Philippine ESL Journal, Vol. 6, February 2011 © 2011 Time Taylor International ISSN 1718-2298 46 Ano ba talaga ang “ano”?: Exploring the meanings of “ano” in conversations Irish C. Sioson De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines St. Scholastica‟s College, Manila, Philippines Abstract The study explores the different functions of the Tagalog word “ano” in conversations. Results show that “ano”, though conventionally means the interrogative pronoun “what” in English, serves other functions, which further supports the multifunctionality view of any language behavior (Condon, 2001). The study found out that “ano” functions frequently as a gap filler in conversations, followed by the use of the interrogative pronoun “what”, then by substitution, expression of hesitation, tag questions and , finally, expression of irritation. The gap-filling function of “ano” may provide insights on the different factors involved in conversations and could be seen as an effect of the speaker‟s effort to make the message clearer. Implications for language teaching and learning and second language research have then been drawn. Keywords: conversational context, Philippine English, co-operative principle, conversational implicature, semantic primitives Introduction The relationship between meaning and context has long been established in the field of semantics and pragmatics. For instance, Grice (1968) has made a distinction between what was said which he treated as artificial to some extent, and what is implicated which he treated as something that is suggested or implied in an utterance. He further distinguished conventional implicature which arises from the meaning of some word or phrase used, and nonconventional implicature which springs from “outside the specification of the conventional meaning of the words used” (Grice, 1968, p. 65). Perhaps what is of importance is Grice‟s conversational implicatures in which contexts provide certain information or