« … l'adolescent qui suit point par point la mode actuelle des adolescents, la 'mode militaire', communique par là même à tous ceux qui l'entourent une information, à savoir qu'il entend être reconnu comme appartenant à un certain groupe, avec sa mentalité et ses valeurs. » – Roland Barthes, Le grain de la voix
Abstract. In the last two chapters, I have defended two related hypotheses:
(a) We may send certain information and update the common background in ways that can be accounted for by neither the prevailing Gricean models nor by the code models. (b) Such cases may be accounted for by the Extended Gricean model (EGM). In this chapter, I will illustrate these claims with several examples. I will begin with the two examples of laughter presented in Chapter 1 and then discuss other kinds of stimuli (nonverbal affective signs (§3.1), the sound of one's voice (§3.2), clothing (§3.3), and speech acts (§3.4). This will allow me to illustrate the working of the EGM and explore some of its boundaries.
3.1. N
ONVERBAL AFFECTIVE SIGNS 3.1.1.FRANK'S LAUGHTERLet us go back to Frank's laughter, an example given in Chapter 1.
(1) (At a restaurant) – Emily: 'Where did your wife go?' – Frank: 'She is actually calling the doctor to see if she can meet him about her gastroenteritis. Huhu. He. Hu. [low pitched, soft]' – Emily: 'Oh! I will keep that to myself.'67
As we saw, it is natural to understand Frank to transmit the following pieces of information with his laugher:
- p: Frank is embarrassed to reveal a piece of private information about his wife.
- q: Frank's wife would rather avoid that Emily be informed of her gastroenteritis.
- r: The situation is not too serious or worrisome.
67 The example is adapted from a corpus example (Ginzburg et al., 2015).
And we saw that neither the prevailing Gricean models nor the code models can account for this fact. How can the EGM do so?
First of all, observe that Emily can reasonably make the following hypotheses:
- Frank knows that his laughter may produce a certain set of effects e in Emily (formation of beliefs, modification of her affective state,
…).
- Frank can control at least some of the effects produced by his laughter, in the sense that the mechanism leading Frank to generate effects in Emily (beliefs, affects, …) is reasons-responsive. In other words, by holding fixed this kind of mechanism, there is a possible scenario where Frank would have acted otherwise because he recognized a reason as sufficient for acting otherwise (in a way that is understandable to a third-person perspective). For instance, there is a possible scenario where he does not want Emily to think that he is embarrassed and so where he either refrains from laughing (if the laughter is not uncontrollable) or produces further stimuli (an explanation, a confident smile, taking a self-assured posture, etc.) to make Emily think that he is not embarrassed.
- Frank did not refrain from laughing nor did he produce further stimuli to prevent the effects e.
- It is mutually recognizable for both Frank and Emily that they can make these hypotheses.
So, it is reasonable to believe that Frank has produced a stimulus with effects in Emily that are mutually recognizable by both Frank and Emily as controllable, Effects Mutually Recognizable As Controllable, or EMRAC.
This means that Frank allows his laughter to mean something, according to how I have defined allower-meaning in Chapter 2.
These notions were defined in Chapter 2, but, maybe it will be easier to follow if I reproduce some definitions here. Here is that of allower-meaning:
Allower meaning – definition:
A sender S allows x to mean something to the receiver R (or the appropriate conditional receiver R) if, and only if,
S produces x while:
(i) S allows x to generate effects e in R, and
(c) (ii) S allows x to make (i) mutually recognizable for R and S.
And here is that for 'to allow':
S allows x to F – definition
A sender S allows the stimuli x – made of individual stimulus <x1, x2,
…, xn>, produced by S between t0 and t1 – to generate the effect e (doxastic, affective, evaluative, behavioral, …) on the actual or conditional audience R if, and only if,
(d) S had guidance-control over the production of e between t0 and t1, and
(e) It was manifest to S between t0 and t1 that S may generate e in R with x.
A mental content is manifest to S at t when that mental content is consciously perceptible, inferable, imaginable, or could be the content of another conscious mental state of S at t holding fixed S's mental capacities and memories at t. And by 'guidance-control' (a notion from Fischer and Ravizza (1998)), I mean that the kind of mechanism that actually issues in S's allowing x to generate e in R is S's own and is reasons-responsive. The mechanism is reasons-responsive if, holding fixed the mechanism kind, the agent would react to at least one sufficient reason to do otherwise. See Chapter 2 (§2.2) for more on these notions.
