Implication (pragmatics)

In pragmatics (linguistics), implication (or implicature) is the relationship between two statements where the truth of one suggests the truth of the other, but--distinguishing implication from entailment--does not require it. For example, the sentence "Mary had a baby and got married" strongly suggests that Mary had the baby before the wedding, but the sentence would still be strictly true if Mary had her baby after she got married. Further, if we add the qualification "-- not necessarily in that order" to the original sentence, then the implication is cancelled even though the meaning of the original sentence is not altered.

Related Topics:
Pragmatics - Linguistics - Entailment

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This can be contrasted with cases of entailment. For example, the statement "The president was assassinated" not only suggests that "The president is dead" is true, but requires that it be true. The first sentence could not be true if the second were not true; if the president were not dead, then whatever it is that happened to him would not have counted as a (successful) assassination. Similarly, unlike implications, entailments cannot be cancelled; there is no qualification that one could add to "The president was assassinated" which would cause it to cease entailing "The president is dead" while also preserving the meaning of the first sentence.

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The more specialized term implicature was coined by Paul Grice as a technical term in pragmatics without the additional meanings in logic and informal language use of implication.

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