UNVEILING THE ICEBERG IN THE ANALYSIS OF IMPLICATURE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONFLICTS IN ERNEST HEMINGWAY'S SELECTED SHORT STORIES

Abstrak

Ernest Hemingway's Iceberg Theory is built upon minimalist dialogue that is often ambiguous or seemingly unrelated to the narrative surface, creating a deliberate gap between what characters say and what they truly mean. This study investigates how such dialogue operates through the mechanism of Conversational Implicature across five selected short stories: Hills Like White Elephants, Cat in the Rain, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and The Killers. Employing a qualitative descriptive approach, the research examines how characters intentionally flout Grice's Cooperative Principle—specifically the maxims of Quality, Quantity, Relation, and Manner. Analysis reveals that these violations function as subtle communicative strategies, enabling characters to circumvent sensitive subjects, express restrained aggression, or conceal psychological turmoil they are unable to articulate directly. The pragmatic cues generated by these violations illuminate the hidden "seven-eighths" of Hemingway's narratives, bringing to the fore deeper themes of alienation, existential emptiness, and emotional distance. The study concludes that Hemingway employs conversational implicature not merely as a linguistic phenomenon, but as a deliberate narrative method for constructing psychological depth and emotional truth beneath his sparse, understated prose.