something bad in another’s”. (p. 87)
By surveying the use of the quantity maxim in a Malagasian society, Keenan
(1976) tended to investigate whether people from different cultures can interpret
conversational implicature in English in the same way. She found that the
Malagasian expected speakers to give less information, which is opposite to the way
Americans expected. Therefore, implicatures in American culture can lead the
Malagasian misunderstand. Due to the distinctions in the expectations of speakers in
different cultures, Keenan stated that people from different cultures can differently
interpret the same utterance within the same context (Lee, 2002).
Also, Keenan, 1976; Nash, 1989; Olshtain & Cohen, 1989; Wierbicka, 1991;
Lee, 2000 has stated that “the rules for discourse units or speech acts can vary
significantly from culture to culture” (Lee, 2002, p. 2).
In this study, the researcher also wants to know whether the Vietnamese
fourth year English majored students at Tay Nguyen University misunderstand
implicatures in the culture speaking English or not. In other words, whether cultural
knowledge is the factor influencing the students’ ability to understand English
conversational implicatures.


2.5. The importance of conversational implicature
According to Vo Thi Thanh Thao (2011), “Conversational implicature is one
of the most important ideas in pragmatics. The importance of conversational
implicature as a means of expressing a message indirectly is well established”.
In addition, Lee (2002) shows that native speakers of English always use
pragmatic strategies with the purpose of playing with words in order to get
communicative effect. For example, to express irony, a native speaker use such

expression as “Boy, she really knows how to sing” to talk about a bad singer. That
expression means something different from what the speaker literally said.
Furthermore, Nguyen Thi Tu Anh (2012) has stated that if we can interpret
implicatures of the speaker or the writer, it will help us understand the problem
clearly and communicate successfully. Or it can be said that since conversational
implicature plays a very considerable role in term of pragmatics, understanding
them is very important, helping us more in communication.
Also, according to Green (1989, cited in Bouton 1994), conversational
implicature is “an absolutely unremarkable and ordinary conversational strategy and
therefore, very much part of any proficient speaker’s communicative competence.
Therefore, it is very significant for us to be able to understand conversational
implicature.
The ability to understand what a native speaker intends to convey will help
English Foreign Language students improve their communicative skills and prepare
them to be proficient language learners who can carry the effective and successful
communication using a suitable conversational strategy and know how to encounter
with communicative circumstances requiring interpretation (Supaporn Manowong,
2011).