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 Topic 12 - Meaning between the lines (Session A) > Conversational implicature and The Dumb Waiter > Task D skip topic navigation

Session Overview
Inference and the Discourse Architecture of Drama
Grice's Cooperative Principle
Practising Gricean Analysis
Top Girls
Conversational implicature and The Dumb Waiter
Gricean Self-Test
 
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The Dumb Waiter Passage
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Conversational implicature and The Dumb Waiter

Task D - Gricean analysis of turns 18-19

How would you characterise these two turns in Gricean terms and what is their interpretative significance?

18. GUS

They put on the kettle.

19. BEN

(taut) Who says?

They stare at each other, breathing hard.

(deliberately) I have never in all my life heard anyone say put on the kettle.

 

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