Significance of conversational implicature in the dialogue of the Censurer (al-athilah): A pragmatic study of the knights’ poetry

Abstract

Dual meanings remain a mystery that linguists seek to resolve to maintain successful linguistic communication between the addresser and the addressee that transcends language proficiency to denotations. For this purpose, linguists developed theories throughout history to determine hidden meanings and find out their denotations and connotation in discourse and the degrees of their explicitness and implicitness. One of those theories is Pragmatics which deals with language in use and is concerned with the addresser and the addresser’s intentions which cannot be reached only from the form but must be looked at in terms of the language use and its context.

A number of concepts emerged from pragmatics, one of which is Conversational Implicature which deals with the implications of the explicit meaning by applying rules and parameters defined by linguistics.

This research is an attempt to reveal Conversational Implicature in Jahiliya poetry by studying the poetry of the Jahiliya knights, which demonstrates a high degree of conflict between explicit and implicit meanings which are evident in the poets’ discourse, especially in the poetry of the Censurer (al-athilah): the woman who tries to dissuade them from achieving their social glory. The Censurer’s discourse is characterized by a communicative level that employs Conversational Implicature to persuade two sides interacting through action and reaction with regards to specific implications, and where the discourse linguistic and contextual constituents meet and aim to impact and direct behavior.

The research found in the Jahiliya knights’ poetry good material to study Conversational Implicature and the way it became a tool of expressing their conflicting social views of life and the universe in their monologues and in censuring their censurers. It also showed the impact of the Conversational Implicature’ laws in fulfilling the power of expression, which builds conversational Implicature out of explicit meaning and allows one sentence to have direct and indirect meanings in a joint situational context.