Vagueness as an implicit-encoding persuasive strategy: an experimental approach

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Abstract

The paper provides novel theoretical and experimental perspectives on the functioning of linguistic vagueness as an implicit persuasive strategy. It presents an operative definition of pragmatically marked vagueness, referring to vague expressions whose interpretation is not retrievable by recipients. The phenomenon is illustrated via numerous examples of its use in predominantly persuasive texts (i.e., advertising and political propaganda) in different languages. The psycholinguistic functioning of vague expressions is then illustrated by the results of a self-paced reading task experiment. Data showing shorter reading times associated with markedly vague expressions as compared to expressions that are either (a) lexically more precise or (b) made precise by the context suggest that the former are interpreted in a shallow way, without searching for and/or retrieving exact referents. These results support the validity of a differentiation between context-supported vs. non-supported vague expressions. Furthermore, validation of using marked vagueness as a persuasive implicit strategy which reduces epistemic vigilance is provided.

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Most cited references 60

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Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.

A Tversky, D Kahneman (1974)

This article described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: (i) representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class or process B; (ii) availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development; and (iii) adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available. These heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but they lead to systematic and predictable errors. A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could improve judgements and decisions in situations of uncertainty.

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To transform or not to transform: using generalized linear mixed models to analyse reaction time data

Steson Lo, Sally Andrews (2015)

Linear mixed-effect models (LMMs) are being increasingly widely used in psychology to analyse multi-level research designs. This feature allows LMMs to address some of the problems identified by Speelman and McGann (2013) about the use of mean data, because they do not average across individual responses. However, recent guidelines for using LMM to analyse skewed reaction time (RT) data collected in many cognitive psychological studies recommend the application of non-linear transformations to satisfy assumptions of normality. Uncritical adoption of this recommendation has important theoretical implications which can yield misleading conclusions. For example, Balota et al. (2013) showed that analyses of raw RT produced additive effects of word frequency and stimulus quality on word identification, which conflicted with the interactive effects observed in analyses of transformed RT. Generalized linear mixed-effect models (GLMM) provide a solution to this problem by satisfying normality assumptions without the need for transformation. This allows differences between individuals to be properly assessed, using the metric most appropriate to the researcher's theoretical context. We outline the major theoretical decisions involved in specifying a GLMM, and illustrate them by reanalysing Balota et al.'s datasets. We then consider the broader benefits of using GLMM to investigate individual differences.

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Epistemic Vigilance

Dan Sperber, Fabrice Clément, Christophe Heintz … (2010)

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Author and article information

Contributors

Claudia Coppola: claudia.coppola@uniroma3.it

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Cogn Process

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Cogn Process

Title: Cognitive Processing

Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg (Berlin/Heidelberg )

ISSN (Print): 1612-4782

ISSN (Electronic): 1612-4790

Publication date (Electronic): 29 January 2024

Publication date PMC-release: 29 January 2024

Publication date (Print): 2024

Volume: 25

Issue: 2

Pages: 205-227

Affiliations

[1 ]Department of Philosophy, Communication, and Performing Arts, Roma Tre University, ( https://ror.org/05vf0dg29) Rome, Italy

[2 ]Department of Music, Art, and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, ( https://ror.org/05n3dz165) Jyväskylä, Finland

[3 ]Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Roma Tre University, ( https://ror.org/05vf0dg29) Rome, Italy

Author information

Alessandro Ansani http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0657-5732

Article

Publisher ID: 1171

DOI: 10.1007/s10339-023-01171-z

PMC ID: 11106197

PubMed ID: 38285278

SO-VID: 5ca83a21-e1c9-4311-8ead-d0b1895015c8

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Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

History

Date received : 12 December 2022

Date accepted : 6 November 2023

Funding

Funded by: Università degli Studi Roma Tre

Open Access :

Open access funding provided by Università degli Studi Roma Tre within the CRUI-CARE Agreement.

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Neurology

Keywords: vagueness,implicit persuasion strategies,shallow processing,self-paced reading experiment

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Neurology

Keywords: vagueness, implicit persuasion strategies, shallow processing, self-paced reading experiment

Vagueness as an implicit-encoding persuasive strategy: an experimental approach

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Karger: Neurology and Neuroscience

Most cited references 60

Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.

To transform or not to transform: using generalized linear mixed models to analyse reaction time data

Epistemic Vigilance

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