Implicitness and Implicature: Function and Context in ʿAbdullah Billa’s Twenty-Four Memories for One Poem

Abstract

This paper explores how Twenty-Four Memories for One Poem by Abdullah Billa generates meaning through a constant negotiation between what is stated outright and what is left to be inferred. Drawing on pragmatic theory, it argues that the collection relies on functional implicatures—logical links that bind its poetic sequences—yet these links are repeatedly complicated by high rhetorical density. The text therefore pushes readers to move from literal statements to context-driven, implicit understandings. The analysis demonstrates that examining such implicit layers is a fundamentally pragmatic task, fully applicable to literary criticism. Ultimately, the study contends that the so-called “unsaid” is simply the dynamic interplay of explicit and implicit meanings, an interplay that lies at the heart of the collection’s poetic power and imaginative originality.