explicature
nounUK /ɛkˈsplɪkətʃə/ · US /ɛkˈsplɪkət͡ʃɚ/
Etymology From explicate + -ure, after implicature.
1
Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences Something explicitly expressed in an utterance, as opposed to what is implicit.
- In relevance theory terms, he must construct a hypothesis about the explicit content of Ally's utterance;that is, he mustrely upon both the words she uses in this utterance and an inferencing process to construct an explicature.2012, Jodie Clark, Language, Sex and Social Structure:
- If the speaker was your flat-mate and you had a habit of borrowing her property without permission, she might be asking you if you'd 'borrowed' the book she owned (explicature) and the utterance might be taken as a demand for its return.2013, Peter Grundy, Doing Pragmatics, page 136: