explicature

From explicate +‎ -ure, after implicature.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɛkˈsplɪkətʃə/, /ɪkˈsplɪkətʃə/, /ˈɛksplɪkətʃə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɛkˈsplɪkət͡ʃɚ/, /ɪkˈsplɪkət͡ʃɚ/

explicature (countable and uncountable, plural explicatures)

1. (linguistics) Something explicitly expressed in an utterance, as opposed to what is implicit. [from 20th c.]
   • 2012, Jodie Clark, Language, Sex and Social Structure:

     In relevance theory terms, he must construct a hypothesis about the explicit content of Ally's utterance;that is, he mustrely upon both the words she uses in this utterance and an inferencing process to construct an explicature.

   • 2013, Peter Grundy, Doing Pragmatics, page 136:

     If the speaker was your flat-mate and you had a habit of borrowing her property without permission, she might be asking you if you'd 'borrowed' the book she owned (explicature) and the utterance might be taken as a demand for its return.

explicātūre

1. vocative masculine singular of explicātūrus