The Nuts and Bolts of Teaching Implicatures in EFL/ESL Contexts: An Overview on the Role of Video-enhanced Input

The notion of implicature, the crucial role of which in second/foreign language learning has been repeatedly acknowledged by many scholars, is a key concept in Grice’s groundbreaking theory of Cooperative Principle (CP). According to this theory, interlocutors of a conversation follow the four maxims of Quality, Quantity, Relevance and Manner or deliberately violate them in order to convey a message which is beyond what is directly said. This paper is an attempt to further the understanding of implicatures by spelling out the basic tenets of Grice’s theory of implicatures and reporting the results of some of the studies conducted on this topic with a special emphasis on the role of video-driven prompts as influential sources of input. It finishes with new strands of research on implicatures.