Because his laughter and the omission to produce further stimuli – I will just say 'the laughter' for short – are stimuli with EMRAC, which means that Frank allows his laughter to mean something, and since there are no reasons to believe that Frank is not a rational agent, Emily can assume that he is subjected to the Goal Principles. In particular, she can assume that here is subjected to this particular application:
Goal Principle 2: Rationalization of allower-meaning
If S allows the stimuli x to generate effects e in R and to make this mutually recognizable, then assume that these mutually recognizable effects are conducive to S's goal, including her goals in interacting with R, ceteris paribus. Accordingly, assume that S would not have allowed x to have e if allowing e was more obstructive to S's goals than not allowing e, ceteris paribus.
Now, to know what Frank allows his laughter to mean, we need to figure out what are the EMRAC of his laughter (in light of Goal Principle 2). A first set of EMRAC is to be found in what the laughter encodes according
to the codes shared by Frank and Emily, i.e. according to the pre-established associations between laughter and messages. As we saw in Chapter 1, as far as we know from empirical studies, what laughter encodes is best predicted by Table 3.1 (see below and Chapter 1). Since Frank's laughter is soft, low pitched, and brief, it is more of a non-Duchenne than a non-Duchenne kind. Assuming that Frank and Emily implicitly master the code in Table 3.1 thanks to their past exposure to laughter (like we master the syntactic rules of our language implicitly after sufficient exposure), here is a belief that Frank allows his laughter to produce:
- (B1) Frank expresses amusement, contempt, fear, incredulity, joy, sadness, Schadenfreude, social anxiety (including embarrassment), an urge to affiliate, an urge to act aggressively, or ticklishness.
Information encoded Stimuli
Positive emotion (mostly mirth, but also joy, relief, or playfulness)
Acoustic stimuli of Duchenne laughter (louder, higher-pitched, lasts longer, more calls per bouts, …)
Amusement, contempt, fear, incredulity, joy, sadness, Schadenfreude, social anxiety, urge to affiliate, urge to aggress, ticklishness.
Acoustic stimuli of non-Duchenne laughter (softer, lower-pitched, briefer, fewer calls per bouts, …)
Table 3.1. An acoustic code for laughter (reproduced from Chapter 1).
As we saw in chapter 1, (B1) would not satisfy an engaged receiver, one who wants to answer the question, 'Why did Frank laugh?'. This is because the code in Table 3.1 does not provide enough information to make sense of Frank's laughter by rationalizing his behavior. After all, it is far too vague. Its vagueness may also be unsatisfying for a receiver who cares about how the common background is updated through Frank's laughter.
Frank's laughter is a stimulus that is relevant to the conversation. As a rule of thumb, all emotional reactions that are mutually recognizable are relevant to a conversation. But merely allowing the production of (B1) is not particularly conducive to Frank's goal of interacting with Emily.
Interpreting Frank's laughter to merely allow his laughter to generate (B1)
seems to be in tension with the following goal, which is reasonably attributable to Frank:68
- (G1) When engaged in a conversation, try to avoid producing stimuli that appear to be relevant to the conversation but are too vague to allow a rationalization of why the stimuli were produced.
So, at this point, what the code models can tell us is in tension with Frank's goal (G1). This would give Emily reasons to make hypotheses about Frank's informative dispositions that are not based on the code model. But before going into this (Gricean) direction, let me look at another potential (semantic) way to resolve the tension between (B1) and (G1) by taking into account statistical regularities.
Among all the emotions that non-Duchenne laughter can express, overall, it is most often perceived as expressing positive affects rather than negative ones (McGettigan et al., 2015, p. 248). Plausibly, this reflects the fact that non-Duchenne laughter may be statistically skewed toward positive emotions, even though it is not statistically significantly correlated with positive emotions like Duchenne laughter is. Additionally, the belief that laughter normally expresses amusement or another positive emotion is widespread, whether or not it is a true belief (Provine, 2001). For these reasons, the association between laughter and positive emotions may be more salient than associations of laughter with other emotions. Following this line of reasoning, it is at least reasonable to suppose that Frank allows his laughter to generate the following EMRAC:
- (B2) It is more probable that Frank is undergoing a positive emotion than a negative one about what he has just said (i.e. that his wife is calling the doctor because of her gastroenteritis).
