Diana Mazzarella (Institut des Sciences Cognitive 'Marc Jeannerod', Lione)
April 11 MON — 10.30-12.30
Sala "Enzo Paci" — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Believing what you are told: Politeness and scalar inferences
Abstract:
Recent behavioural studies in experimental pragmatics investigate the effect of contextual manipulations on the derivation of scalar inferences (e.g. ‘Not all X-ed’ from ‘Some X-ed’). Among these, Bonnefon and colleagues suggest that scalar inferences are less likely to be derived in face-threatening contexts (Bonnefon et al., 2009, 2011; Feeney & Bonnefon, 2012). (1) A: What impression did I make during dinner? B: Some of the guests thought you drank too much. Bonnefon et al. argue that in such contexts A would be less likely to derive the pragmatic inference that not all of the guests thought you drank too much from B’s utterance. Furthermore, contrary to evidence showing that enrichments come with extra cost (since Bott & Noveck, 2004), they suggest that, in this context, the semantic interpretation -- at least some of the guests thought you drank too much -- is arrived at slowly and effortfully. The focus on the derivation of scalar inferences (as part and parcel of the comprehension process) has obscured the fact that scalar inferences may be derived as part of the speaker’s intended meaning and yet fail to be accepted as true by the addressee. The gap between comprehension and acceptance is typically bridged by epistemic trust (Sperber et al., 2010). Crucially, in face-threatening contexts, the addressee may have reasons to doubt the truth of what the speaker communicates because he thinks that she is trying to be kind and polite (rather than strictly honest). We tested our hypothesis through a series of MTurk studies inspired by Bonnefon et al.’s task which asked participants to read a face-threatening (or face-boosting) vignette containing a scalar utterance ‘Some X-ed’ and to answer to a yes-no question concerning the possibility that all X-ed. Our main innovation is that, unlike Bonnefond et al., we separated the presentation of the scalar utterance from participants’ evaluation of it. In this way, Reaction Times to each part could be measured separately. Importantly, our results replicate Bonnefon et al’s finding showing that participants are more likely to answer ‘yes’ in the face-threatening condition than in the face-boosting one. They also show that latencies are significantly longer in the epistemic assessment stage when participants provide a ‘yes’ answer. We interpret the data as follows: Participants derive the scalar inference both in face-threatening and in face-boosting contexts (as suggested by comparable RT’s at the ‘comprehension stage’ across conditions), but they are more likely to reject the enrichment in face-threatening contexts (thus the higher percentage of ‘yes’ answers). Furthermore, longer RTs at the epistemic assessment stage for ‘yes’ answers are explained by assuming that rejection of the speaker’s meaning takes longer than its acceptance.