A COMPARISON OF PAKISTANI AND TURKISH LEARNERS’ COMPREHENSION OF CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES IN ENGLISH

Abstract

Conversational implicatures, as a complicated aspect of pragmatic skill, transmit meanings beyond its literal articulation and pose significant interpretive challenges for second language learners. The objective of the present study was to examine how well Turkish and Pakistani learners understood conversational implicatures in English. The study employs a categorization of conversational implicature developed by Grice (1975), Arseneault (2014), Bouton (1994), and Roever (2011). The study involved 160 undergraduate students from Pakistan and Turkey. The findings reveal that Turkish learners comparatively showed a higher level of comprehension of the conversational implicatures as observed from their use of idiosyncratic implicatures (81%) in English than the Pakistani EFL learners (67.8%). Moreover, the formulaic implicatures were proved to be more problematic than the idiosyncratic implicatures for both Pakistani (59%) and Turkish learners (76.1%). Turkish students performed better on Idiomatic (93%) and Quantity (91%) categories. However Pakistani students scored higher on Quality (73%) and Manner (73%) categories. However, both of the groups struggled with POPE-Q, Sequential, and Relevance implicatures the most. The findings are beneficial for teaching and learning the English language by establishing areas that require improvement in learners.