Exploring the Psychological Reality of Conversational

Implicatures

Thomas Holtgraves

Dept. of Psychological Science

Ball State University

East

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?

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 yourdentist 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 TimesHoltgraves & Ashley, 2001

850

900

950

1000

1050

1100

Exper. 1 Exper. 2

Speech Act

Control

Lexical Decision TimesHoltgraves & Ashley, 2001

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Exper. 3 Exper. 4

Speech ActControl

Speech Acts and MemoryHoltgraves (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

0.00%

5.00%

10.00%

15.00%

20.00%

25.00%

Exp. 1Recognition

Exp. 2Recognition

Exp. 3 Recall

Speech Act

Control

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 TimesHoltgraves & McNamara, 2010

0200

400

600

800

1000

12001400

1600

1800

2000

Control Participants Parkinson's Participants

Speech ActControl

Correct Speech Act RecognitionHoltgraves & McNamara, 2010

00.050.1

0.150.2

0.250.3

0.350.4

0.450.5

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 RepliesHoltgraves, 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 RepliesHoltgraves, 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 ExperimentsPercentage Negative Interpretations

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

90.00%

No Information NegativeInformation

Positive Information

Relevance Violation ExperimentsComprehension Speed: Replies and Judgments

2000

2100

2200

2300

2400

2500

2600

2700

2800

NoInformation

NegativeInformation

PositiveInformation

Reply

Paraphrase

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 Within-Participants•Forced choice and open-ended

Percentage Negative Interpretations as Function of Perspective (Holtgraves, 2005)

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

90.00%

Opinion Self-Disclosure

Speaker

Recipient

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.