[Music] language is a window into social relations I'll begin with a a puzzle in uh language this one is taken from the movie Fargo from a scene early in the movie in which a kidnapper has a hostage in tied up in the back seat of the car and inconveniently is pulled over by a uh by the police because he's missing his plates the police officer asks him to show his driver's license he propers his wallet with a license showing and a $50 bill extending ever so slightly and he says to the officer I was thinking
that maybe the best thing would be to take care of it here in Brainard which the audience and presumably the officer recognize as a veiled bribe uh now this is an example of what linguists call an indirect direct speech act a case in which we don't blurt out what we mean in so many words but we Veil our intentions in inuendo hoping for our listener to read between the lines and uh infer our real intent and this is something that we do all the time often without realizing it for example uh if you could pass
the guacamole that would be awesome uh now when you think about it that doesn't make a whole lot of sense uh but we effortlessly recognize it as a polite request uh we're counting on you to show leadership in our campaign for the future anyone who has sat through a fundraising dinner is familiar with euphemistic snoring uh like that which can be translated as give us money would you like to come up and see my etchings that has been recognized as a sexual come on for so long that in the 1930s James Thurber drew a New
Yorker cartoon in which a man says to his date you wait here and I'll bring the etchings down [Applause] then there's um nice story you got there would be a real shame if something happened to it which uh any uh viewer of The Sopranos can recognize As A Veiled Threat so the puzzle is why are bribes requests seductions solicitations and threats so often veiled when both parties presumably know exactly what they mean language has to do two things it's got to convey some content such as a bribe a demand or a proposition at the same
time it's got to negotiate a relationship type the solution is to use language at two levels the speaker uses the literal form to Signal the safest relationship to the listener while counting on The Listener to read between the lines to entertain a proposition that might be incompatible with that relationship and politeness is a simple example what's going on with if you could pass the guacamole that would be awesome uh I think everyone would agree that it's a bit of an overstatement uh and also it's not clear why you should be pondering counterfactual worlds uh right
there and then at the dinner table now The Listener thinks assuming that the speaker has not lost his mind uh the speaker says an outcome is good therefore he must be requesting it the overall effect is that the intended content gets through namely the imperative but without the presumption of dominance that would ordinarily accompany an imperative namely an expectation that you can be commanding some other person to do what you want well according to the Anthropologist Alan Fisk there are only three major human relationship types across the world's cultures each prescribes a distinct way of
Distributing resources each has a distinct evolutionary basis and each applies most naturally to certain people but can be extended through negotiation to others and that's where language comes in so there's dominance as I've mentioned whose logic is don't mess with me and which presumably We inherited from the dominant hierarchies that are ubiquitous among primates uh very different from that is communality the ethos share and share alike which uh evolved by a different route namely kin selection and mutualism and therefore is extended by default to Kin uh to spouses and among close friends finally there's reciprocity
you scratch my back I'll scratch yours uh which pertains to the businesslike tit fortat exchanges of goods and services that characterizes reciprocal altruism now Behavior that's acceptable in one relationship type can be anomalous in another for example at a drinks party you might go over to your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend and help yourself to a prawn off their plate but you wouldn't go up to your boss and help yourself to a prawn office plate because what you can get away with in a communality relationship you can't get away with in a dominance
relationship likewise uh at the end of a dinner party if you pulled out your wallet and offered to pay the host for the dinner that would not be perceived as fair that would be perceived as crass because of the clash between reciprocity which would is what would be appropriate say at a restaurant and communality which is what we deem appropriate at a among friends now those are cases where everyone knows what's appropriate but in cases where the two sides aren't sure that they're in the same wavelength uh a Divergent understanding can lead to an unpleasant
emotion uh the one that we call awkwardness for example there can be awkward moments in a workplace when a an employee doesn't know or a student doesn't know whether to address a supervisor by their first name or to invite them out after work for a beer because of the ambiguity as to whether their relationship is governed by dominance or friendship it's well wellknown bit of uh of wisdom that good friends should not engage in a major business transaction like one of them selling his car to the other the very Act of negotiating a price can
put a straight on the Friendship because what's appropriate in a reciprocity relationship is not appropriate in a communality relationship the contrast between um dominance and uh sex uh as when a supervisor solicits sex from an employee defines the battleground of sexual harassment and even the two kinds of communal relationship of friendship and sex uh give rise to the anxieties of dating well one remaining problem which is why we resort to indirect Ness even when there is no real uncertainty uh for example when The Listener knows the speaker's intent uh people aren't naive and it's hard
to believe that any grown woman could be fooled by the line about the etchings nonetheless there is something that is more comfortable about asking uh to see etchings than asking for sex so what is going on there the deniability is not really plausible why should a obvious inuendo still feel more comfortable than a direct Overture that is in some sense on the record to illustrate the problem with a a scene from the romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally where in an early scene of the movie uh Harry makes a remark that Sally interprets as sexual
and she accuses him of uh you're coming on to me so he says well what do you want me to do about it I take it back okay I take it back she says you can't take it back why not because it's already out there he says oh geez what are we supposed to do call the cops it's already out there well what is the psycholog iCal status of an overture that we feel to be out there or on the record that makes it feel so much more Awkward than a veiled Overture that's conveyed indirectly
and I think a key to this uh Paradox is a concept that economists and logicians call Mutual knowledge which they distinguish from Individual knowledge in individual knowledge a Knows X and B Knows X in mutual knowledge a Knows X B Knows X a knows that b Knows X B knows that a Knows X x a knows that b knows that a Knows X uh add infin itm and this is a difference that has profound consequences for example why is freedom of assembly enshrined as a fundamental right in a democracy and why are political revolutions often
triggered when a crowd gathers in a Public Square to challenge the uh the president in his Palace well it's because when people were at home um everyone knew that they loathed the uh dictator but no one knew that other people knew that they knew uh once you assemble in a place where everyone can see everyone else uh everyone knows that everyone else knows that everyone else knows that the dictator is loathed and that gives them the collective power to challenge the authority of the dictator who otherwise could pick off to centers one at a time
another example is that The Emperor's New Clothes is a story about Mutual knowledge when the little boy said the emperor is uh is naked he wasn't telling anyone anything that they didn't already know anything that they couldn't see with their own eyeballs he was nonetheless changing the state of their knowledge because at that moment everyone now knew that everyone else knew that everyone else knew once again that gave them the collective power to challenge the dominance of the emperor uh through their their uh laughter the moral of the story is that explicit language is an
excellent way of creating Mutual knowledge and so here's hypothesis inuendos even obvious ones merely provide individual knowledge whereas direct speech provides Mutual knowledge and relationships are maintained or nullified by a mutual knowledge of the relationship type so if Harry were to say would you like to come up and see my etchings and Sally says no Then Sally knows that she's turned down an overture and Harry knows that she's turned down a sexual Overture but does Sally know that Harry knows she could be uh thinking maybe Harry thinks I'm I'm naive and does Harry know that
Sally knows that he knows he could be wondering maybe Sally thinks I'm dense there's no Mutual knowledge and they can maintain the fiction of friendship whereas if Harry were to say would you like to come up and have sex and Sally turns him down now Harry knows that Sally knows that Harry knows that Sally knows they cannot maintain the fiction of a friendship and I think this is the basis for our intuition that with overt language you can't take it back it's out there
