Pragmatics of Indirect Replies

Eiichi Yamamoto

In certain situations speakers are known to prefer indirect responses to Yes/No questions over direct ones. According to Relevance Theory, which is the predominant framework for pragmatics in recent linguistics, this kind of psychological bias is explained solely in terms of added conversational implications as conveyed by the indirect replies. Thus, “She doesn’t drink whisky” is effectively used in response to a question like “Does Susan drink whisky?” with extra implications that cannot be derived from the direct answer “No, she doesn’t.” The implications will include, for example, “She doesn’t drink beer,” “She may prefer soft drinks,” “She probably disapproves of getting drunk,” etc.

In this paper, we challenge this thesis and propose instead that a completely different type of pragmatic force is in fact involved in the speaker’s choice of expressions at large. It is claimed that the force operates on the basis of implicature-generating scales, whose implementation depends on such interpersonal factors as are embodied by politeness considerations, on the one hand, and by sarcastic intentions, on the other. The scales are also shown to be widely pervasive in the choice of expressions from among synonymous alternatives.