Conversational Implicature in al-Khansāʾ’s Poetry in Light of Paul Grice’s Maxims

Al-Khansāʾ’s poetry is regarded as one of the most distinguished literary models of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods, characterized by its sincerity of emotion and the depth of human experience, particularly in elegy, which provided her with ample space to express both personal grief and existential suffering. Her poetic texts constitute a rich field for pragmatic analysis in light of Paul Grice’s principles of conversational implicature, as they reveal multiple layers of meaning that go beyond the surface of words, establishing subtle networks of relations between speaker and addressee. This study aims to explore Al-Khansāʾ’s violations of Grice’s four maxims—quantity, quality, relation, and manner—in numerous instances, while clarifying how she employed these violations to convey deeper implicatures linked to the context of elegy and her personal experience of loss. The significance of this research lies in bridging classical Arabic rhetoric with modern pragmatics, by connecting Al-Khansāʾ’s poetry to Western pragmatic concepts, thereby illuminating new dimensions within her texts. It also surveys the most notable theoretical contributions, and concludes with findings that highlight the richness of her poetry and its openness to multiple interpretive possibilities from a pragmatic perspective.