A sociobiological account of indirect speech

Interaction Studies 18 (1):142-160 (2017)
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Abstract

Indirect speech is a remarkable trait of human communication. The present paper tackles the sociobiological underpinnings of communicative indirectness discussing both socio-interactional and cognitive rationales behind its manifestation in discourse. From a social perspective, the use of indirect forms in interactions can be regarded as an adaptive response to the epistemic implications of transacted new information in small primary groups, representing – in Givón’s terms – our “bio-cultural” descent. The design features of indirect strategies today may therefore be explained in terms of a form-function mapping in which indirect communicative expressions allowed a “safer” transaction of contents and a more cooperative attitude of speakers in both face-to-face and public contexts of communication. The unchallengeability effects notably induced by underencoded meanings have now received extensive experimental backing, unveiling intriguing underlying cognitive mechanisms such as the well-known cognitive illusions or fallacies.

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References found in this work

Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?David Premack & G. Woodruff - 1978 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (4):515-629.
Scorekeeping in a language game.David Lewis - 1979 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 8 (1):339--359.
Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?David Premack & Guy Woodruff - 1978 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1 (4):515-526.
Fallacies.C. L. Hamblin - 1970 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 160:492-492.

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