Pragmatics Graduate Seminar - Diana Mazzarella

It is widely assumed that implicit communication enables a risky message to be conveyed while being deniable, disavowable, by its sender (Fricker, 2012; Pinker, 2007). For this reason, implicit communication is typically assumed to be less committal than explicit communication. However, there are different ways in which speakers can craft their utterances and leave a risky content unstated.  For instance, a speaker can either implicate it or presuppose it. Little is known of how these distinct levels of meaning affect the speaker’s liability and perceived blameworthiness. 

I will present a series of experimental studies investigating whether commitment attribution varies as a function of the way in which a message is conveyed and discuss their implications for the study of the strategic advantages of implicit communication, as well as for the debate about what levels of meaning feature in the comprehension process.