R. I. P.: Grice's Conventional Implicature

Into the Conventional-Implicature Dimension
Christopher Potts 1*

Grice coined the term 'conventional implicature' in a short passage in 'Logic and Conversation'. The description is intuitive and deeply intriguing. The range of phenomena that have since been assigned this label is large and diverse. I survey the central factual motivation, arguing that it is loosely unified by the idea that conventional implicatures contribute a separate dimension of meaning. I provide tests for distinguishing conventional implicatures from other kinds of meaning, and I briefly explore ways in which one can incorporate multiple dimensions of meaning into a single theory.

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Philosophy Compass 2 (2007): 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00089.x