The Relationship between Iranian EFL Learners’ Proficiency Level and Their Knowledge of Idiosyncratic and Formulaic Implicatures

Conversational implicature, which is a component of speaker meaning that constitutes an aspect of what is meant in a speaker’s utterance without being part of what is said, is  subsumed under interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) which has attracted considerable attention from pragmatics practitioners and theoreticians. Nonetheless, very few studies have explored the correlation between implicature knowledge and the proficiency level; therefore, the present study, conducted at Golestan University among Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and English Literature students,  aimed to find out not only whether there would be any statistically significant relationship between 102 (35 males and 76 females) Iranian EFL learners’ proficiency level (High vs. Low) and their implicature knowledge as well as the subcategories of idiosyncratic and formulaic implicatures, but also whether there would exist any significant relationship between male and female EFL learners’ proficiency level (High vs. low) and their implicature knowledge. Moreover, this study investigated to what extent the (sub)categories of idiosyncratic and formulaic implicatures could be predicted by the proficiency level. The results of Pearson correlation indicated that there was a positive significant relationship between proficiency score and both formulaic implicatures and idiosyncratic implicatures. Moreover, among three sub-constructs of formulaic implicatures, Understand Criticism had the highest positive significant correlation and the Pope Q had the lowest correlation with proficiency. In addition, among four sub-constructs of idiosyncratic implicatures, Relevance Disclosure had the highest positive significant correlation and Relevance General had the lowest correlation with proficiency. However, the results of independent-samples t-test indicated that there is no significant difference in the implicature knowledge between male and female students. Results of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) revealed that both types of implicatures are predicted positively and significantly by proficiency level. Therefore, one of the implications of the present study for materials developers is to include idiosyncratic and formulaic implicatures in the textbooks to enhance the leaners’ implicature comprehension; teachers can also focus on the significance of interpreting the implied meaning rather than just focusing on linguistic features.