explicature

Definitions

Something explicitly expressed in an utterance, as opposed to what is implicit.

countable, uncountable

Examples

“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.”

“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⟳.”

CEFR level