Implicitness: From lexis to discourse

Although the term implicitness is ubiquitous in the pragmatic scholarship, it has rarely constituted the focus of attention per se. This book aims to help crystallize the concept of implicitness by defining its linguistic boundaries, as well as specifying and exploring its different communicative manifestations. The contributions by leading specialists scrutinize the main conceptualizations, forms and occurrences of implicitness (such as implicature, impliciture, explicature, entailment, presupposition, etc.) at different levels of linguistic organization. The volume focuses on phrasal, sentential, and discursive phenomena, showcasing the richness and variety of implicit forms of communication, systematizing (where possible) the existing analytic perspectives, and identifying the most productive procedures for further exploration. Taken together, the chapters exhibit theoretical differences that hinder a consensus on the nature of implicitness, but they simultaneously reveal methodological points of contact and raise common questions, thereby signposting a future analytic agenda. The book will appeal to both theoretically and empirically minded scholars working within and across the disciplines of Pragmatics, Semantics, Language Philosophy, Discourse Analysis, and Communication Studies.

Table of Contents:
1. Chapter 1. Implicitness: Familiar terra incognita in pragmatics (by Dynel, Marta); 2. Part I. Word and phrase; 3. Chapter 2. What's a reading? (by Ariel, Mira); 4. Chapter 3. Pronouns and implicature (by Davis, Wayne A.); 5. Chapter 4. Implicitness in the lexis: Lexical narrowing and neo-Gricean pragmatics (by Huang, Yan); 6. Chapter 5. Zero subject anaphors and extralinguistically motivated subject pro-drop in Hungarian language use (by Nemeth T., Eniko); 7. Part II. Sentence and utterance; 8. Chapter 6. Implicitness via overt untruthfulness: Grice on Quality-based figures of speech (by Dynel, Marta); 9. Chapter 7. Lexical pragmatics and implicit communication (by Wilson, Deirdre); 10. Chapter 8. Indirect ritual offence - A study on elusive impoliteness (by Kadar, Daniel Z.); 11. Chapter 9. Implicitness in the use of situation-bound utterances (by Kecskes, Istvan); 12. Chapter 10. Thematic silence as a speech act (by Kurzon, Dennis); 13. Part III. Text and discourse; 14. Chapter 11. The dynamics of discourse: Quantity meets quality (by Fetzer, Anita); 15. Chapter 12. Why don't you tell it explicitly?: Personal/subpersonal accounts of implicitness (by Mazzone, Marco); 16. Chapter 13. Implicature and the inferential substrate (by Haugh, Michael); 17. Index