000028702 AN INVESTIGATION INTO HOW VIETNAMESE STUDENTS AT TAY NGUYEN UNIVERSITY INTERPRET IMPLICATURE IN ENGLISH MỘT CUỘC ĐIỀU TRA VỀ CÁCH SINH VIÊN VIỆT NAM TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC TÂY NGUYÊN DIỄN GIẢI NGHĨA CHỈ TRONG TIẾNG ANH
Bases for inferencing implicatures
According Grice (1975) in order to work out that a particular conversational implicature is present, the hearer will reply on the following data:
(i) the conventional meaning o f the words used, together with the identity o f anv references that may be involved;
(ii) the Cooperative Principle and its maxims;
(iii) the context, linguistic or otherwise, o f the utterance;
(iv) other items o f background knowledge; and
Leech (1984) argues that listeners infer implicatures from three main sources: the conventional semantic meaning of the utterance, the expectation that speakers follow cooperative principles and that listeners assume this stance too, and the relevant background knowledge or experience that supports understanding For example, understanding the statement “there’s a garage round the corner” as an implied meaning like “I’m out of petrol” relies on interpreting beyond the literal words Background knowledge can be crucial: a line such as “Why Australia must cut the Umbilical Accord” would be opaque to someone without familiarity with Australia’s politics, where the author signals opposition to a specific Prices and Wages Accord between government, business, and unions The metaphor of the “umbilical cord” illustrates how a shared background can lead the hearer to infer that the Accord, like a cord, should be severed.
As cited in Nguyen Hoa (2000), informal reasoning plays a central role in uncovering most conversational implicatures, relying on an informal approach to surface these subtle meanings, with a more detailed discussion to follow in the next section.
M echanism for inferencing im plicature
Grice (1975) says “conversational implicatures should be recoverable by the reasoning process " and s u g g e s t s chat the conversational implicatures o f an utterance might be derived by arguments o f the following form, that we may call a mechanism for working out or inferencing implicatures:
(ii) There is no reason to suppose that he is not observing the maxims, or at least the Cooperative Principle.
(iii) He could not be doing this unless he thought that q.
(iv) He knows (and knows that I know that he knows) that I can see that the supposition that he thinks that q is required.
(v) He has done nothing to stop me, the addressee, thinking that q.
(vi) He intends me to think, or is at least willing to allow me to think, that q.
(vii) And so, he has implicated that q.
(Grice, 1975)Now consider the reasoning o f some preceding examples which are analyzed under the view o f this mechanism offered by Grice:
Returning to example [5] (see page 9):
B: Somewhere in the South o f France.
There is no reason to suppose that B is opting out B has infringed the first maxim, Quantity (his answer is, as he well knows, less informative than is required to meet A's needs) This infringement o f the first maxim o f Quantity can be explained only by the supposition that B is aware that to be more informative would be to say something that infringed the second maxim o f Quality, ‘D on’t say what you lack adequate evidence for So B implicates that he does not know in which C lives.
Consider another example in which the first maxim o f Quality is flouted:
A and B both know that A 's friend A'has ju st sold A 's business secrets.
(Grice, 1975) The gloss is that:
It is perfectly obvious to both A and B that A has said, or acted as if to say, something he does not believe, and B knows that A knows this.
If A's utterance is entirely pointless, he must be trying to convey some proposition other than the one he claims to be asserting That alternative proposition would have to be obviously related to what he says, and the most obvious related proposition is the negation— the contradiction— of the proposition he purports to forward.
2.1.6 Aspects of the process o f interpreting intended meanings
Inferencing implicature arises from multiple factors, rather than a single cue Brown and Yule (1983) propose that there are three key aspects to the process of interpreting a speaker’s or writer’s intended meaning as discourse is produced These aspects—how linguistic choices are used, how contextual and situational cues shape interpretation, and how the audience’s background knowledge and expectations influence understanding—determine how listeners and readers infer meaning beyond the literal words, guiding the overall comprehension of the discourse.
