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Definition 2024

explicature ‎(uncountable)

(linguistics) What is explicitly expressed in an utterance, as opposed to what is implicit. [from 20th c.]
- 2012, Jodie Clark, Language, Sex and Social Structure:
  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.
- 2013, Peter Grundy, Doing Pragmatics, p. 136:
  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.

explicātūre