(B2) is much more precise than (B1) and, as such, it may be considered as avoiding the unwanted vagueness and so resolving the tension with (G1).
This may appear as an economic way to rationalize Frank's behavior as it does not appeal to pragmatic principles or mindreading abilities. However, allowing his laughter to generate (B2) seems incompatible with other goals of Frank, goals that can also reasonably be taken to be part of the common background:
68 It is reasonably attributable to Frank because this goal can plausibly be derived from basic principles of rationality that apply to all rational agents in a way similar to how Grice's maxims of quantity and of relation are derived (Kasher, 1982) since these two maxims are very similar to (G1).
- (G2) Frank wants to be caring toward his wife.
- (G3) Frank's wife's condition is at least bad enough to go to see the doctor and so Frank does not want to appear as undergoing a positive emotion about her condition (because of G2).
- (G4) People generally prefer not to publicize their gastric issues and Frank would rather respect his wife's preferences (because of G2).
I don't see how the tensions between, on the one hand (B1) and (G1) and, on the other hand, between (B2) and (G2–4), can be resolved merely based on pre-established pairings, merely with the tools of the code model, or merely on semantic grounds. This leads us down the Gricean way.
An engaged receiver may suppose that Frank's laughter carries more than the information that it encodes. This supposition may allow resolving the tension between what laughter encodes (its semantic meaning) and the goals and beliefs in the common background.
Here are some hypotheses that Emily may form about beliefs that Frank allows his laughter to generate:
- p: Frank is embarrassed to reveal a piece of private information about his wife.
- q: Frank's wife would rather avoid that Emily or other people be informed of her gastroenteritis.
- r: The situation is not too serious or worrisome.
More specifically, Emily may reasonably suppose that:
(i) Frank allows his laughter (and the absence of further stimuli) to generate her beliefs that p, q, and r (or: to make p, q, and r manifest), and
(ii) He allows his laughter to make this mutually recognizable to both of them.
So, following our definition, Emily may reasonably suppose that Frank allows his laughter to mean that p, q, and r. Making this hypothesis permits Emily (and us) to rationalize Frank's behavior as we will now see.
Supposing that Frank allows his laughter to mean that p, i.e. that he is embarrassed, is coherent with Frank having goal (G4), i.e. that Frank would rather respect his wife's preferences not to publicize her gastric issue. Embarrassment is an emotion whose purpose is to make us react to situations such as this one: a situation where we don't want to reveal a
piece of information, but where we have no choice to do so, or where it would be worse if we did not reveal it (e.g. because a more important goal is to answer to our friends' questions truthfully and with the appropriate amount of information). Supposing that Frank allows his laughter to mean that he is embarrassed is also conducive to Frank's goal (G3), i.e. to not appear as undergoing a positive emotion about her wife's issue, since embarrassment is not a positive emotion. It is also coherent with (G2), i.e.
that Frank wants to be caring toward his wife since being embarrassed about this situation shows that Frank cares about his wife's privacy.69 Supposing that Frank allows his laughter to mean that q, i.e. that his wife would rather avoid that Emily be informed of her gastroenteritis, is, of course, conducive to (G4), i.e. that Frank would rather respect his wife's preference that the issue remain private. It also gives further support to the hypothesis that p, i.e. that Frank is embarrassed, and as such supposing that Frank allows his laughter to mean that q reinforces the cohesion with goals (G3) and (G2).
Supposing that Frank allows his laughter to mean that r, i.e. that the situation is not too serious or worrisome, is coherent with a further goal that can also reasonably be taken to be part of the common background:
(G5) Try not to laugh at topics that are too serious or worrisome for you or your audience. If you cannot help or did not know that the issue was too serious or worrisome, present your apologies.
Finally, supposing that Frank allows his laughter to mean that p, q, and r makes it conducive to (G1), i.e. to not allow stimuli that appear to be relevant but are not informative enough.
So, we see how supposing that Frank is sending pieces of information that go beyond what is encoded in his laughter permits a more optimal rationalization of his behavior. It gives a satisfying explanation for why Frank laughed.
