The Interpretation of Implicature: A Comparative Study between Implicature in Linguistics and Journalism

Abstract

Abstract—This study explores implicature as a pragmatic inference in some journalist texts. Content analysis has proved the existence of the inference in all types of news reporting. The study also reveals that implicature as a vital pragmatic element in the process of communication which bridges the gap between what is literally said and what is intentionally meant. Analysis of implicature has proved its importance to discourse analysis theories and the new English syllabi since it caters for what is said and what is understood in the process of communication. Sentence linguistics which has been used in school-classes since 1850 has been challenged by this pragmatic inference. That is, traditional grammar concentrated mainly on the structures of sentences and their internal systems. Implicature, however, employs the whole situation and it uses all the circumstances surrounding the utterance in order to really conceive the intended meaning of the producer of that utterance. Implicature as well plays a vital role in media language by bridging the gap between the different cultures. The paper shows this inference as a tool of cultural transfer and how far it can be harnessed as interdisciplinary system to illustrate linguistic pragmatic theory as well as explaining how media language works.