To Implication and Back: Linguistic Implicature Across Fields

In this week’s readings, we observed scalar implicature, the use of weak terms to imply the negation of stronger ones that lie on the same scale. Both readings focused on the difference between adults and children in their abilities to compute scalar implicatures. We saw that adults are more likely to rely upon linguistic pragmatics when interpreting scalar alternatives, while children were more likely to utilize the logical meaning. With these findings in mind, we arrive at an interesting crossroads where children respond oppositely to adults, though not with necessarily unsound reasoning: the children merely lack the capacity to generate relevant alternatives for specific scales.

When considering words such as “all,” “some,” and “many,” I am reminded of both philosophy and psychology. In the philosophy of semantics, we often debate what makes a true statement, especially given scalar words. Is the sentence “All of the kings went home” at all equivalent to the sentence “Most of the kings went home”? And, for that matter, how do the sentences “Most of the kings went home” and “Some of the kings went home” differ? We see the immediate scalar effect upon our interpretation – the children in the studies we read about this week are free from the boundless confusion that adults seem to face when considering these alternatives. Slightly similarly, a psychological study by Loftus and Palmer observed the effect of question wording on eyewitness testimony. In the study, subjects viewed a traffic accident, and were then interrogated by experimenters. However, while some experimenters asked the question “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?”, others asked “About how fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other?”. As one might expect, subjects asked the former question estimated much higher speeds than subjects asked the latter question. I find this study fascinating and quite similar to the studies of scalar implicature. Both bring to mind concepts of implied knowledge, and both bring into question how much of our perceived knowledge is actually based upon linguistic interpretation.

With these thoughts, I wonder to what degree people take advantage of these implicatures for their benefit? I am sure that advertising agencies could (or do) make heavy use of the results from our readings: when targeting children, saying “Some children get rotting teeth because they don’t brush their teeth” might inspire them to brush because they interpret “some” as “all.” Conversely, when targeting adults, a combination of scalar alternatives could create a dangerous rhetoric: “Only some people get lung cancer from smoking.”