Exploring the Psychological
Reality of Conversational
Implicatures
Thomas Holtgraves
Dept. of Psychological Science
Ball State University
Some Basic Issues:
Do recipients generate conversational implicatures?
When are they generated?
How are they generated?
Which implicatures are generated?
Do some people fail to generate implicatures?
East
Types of Conversational Meaning
(Grice, 1975)
• Generalized implicatures
– Context independent
• Particularized implicatures
– Context dependent
Generalized Implicatures
• Idioms – He spilled the beans
• Conventional Indirect Requests – Could you
open the door?
• Q-implicatures – Some of the students passed
• Illocutionary Force – actions performed with talk
– Promise (I’ll definitely have it done tomorrow) etc.
Speech Act Processing
• Is speech act recognition involved in utterance
comprehension?
– Necessary? (Not according to relevance theory)
– Good enough processing
– On-line or post-hoc?
• Do speech acts play a role in conversation
memory?
Speech Act Activation Experiments
(Holtgraves & Ashley, 2001; Holtgraves, 2008)
Jenny and Emily had been close friends since grade
school.
Now there were rooming together at college.
Emily was very forgetful.
Today, Jenny was sure Emily didn’t remember her
dentist appointment.
Jenny: Don’t forget to go to your dentist
appointment today.
+
REMIND
Sample Experimental Materials
Jenny and Emily had been close friends since grade School.
Now there were rooming together at college.
Emily was very forgetful.
Today, Jenny was sure Emily didn’t remember (had forgotten) her
dentist appointment.
Jenny: Don’t forget (I’ll bet you forgot) to go to your
dentist appointment today.
Probe: Remind
Sample Target Utterances
• Directives
Encourage: Don’t stop now. You can do it.
• Assertives
Blame: It’s all Mary’s fault.
• Expressives
Apologize: I’m so sorry that I ruined your shirt.
• Commissives
Promise: I swear I’ll be neater after the weekend.
Recognition Probe Reaction Times
Holtgraves & Ashley, 2001
1100
1050
1000
Speech Act
Control
950
900
850
Exper. 1
Exper. 2
Lexical Decision Times
Holtgraves & Ashley, 2001
1200
1000
800
Speech Act
Control
600
400
200
0
Exper. 3
Exper. 4
Speech Acts and Memory
Holtgraves (2008)
• Participants read scenarios/utterances
– Speech act/control versions
– Rated scenarios (incidental memory)
– Intervening task (recall states)
• Memory test
– Recognition (exps 1 & 2) or Recall (exp 3)
False Memory for Speech Act Verbs
25.00%
20.00%
15.00%
Speech Act
Control
10.00%
5.00%
0.00%
Exp. 1
Recognition
Exp. 2
Recognition
Exp. 3 Recall
Speech Act Recognition in Parkinson’s
Disease (Holtgraves & McNamara, 2010)
People with Parkinson’s disease (N = 28) and age
matched controls (N = 32) performed lexical
decision task following speech act/control
scenarios (rewritten for PD).
- Assess PD severity
- Assess executive function (stroop task)
Lexical Decision Times
Holtgraves & McNamara, 2010
2000
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
Speech Act
Control
Control Participants
Parkinson's Participants
Correct Speech Act Recognition
Holtgraves & McNamara, 2010
0.5
0.45
0.4
0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
Control Participants
Parkinson's Participants
Lateralization
• Role of right hemisphere (RH) in
pragmatics
– Evidence from RHD participants (poor at
recognizing nonliteral meanings)
• Speech Act Comprehension materials
– Lateralize targets to RVF/LH or LVF/RH
Lexical Decision Speed as a Function of
Utterance Type and Visual Field
Particularized Implicatures
• No preferred reading out of context
• Recipients engage in time-consuming
inferential processing
• Example: Violations of the Relation
Maxim
• Which inference will be generated?
Particularized Implicatures
• Inference based on perceived reason for
violation
• Relevance violations occur because of face
management
• Recipients realize this and use it as an
interpretive frame
• In general, relevance violations should be
interpreted as conveying negative
information
Sample Scenarios, Questions, and Replies
Holtgraves, 1997; 1998
• Opinion Scenario
• Nick and Paul are taking the same History class. Students in this
class have to give a 20 presentation to the class on some topic. Nick
gave his presentation and then decided to ask Paul what he thought
of it
• Nick: What did you think of my presentation?
• Paul: It’s hard to give a good presentation.
• Paraphrase: I didn’t like your presentation.
Sample Scenarios, Questions, and Replies
Holtgraves, 1997; 1998
• Self-Disclosure Scenario
• Bob and Andy are good friends. This semester Bob is taking
introductory Chemistry and Andy wants to know how is doing in the
course.
• Nick: How are you doing in chemistry?
• Paul: Chemistry is a very difficult course.
• Paraphrase: I’m not doing well in chemistry.
Relevance Violation Experiments
• Participants read scenarios, questions and
replies
• Three types of scenarios: negative,
positive, no information
• Judge negative interpretation paraphrase
• Judgment, judgment speed, reply
comprehension speed examined
Relevance Violation Experiments
Percentage Negative Interpretations
90.00%
80.00%
70.00%
60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
No Information
Negative
Information
Positive Information
Relevance Violation Experiments
Comprehension Speed: Replies and Judgments
2800
2700
2600
2500
2400
Reply
Paraphrase
2300
2200
2100
2000
No
Information
Negative
Information
Positive
Information
Perspective and Particularized
Implicatures
• Recipient’s perspective
– Relevance violations as face management
• Interpret as conveying negative information
• Speaker’s perspective
– Other reasons for relevance violations
• Question not understood
• Speaker doesn’t have opinion
• Speaker-Hearer divergence in interpretation
(Particularized only)
Perspective and Particularized
Implicatures
•Read Scenarios, Questions, and Replies
•Adopt perspective of Speaker (Taking Bob’s
perspective, do you think Bob wanted Andy to
believe ..) or Recipient (Taking Andy’s
perspective, do you think Andy would interpret
Bob’s reply as meaning….)
•Between-Participants and WithinParticipants
•Forced choice and open-ended
Percentage Negative Interpretations as
Function of Perspective (Holtgraves, 2005)
90.00%
80.00%
70.00%
60.00%
50.00%
Speaker
Recipient
40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
Opinion
Self-Disclosure
Future Directions
• Face management and interpretation of
uncertainty terms
– Quantifiers (some) Some liked/hated your
party
– Probability terms (possibly) It’s possible you
have deafness/insomnia
– Evaluative terms (like) I liked the meal (in response to
a query from the cook or someone else)
– Self disclosure: It’s possible I/Jack scratched your car
– Self report: I will drink some beers/steal some cars.