(i) computing the communicative function (taking the message);
(ii) using socio-cultural knowledge (background);
(iii) determining the inferences to be made.
(As cited in Nguyen Hoa, 2000, p 123)
Nguyen Hoa (2000) argues that language carries both social (interactional) meaning and propositional (transactional) meaning when spoken in a given context, and that hearers decode these two aspects of communicative function Consequently, expressions such as “How are you?” are typically interpreted as greetings rather than genuine inquiries about someone’s health (pp 123–124).
Language comprehension can unfold from the details up or from expectations down Nguyen Hoa (2000) explains that bottom-up processing starts by interpreting the meanings of words, phrases, and sentence structure to assemble an overall interpretation, while top-down processing relies on context and the composite meaning of previously processed sentences to predict what the next sentence will mean.
Yule (1996) argues that our ability to interpret unwritten and unsaid content automatically rests on pre-existing knowledge structures—patterns from prior experience we use to interpret new experiences These structures, called schemata, are memory-based skeletons that are filled with elements to shape interpretation Schemata are organized background knowledge that leads us to expect or predict aspects of discourse, guiding our interpretation of communication (Nguyen Hoa, 2000, p.129) Evidence from Tanen (1980) shows that such expectations can influence the way we produce discourse.
When Americans and Greeks watched the same silent film, they produced different interpretations: Americans focused on concrete events and the filming techniques, while Greeks emphasized the motives and emotions of the characters This divergence reflects the influence of different cultural backgrounds (as cited in Nguyen Hoa, 2000:129).
Cultural schemata are the mental structures shaped by our background knowledge and experiences, and they are culturally determined We develop these schemata in the contexts of our basic experiences, which means different cultures interpret the same situation in divergent ways and can misread others’ actions This framework helps explain misinterpretation in cross-cultural communication, where assumptions rooted in one culture’s expectations shape how events are seen by others For example, Yule (1996) describes an Australian factory supervisor who assumed Easter would be a holiday for all workers and asked a coworker from Vietnam about her plans, illustrating how differing cultural expectations can influence who is consulted, what is understood, and how dialogue unfolds.
[ 16] You have five days off What are you going to do?
A Vietnamese worker immediately interpreted the speaker’s utterance as a layoff rather than as a holiday, illustrating how cross-cultural communication can lead to misinterpretation when different schemas assign different meanings to the same message "Something good in one person’s schema can sound like something bad in another’s" (Yule, 1996, p 87).
2.1.7 Factors governing the interpretation of implied meanings
Across many of the preceding examples, the words people exchange in verbal encounters are inextricably linked to the situational context in which they occur Language gains meaning through more than dictionary definitions; it depends on who is speaking, when and where, and what the speakers intend to accomplish For example, A’s words to B—“I need to get in there Can you open the door?”—make sense to B only if he shares the language and can grasp the semantic implications of the utterance within the current moment In short, effective communication hinges on the listener’s ability to interpret linguistic meaning by considering context, shared conventions, and pragmatic cues.
Interpreting A's utterance requires linking the spoken 'T' to the friend he knows and recognizing him by his voice and appearance It also involves tying the word 'there' to a room he understands lies behind the door he can see from his current position Finally, he must grasp the role of the definite article 'the' in this context, signaling a specific referent familiar to both speaker and listener.
The “door” that A wants opened points to the same door he sees; from A’s smile, tone and intonation, and from the preceding statement of A’s needs, B must understand that this is a justified, friendly request for help and not a fortuitous inquiry In other words, beyond the semantic meaning of A’s individual words, B has to understand how these words relate to the pragmatic context of their utterance (Clair Kramsch, 1998).
Paralinguistic cues—such as stress and intonation, tone of voice, gestures, body posture, and gaze—together with extralinguistic factors—the context in which conversations occur—help speakers hint at, clarify, or guide a listener’s interpretation of what is being said Even simple words like 'there' or 'the door' can take on different meanings depending on these cues, and among the infinite range of potentially relevant contextual factors, nonverbal signals and situational context shape how listeners interpret spoken messages.
We will examine each o f these factors.