THE FUNCTION OF IMPLICATURE IN SUSTAINING CONVERSATIONS

This is a case study on conversations performed by several
speakers who are fluent in English. The objective is to find
out the function of implicatures in sustaining the
conversations. There are ten fluent speakers who participated
in the talk. The conversations were recorded and transcribed
to be the data. The function and context of implicatures were
identified in terms of concept of conversational implicatures:
generalized and particularized (GCis and PCis).There are
152 implicatures identified and the dominant type is the PCI
(53.28%). The implicatures are deduced from the meanings
of the sentences or utterances including the unsaid
utterances as the context. One typical example of the
conversational implicature is that a speaker will finish the
utterances of another speaker to show that the implicature is
clear and definite. There are 7 main functions of the
conversational implicatures. namely (1) enabling, (2)
' J ' '
making, (7) persuading another speaker to give new
information, state the same thing, offer new way of
interpretation, accept what is said, probe into the topic
deeper, say more about the topic, and show his or her
knowledge about the topic. It is suggested that more data be
taken to discover more possible conversational implicatures.
The findings are useful for those who teaching speaking skills
and who want to improve their conversational skins.