Polite Speech Emerges From Competing Social Goals

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Linguistics
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Human language efficiently transmits information.
• Speakers often use imprecise or indirect language for politeness.
• The rational basis for polite speech remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the rational machinery underlying polite language use.
• To model the tradeoff between communicative goals in speech acts.
• To explain the subtlety and richness of social language.

Main Methods:

• Developed a probabilistic model of utterance production.
• Formalized the tradeoff between three communicative goals: information, kindness, and self-presentation.
• Tested the model's predictive accuracy in socially sensitive situations.

Main Results:

• The model accurately predicts human utterance choices in social contexts.
• Polite speech emerges from the competition of the three modeled goals.
• The full model significantly outperforms variants lacking one or more goals.

Conclusions:

• Polite language is a rational outcome of competing communicative objectives.
• A utility-theoretic approach explains nuanced social language use.
• This framework advances the understanding of speech acts and social interaction.