Conditional advice and inducements: are readers sensitive to implicit speech acts during comprehension?

Haigh, Matthew, Stewart, Andrew, Wood, Jeffrey and Connell, Louise (2011) Conditional advice and inducements: are readers sensitive to implicit speech acts during comprehension? Acta Psychologica, 136 (3). pp. 419-424. ISSN 0001-6918

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.01.009

Abstract

Conditionals can implicitly convey a range of speech acts including promises, tips, threats and warnings. These are traditionally divided into the broader categories of advice (tips and warnings) and inducements (promises and threats). One consequence of this distinction is that speech acts from within the same category should be harder to differentiate than those from different categories. We examined this in two self-paced reading experiments. Experiment 1 revealed a rapid processing penalty when inducements (promises) and advice (tips) were anaphorically referenced using a mismatching speech act. In Experiment 2 a delayed penalty was observed when a speech act (promise or threat) was referenced by a mismatching speech act from the same category of inducements. This suggests that speech acts from the same category are harder to discriminate than those from different categories. Our findings not only support a semantic distinction between speech act categories, but also reveal pragmatic differences within categories.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Conditionals, comprehension, promise, tip, threat
Subjects: C800 Psychology
Department: Faculties > Health and Life Sciences > Psychology
Depositing User: Matthew Haigh
Date Deposited: 18 Oct 2013 10:46
Last Modified: 17 Dec 2023 14:48
URI: https://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/14048

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