Implicature in Contemporary European Novels: Pragmatic and Linguocultural Mechanisms of Unsaid Meaning

Abstract

The article examines how implicit meaning is generated in the dialogues of contemporary English-language novels from pragmatic and linguocultural perspectives. The material comprises dialogic episodes from Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1989) and Sally Rooney’s Normal People (2018). The analysis draws on Grice’s cooperative principle, neo-Gricean models (Horn, Levinson) and relevance theory. It is shown that in both novels implicature carries the main semantic load, but its cultural basis differs: in Ishiguro it is tied to class duty and the norm of restraint, in Rooney to social inequality and the need to save face. Implicature is interpreted as the pragmatic manifestation of a linguocultural code.