Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
Vol. 57 (2005) 245–266
Can I say “bobobo” and mean “There’s no such
thing as cheap talk”?
David Sally ∗
Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, 100 Tuck Hall, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
Received 8 September 2001; received in revised form 21 January 2003; accepted 13 February 2004
Available online 26 February 2005
Abstract
The theory of cheap talk, evaluated as a model of language use, is shown to mismatch the reality of
communication in five respects: real talk is conflict dampening, is more than assertion, is dear, is not
literal, and is beholden to its medium. The linguistic theory of pragmatics is employed to demonstrate
formally that every utterance creates a coordination game whose resolution reveals evidence of similarity and of a shared mental model, so there is no neutral style of communication: an utterance must
affect the relationship between the players. This alteration, in turn, will affect any game allowing for
communication.
© 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
JEL classification: C71; D01
Keywords: Bobobo; Language; Cheap talk; Coordination games; Communication; Meaning
- Can I say “bobobo” and mean “There’s no such thing as cheap talk”?1
- Surely, you cannot. “Bobobo” is just gibberish, a meaningless string of phonemes, and I
do not know what it signifies.
- Are you certain? Suppose I did say “bobobo” and you heard me to mean “There’s no such
thing as cheap talk.” What, in turn, would be the meaning and significance of our shared
understanding?
∗
Tel.: +1 607 257 5758.
E-mail address: [email protected].
1 Wittgenstein (1958) composed this famous thought: “Can I say ‘bububu’ and mean ‘If it doesn’t rain I shall
go for a walk’?—It is only in a language that I can mean something by something” (p. 18n).
0167-2681/$ – see front matter © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2004.02.004
246
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
Humans are adaptable producers of meaning. So it is that the chance appearance of a
crow alighting on a sill or a rainbow arcing across the sky may be interpreted as an omen and
may alter a person’s behavior; so it is that subjects in Garfinkel’s (1967) experiments who
received random answers to “yes or no” questions constructed a monologic conversation to
justify even contradictory replies;2 so it is that the amicable nonsense of Jabberwocky fills
Alice’s head with “ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are” (Carroll, 1871/1992,
p. 24); so it is that words and gestures may momentously modify a social interaction (a
meeting among the mimsy borogoves?). Although the achievement of meaning in a single
mind may occur automatically, the coordination of meaning among intentional beings is not
a trivial matter. However, at present, no economic model of communication reflects this nontriviality: theories of signaling and cheap talk assume that messages are unambiguous and
that a decoding scheme is universally recognized. As linguists, adherents of these models
would be welcomed by the semanticists, those who believe that meaning is generated by
and within an utterance itself. Opposed to this view within the philosophical world are the
pragmaticists, who state that the force of an utterance arises not only from its semantic
content but also from the social situation.
Leech (1983) captured the difference between semantics and pragmatics succinctly in his
characterization of the basic questions asked by each about a given utterance, U: the former
asks “what does U mean?;” the latter asks “what do you mean by U?” Semantically, “it’s hot
in here” is the speaker’s assessment of the temperature in a place; pragmatically, the phrase
may be a request to open a window, an ironic plea to close a window, a demand to move
away from danger, and so on.3 Accordingly, the rhetorical approach of pragmatics is able
to account for many of the instances when language is used in semantically inappropriate
ways. The claim here is that the richness and power of language lie in its creative use (poetry,
metaphor, whispering, humor, irony, promising) and that using language is fundamentally
social and interpersonal and can only be analyzed as such.
This paper has three major points:
(1) “cheap talk” may be a good model of other signaling phenomena, but it inaccurately
portrays language;
(2) the pragmatic game of meaning is an “impure” coordination game, so any game in
which players can talk really has at least two-stages—meaning coordination and then
the original game;
(3) in this two-stage setting, meaning coordination serves as a signal of the relationship
between the players and consequently may affect their decisions in the original game.
2 Zeitlyn (1995) made the compelling case that these two first examples may be closely related. He described
the Mambila spider divination in which a stick and a stone are placed near a spider’s hole, then covered with a few
leaves and a pot. A yes–no question is posed and the pot is tapped. After a period of time, the pot is removed and
the disturbance of the leaves produced by the spider is interpreted by the diviner. Because the divination process
enjoys the same legitimacy as a conversation between humans, contradictions are as non-fatal to the former as to
the latter: ‘the contradiction may be regarded as a rhetorical device used by the divination to make the diviner cast
the net of his questions more widely” (p. 201).
