An Analysis of Conversational Implicatures in a “Ghazal” of Hafiz based on Grice’s Inference Theory

In discourse analysis, Grice’s inference theory – particularly, his ideas on implication – is quite helpful in determining the speaker’s intention as well as discovering and justifying the relations between discourse and its illocutionary force in verbal communication. Likewise, Grice’s verbal implications can be useful in interpreting and analyzing literary texts which are filled with figures of thought and words and sentences which usually have implicit and metaphorical meanings. Following Grice’s inference theory and his cooperative principles, this paper studies the quality of deviation from standard language norms and it’s transformation into mystical and literary language in a ghazal of Hafiz in order to calculate and infer the implicit meanings within a methodic and systematic framework. Therefore, at first, Grice’s theory and concepts such as conversational implicatures are presented and further elaborated on with a discussion of appearance appropriateness in classical rhetoric. Then, adopting a descriptive-analytic method, the first ghazal of Hafiz is studied, and the intentions beyond his words are extracted. This analysis shows that this ghazal does not feature Grice’s cooperative principles, and has deviated from standard language norms. Thus, Hafiz has used words and sentences in other meanings, and has created a mystical-literary language in a syncretic ghazal. The present paper’s main contribution is the justification and explication of Hafiz’s mystical language in the ghazal in question using reliable devices in pragmatics.