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Part of
Relevance Theory, Figuration, and Continuity in Pragmatics
Edited by Agnieszka Piskorska
[Figurative Thought and Language 8] 2020
► pp. 291–308

Chapter 10
Another look at “Cat in the rain”

A cognitive pragmatic approach to text analysis

| Nara University, Japan

Hemingway’s “Cat in the rain” has been discussed from various viewpoints, both by literary critics and by linguists. Among the points in dispute is the issue of whether the cat the American wife saw under the table in the rain was identical with the big tortoise-shell cat introduced in the final paragraph of the story. The chapter reconsiders the issue in terms of strong/weak implicatures in relevance theory. I argue that the interpretation that the cat the hotel owner told the maid to bring to the American wife is different from the one the wife saw is obtained as a strong implicature and that the identity of the two cats can be derived from a weak implicature. I also argue that the latter interpretation leads to an interesting implication: both cats could be the same type of a tortoise-shell cat but not identical.

Keywords: strong/weak implicature, Gricean implicature, reference assignment, cognitive effect, ‘twist’ in literary text, tortoise shell cat
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Implicature in relevance theory
  • 3.Strong and weak implicatures and reference assignments in literary texts
  • 4.Approaches to the identity of the two cats
    • 4.1Interpretations of the identity of the cats
    • 4.2Gricean implicature analysis
    • 4.3Strong and weak implicature analysis
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 20 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.8.10uch
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