There is a strong focus on indirect speech acts which is reading between the lines and inferring real intent. This is all about the pragmatics and implied meanings, potentially through the use of innuendos. The example Pinker uses is from the movie Fargo; when the kidnapper is pulled over by a police officer and is asked to show his driver's license, he holds his wallet out with a 50-dollar bill extending at a slight angle out of the wallet. He says, "I was thinking that maybe the best thing would be to take care of it here in Brainerd", which is recognised as a veiled bribe.
He says that we use language at two levels, it has to have content and to negotiate a relationship type. One way is the politeness strategy. An example of this would be if someone said, "if you could pass the guacamole that would be awesome". This is an imperative without the dominance.
There are supposedly three main human relationship types: dominance, communality and reciprocity. Dominance is where one is superior over the other, communality is relaxed and usually between friends and family and reciprocity is where both parties exchange in favours. When both parties aren't on the same page then a divergent understanding could be awkward.
Innuendos, even when they are obvious, are individual knowledge and simply implied and direct speech is mutual knowledge. We use indirect speech because overt language cannot be taken back which may make relationships awkward.
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