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How does the brain handle speech that is intended to mislead-in advertising, in political rhetoric, and even in ordinary conversation?
We human beings, as homines loquentes, rely on verbal language to carry out many functions: to make ourselves understood, to learn about facts or ideas, to spread cultural values, and to induce people to do what we want them to do-that is, to manipulate other people. The power of language to influence other people's thoughts and behaviors is of course a focus of linguistic research, but it also flows into the domain of psychology and, notably, of the interplay between language and human cognition. A particularly subtle form of this interplay is manipulative language, which requires the receiver to take part in the reconstruction of a negotiated meaning; the receiver is thereby made to assume some of the responsibility for the interpretive choices made.
As a linguist, I am interested in the inner workings of the human brain when manipulative language is heard or read. I conduct neurophysiological experiments on the processing of different strategies of implicit communication, especially in contexts in which the messaging may tum out to be deceptive, such as political speech or advertising. Earlier lines of research on implicit and manipulative language have concentrated on quantitative analyses aimed at assessing how often a designated speaker resorts to a certain discourse strategy to distort her recipients' views on certain issues (either in public speeches or on social media). My current investigations have capitalized on this empirical scaffolding, using the technique of electroencephalography to examine how the human brain deals with implicitly transmitted contents-that is, those aimed at the subliminal threshold of our cognitive perception. Newly emerging lines of research in this direction are beginning to reveal how the brain interprets (or misinterprets) unsaid meanings in a message.
For the purposes of this discussion, communication is implicit whenever some content of a message, or the way it contributes to the normal unfolding of an interaction, is left unexpressed or underspecified. Consider the following short dialogue as an illustration.
Speaker A: Why don't you try my delicious chocolate cookies? Speaker B: Oh, I have to lose weight. My doctor wants to put me on a strict diet.
On the face of it, this...