What is Said in Metalinguistic Negation in English

Abstract

The distinction between what is said and what is implicated has been one of the debatable topics in the literature. In spite of the various proposals on this issue, not much has been discussed as to what is said and what is implicated in metalinguistic negation (MN henceforth). Among several viable theories of the saying/implicating distinction in MN, default interpretation theory is employed in this paper. Specifically, this paper, while discussing what is said in MN, attempts to pursue the possibility of non-default interpretation, which is left equally tenable by the default interpretation theory. I also argue that establishing what is said in MN requires secondary pragmatic processes contrary to relevance-theoretic assumptions. I propose that MN might be an example of cases which do not necessarily have both said and implicated meanings.