GRICEIANA

Speranza

The past decade has seen a flurry of experimental work on the psychological basis of conversational implicature, focusing in particular on the questions of whether implicature processing is automatic or effortful and whether pragmatic interpretations develop before or after logical ones. This chapter reviews this work, assesses its significance, and sets it within a wider theoretical context. In particular, it draws attention to a theoretical option largely ignored in the experimental literature. Most experimental work on implicature has been conducted within a broadly Gricean paradigm, according to which implicatures can be calculated and explained using general psycho-social principles. However, there is an alternative strand in philosophy of language, according to which many implicatures depend on convention rather than inference. We argue that this view should not be ruled out and deserves experimental testing. The chapter also makes connections with the literature on dual-process theories of reasoning, as developed by Jonathan Evans and others. Superficially at least, implicature seems made for a dual-process analysis, and we consider if this is correct. The chapter closes with some suggestions for future experimental work.