Understanding what is said and what is implicated: The enriched pragmatic view

It has long been argued that what a speaker says does not fully communicate what a speaker means. For example, if Harry asks Jane “Would you like a piece of cake?” and Jane replies “I'm on a diet” she does not actually say that she is refusing the piece of cake. Consider another example in which Emma says “it will take us some time to get there”. Is Emma simply saying it will take them some unspecified amount of time and implying this may be a long amount of time or is she saying something more? The first example contains what Grice (1975) called a particularized implicature and the second example contains what he called a generalized implicature.; Many scholars have claimed that what speakers say is interpreted with minimal pragmatics while interpreting what speakers implicate requires the use of rich pragmatics. I examined differences in processing time for understanding what is said (“I'm on a diet”) and what is implicated ( therefore I do not want any cake). In addition I examined people's intuitions about the distinction between what is said and what is implicated.; The data from six experiments are presented and demonstrate the following: (1) People require additional processing time to interpret what a speaker implicates than what a speaker says when a speaker utters a particularized implicature only, (2) people do not equate a minimal meaning with what is said and instead pragmatics play a rich role in determining both what speakers say and what they implicate, and (3) people can recognize a distinction between what is said and what is implicated.; These data support the Enriched Pragmatic View proposed in this paper and the idea that pragmatics play a significant role in determining both what speakers say and what they implicate.