Analysing Conversational Implicatures in Two Chapters of the Book of John from the Holy Bible

Abstract

This study seeks to analyse the Conversational Implicatures (CI) of Jesus Christ’s farewell speech in chapters 13 and 14 of the gospel of John from New King James Version of the Holy Bible. It explores the Pragmatics theories of Generalized Conversational Implicatures (GCI) and Particularized Conversational Implicatures (PCI) to explain the hidden messages embedded in the selected chapters drawing upon Yule (2010). Through a descriptive qualitative method, the study excavates the selected chapters to get the invisible viz. implied meanings of Jesus Christ’s messages. The findings reveal that the chapters under consideration are full of conversational implicatures, philosophical in nature and difficult to understand by a simple reading.  The Pragmatic theory of GCI and PCI is used to unfold the hidden messages. These findings are not based on conventional or literal meanings only, but on the contextual ones as well, taking into account the cultural era of Jesus Christ. It has been unveiled that Jesus Christ demonstrated humility, endurance, love and faith.