Since there is no reason to think that Frank would be unable to think that Emily can make these hypotheses and since Frank possessed guidance-control over the ensuing beliefs, Emily can reasonably conclude that Frank allows his laughter to mean that p, q, and r.
69 Observe also that p is consistent with what the code models would predict, i.e. with (B1) and the fact that laughter expresses several emotions including embarrassment, and with (B2), i.e. that laughter is most often associated with positive emotions. The laughter in question is just not part of the statistically most frequent type of laughter.
Furthermore, since Frank has not only allowed the beliefs that p, q, and r to be generated in Emily, but has also allowed this to be mutually recognizable, Emily's beliefs that p, q, and r may tentatively be added to their common background.
I say 'tentatively' because there may be alternative, divergent hypotheses which would rationalize Frank's behavior just as well as the present one, or better. In order to be sure that we can add these pieces of information to the common background, we need to be sure that the information in question is the best rationalization available and that it is so for all the participants. In this case, the description of the scenario does not give enough information to be certain about what would be the best rationalization of Frank's behavior. The more we know about the common background between Emily and Frank, the more chance we have to know how exactly their common background should be updated by stimuli with EMRAC.70
The fact that p, q, and r can tentatively be added to the common background is an important fact about Frank and Emily's conversation because tentative additions to the common background can be used to reorient the conversation, or even can be used to make presuppositions which, if they remain unchallenged, will reinforce the tentative additions and make them definite additions. In our example (1), after Frank's laughter, Emily utters 'Oh! I will keep that to myself.' We can reasonably take this response to make the presupposition that q, i.e. that Frank's wife would rather avoid that Emily or other people be informed of her gastroenteritis. The laughter has primed this presupposition; with her response, Emily confirms that she now takes q to be part of the common background. If Frank does not challenge this presupposition, this piece of information will be added to their common background. Similar reasoning applies for p and r.
In conclusion, it seems to me that the EGM allows us to give a satisfying account of the information we naturally understand Frank to convey with his laughter, of what he allows his laughter to mean beyond what is encoded in it. This model allows us to explain how the laughter updates the common background through pragmatic explanations (implicatures*) even though these pieces of information were not speaker-meant.
70 In Relevance theory's terminology, p, q, and r are akin to weak implicatures (Sperber &
Wilson, 1986, Chapter 4). We could say they are weak-implicatures* since implicatures stricto sensu belong to what is ostensively communicated, which is not true of p, q, and r.
3.1.2.CHUCK'S LAUGHTER
Let us now see, more briefly, how the EGM may apply to Chuck's laughter, the other example that I presented in the first chapter:
(2) (David and Chuck are good friends, politically left-wing, who share progressive values) David, on a serious tone: 'You know, I was thinking: maybe Sarah Palin is the future of the Republican party…' Chuck: 'hh hh, heh heh heh, huhu, hahaHAHAHAHA' (laughs while David is continuing his sentence, his laughter begins rather softly and middle pitched, raises in pitch and ends up pretty loud) David continues: '… seriously I even think she's got her chances for the next elections.'
According to the code in Table 3.1, Chuck is emitting a burst of Duchenne-like laughter (long, high-pitched, loud) and this can tell us that he is most probably undergoing a positive emotion. This, however, is in apparent tension with the meaning of David's statement (which is pronounced on a serious tone, not joking around), since it is part of their common background that, because they are left-wing progressives, Sarah Palin being the future of the Republican party is not good news. Because of this tension, there is a reason for an engaged receiver such as David to figure out Chuck's informative dispositions: what is he disposed to let his audience infer from his behavior? Chuck doesn't provide an excuse or an explanation after his laughter or any other behavior that is meant to cancel some of the effects that his laughter could have on David (e.g. by saying 'I'm sorry, I'm tired, it was a nervous laughter', or by showing nonverbally that he wanted to suppress his laughter, or otherwise). So, for reasons analogous to the one discussed with Frank's laughter above, we can suppose that the laughter is a stimulus with EMRAC.
Another way to describe the situation is to say that David would be justified in engaging in the following reasoning: 'Chuck could have suppressed his laughter or changed some of its communicative effects by explaining why he laughed. This is mutually recognizable. Thus, either he
Another way to describe the situation is to say that David would be justified in engaging in the following reasoning: 'Chuck could have suppressed his laughter or changed some of its communicative effects by explaining why he laughed. This is mutually recognizable. Thus, either he