A sociobiological account of indirect speech
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.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Societies of intimates
- 3.Pragmatic foundations and cognitive prerequisites for indirect communication
- 4.Reasons and linguistic manifestations of indirect communication
- 5.Indirect communication in political speeches
- 6.Indirect communication and cognitive fallacies
- 7.Concluding remarks
- Notes
-
References
This article is currently available as a sample article.
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18.1.07mas
References
Full-text
Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 january 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.