Logic and (Fictional) Conversation

In this article I apply Grice’s theory of conversational implicature to conversations that occur within fictional discourse, with the aim of explaining the characteristic features implicatures display in this context. I reject the pretended pragmatics approach, arguing that pretense is neither necessary nor sufficient to account for how language works in the production of fictional discourse. I propose an alternative model that dispenses with the notion of pretense without losing explanatory power, namely the theory of represented implicatures, and I explain how this view adapts the Gricean framework to capture the specific features of implicatures in fictional conversations. I then examine two problematic kinds of cases, breakings of the fourth wall and metafictional sentences uttered by narrators. Both involve conversational implicatures that communicate information about the real world, information that, according to the theory of represented implicatures, fictional characters and narrators could not possess. I offer an analysis of these cases that is consistent with the theory of represented implicatures.