Analyzing Grice’s Conversational Implicature in Responses Produced by Artificial Intelligence Systems

Ni Made Ayu Purnami; Ni Komang Sri Wardani; Desak Putu Anom Janawati

doi:10.31764/leltj.v14i1.39976

Analyzing Grice’s Conversational Implicature in Responses Produced by Artificial Intelligence Systems

Ni Made Ayu Purnami, Ni Komang Sri Wardani, Desak Putu Anom Janawati

Abstract

This study analyzes Grice’s conversational implicature in responses produced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. The research aims to identify the types of conversational implicatures found in AI-generated responses and to explain how implicatures are constructed in human and AI interactions. Despite extensive research on conversational implicature in human communication, limited studies have examined how AI-generated responses construct conversational implicatures based on Grice's Cooperative Principle, making this investigation necessary to better understand AI-mediated interaction. This study employed a qualitative descriptive research design to provide a detailed interpretation of the data. The 20 conversation excerpts were purposively selected from user-AI interactions, transcribed, coded according to Grice's four conversational maxims, and analysed through thematic interpretation to identify patterns of conversational implicature. The conversations were selected based on their relevance to implicature phenomena, particularly utterances containing implied meanings that required contextual interpretation. The data were analyzed using Grice’s Cooperative Principle and the four conversational maxims: quantity, quality, relation, and manner. The findings reveal that AI systems frequently generate conversational implicatures through indirect answers, implied suggestions, and context-dependent responses. Several responses were identified as observing or flouting Gricean maxims in order to produce meaningful communication. The study also shows that AI systems can imitate human conversational patterns by generating implied meanings, although some responses still demonstrate limitations in contextual understanding. Overall, this research contributes to pragmatic studies by exploring conversational implicature within AI-mediated communication.

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence; Conversational maxims; Gricean maxims.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.31764/leltj.v14i1.39976