Pragmatics as Social Inference About Intentional Action.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Science
• Pragmatics

Background:

• Pragmatic inferences rely on assumptions of speaker cooperation and rationality.
• Previous research primarily tested these inferences in children and linguistic contexts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate pragmatic inferences in adults using both linguistic and non-linguistic communicative actions.
• To determine if pragmatic inferences are influenced by speaker's epistemic states and intentionality.

Main Methods:

• Six online experiments involving 231 American English speaking adults.
• Participants evaluated pragmatic inferences based on various communicative actions, including non-linguistic ones.
• Experiments manipulated speaker's epistemic states and intentionality of actions.

Main Results:

• Adults made pragmatic inferences from diverse communicative actions, including non-linguistic ones.
• Inferences were conditional on the speaker's knowledge and beliefs (epistemic states).
• Intentional communicative actions led to more frequent pragmatic inferences.

Conclusions:

• Pragmatics extends to social inference about cooperative communication through intentional actions.
• The findings support a broader view of pragmatic inference, encompassing non-linguistic and intentional behaviors.