Politeness and Honesty Contribute Additively to the Interpretation of Scalar Expressions

Journal of Language and Social Psychology - Tập 32 Số 2 - Trang 181-190 - 2013
Aidan Feeney1, Jean‐François Bonnefon2
1Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
2Université de Toulouse 2–Le Mirail, Toulouse, France

Tóm tắt

Scalar terms have been the focus of much recent attention. People can interpret such terms narrowly, for example, interpreting A or B to convey A or B but not both, on the grounds that a speaker would have explicitly used a more informative term (i.e., and) had he or she been in a position to do so; or they can interpret such terms broadly ( A or B or both). Examined here are the effects of politeness contexts and self-rated honesty on people’s interpretation of the scalar connective or. In two experiments, it is shown that participants are less likely to adopt the narrow interpretation when the communicative context is face threatening, and that regardless of context, participants high in self-rated honesty adopt the narrow interpretation to a greater extent than those low in self-rated honesty. These results are consistent with the claim that an assumption of honesty underlies certain pragmatic inferences and suggest that personality may be an important source of individual differences in language interpretation.

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Thông tin
Thông tin xuất bản

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

Tập 32 Số 2

181-190

Thông tin tác giả