English language learners’ comprehension and production of implicatures

Abstract

The present study investigated to what extent Turkish-speaking upper-intermediate level second language learners of English can comprehend and produce implicatures. To this end, 90 freshman students completed a multiple-choice test, and responded to 12 situations in a discourse completion task (DCT). The participants had a moderately high level of success in the implicature comprehension test. Although the learners had considerable difficulty in comprehending understated negative criticism items, which flout the maxim of quantity, they were highly competent in comprehending relevance implicatures. The rates of success in quality and manner implicature comprehension were moderate. The participants were more successful in understanding particularized implicatures when compared to generalized implicatures. As for the production data, 70.6% of the responses contained implicatures. The mostly widely flouted maxim was the quality maxim for the purposes of creating sarcasm and achieving face management and politeness. The maxim of quality was flouted when responding to bad news or expressing anger in an unpleasant situation. When trying to express their opinions about the quality of a particular thing/person, participants tended to flout the maxim of quantity in order to avoid expressing their opinions directly, and making the referent disappointed. The participants did not tend to make use of implicatures in the case of requesting. The participants who realized requests via implicatures flouted the quantity maxim mostly. A significant correlation was not documented between participants’ pragmatic production and comprehension. © 2017, Hacettepe University. All rights reserved.