3 The social settings in which the hearer directly understands these alternative meanings should occur easily to
the reader. The basic point is that the development of these meanings depends on the coordination between the
speaker and the hearer, a point made by Lewis (1969, p. 177): “I can’t say ‘It’s cold here’ and mean ‘It’s warm
here’—at least, not without a little help from my friends.”
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
247
The first section examines five specific weaknesses of cheap talk as a model of language:
talk, it turns out, is conflict dampening, is more than assertion, is dear, is not literal, is
beholden to its medium. For those readers who are unfamiliar with linguistics, this portion
of the paper will also serve as an introduction to some essential concepts and data, especially
those of Gricean pragmatics. The second section translates these principles of pragmatics
formally into the proposition that any utterance establishes a coordination game. Solving
or failing to solve this coordination game is shown in the third section to affect behavior in
some linked games, for example, a prisoners’ dilemma preceded by discussion. The final
section reviews, summarizes, and concludes.
1. Cheap talk is a flawed theory of talk
1.1. Formal results and refinements in cheap talk
The sender–receiver model of Crawford and Sobel (1982) initiated the growth of a
literature within game theory to which Farrell (1987) appended the phrase, “cheap talk.”4
This literature assumes that communication takes place through messages. The messages
have two qualities: first, they are unambiguous so that if the sender selects message m1 , then
the receiver recognizes m1 . There are never any problems with interpretation: in equilibrium,
people say what they mean and mean what they say. Note that the sender is neither required to
tell the truth (typically, about what type he is), nor excluded from being intentionally vague
(his vagueness, nevertheless, is unambiguously understood). Second, neither the content
of the message nor the actions of sending or receiving it alters the preferences or payoff
functions of either participant. This quality reflects the “cheapness” of the talk: “A costless
verbal agreement cannot be said to commit the players to anything” (Wärneryd, 1990, p.
92). Therefore, the sender may alter only the informational environment of the receiver,
although he may do so intentionally and deterministically.
Cheap talk may be useful in a variety of games. Crawford and Sobel formally demonstrated that if the preferences of the sender and receiver are “similar enough,” then equilibria will exist in which the message of the sender will alter the prior beliefs of the
receiver. This type of communication affects the outcomes of games that are coordinative rather than conflictual in nature. Accordingly, cheap talk improves the expected
payoff of two firms producing complementary products who wish to enter a naturalmonopoly industry (Farrell, 1987), a committee may outperform a market leader in efficiently establishing an industry standard (Farrell and Saloner, 1988), bargainers may
not exaggerate their initial claims so as to ensure that negotiations ensue (Farrell and
Gibbons, 1989), and subjects in a single battle of the sexes experiment coordinate more
successfully when they are allowed to send messages over their computers (Cooper et
al., 1989, 1992).
4 The proverb, “talk is cheap,” was coined by a fictional con man, Sam Slick, in Haliburton’s (1843) comic novel:
“Talk is cheap, it don’t cost nothin’ but breath.” Despite its aphoristic status, this phrase itself may represent Sam
Slick’s finest scam: Sam sold succeeding generations a bill of goods since talk usually costs more than breath.
248
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
Three papers have advanced theoretical refinements that reveal more clearly the linguistic underpinnings of cheap talk. Farrell (1993) and Matthews et al. (1991) introduced
Nash equilibrium refinements, while Rabin (1990) developed a solution concept, all of
which rest on the existence of a literal meaning for each of the messages. For example, Rabin assumes that the messages emanate from “a common language pre-dating the
specific strategic situation” (p. 149), that “consists of (1) a meaningful vocabulary, and
(2) a common understanding among agents that it is appropriate to interpret statements
according to their literal meaning” (p. 145). His interpretation of “meaningfulness” is
the postulated existence of an exclusive subset of messages associated with each subset of player types. Matthews et al. explicitly state a semantic view of the literal meaning of a message as being “determined by the meanings of its individual components
(‘words’), and the application of a commonly known grammar to their combination”
(p. 253). Because messages have only a literal meaning, the medium of the message is
irrelevant: “It does not matter for our purposes exactly what language, speaking style,
or low-cost mode of communication (e.g., verbal or written) is being employed” (Rabin, p. 150). Messages may be conveyed by semaphore, hieroglyphics, or voice, so long
as both the decoding system and the hermeneutics of literalness are commonly understood.
We can now ask the question relevant to the topic of this paper: “Is cheap talk, talk?”
In other words, does it serve as a general linguistic model of “rational people who know
how to communicate in the ordinary way?” (Farrell and Rabin, 1996, p. 117). The answer
offered here is “No.”5
1.2. Communication and conflict
If it holds to the cheap talk paradigm, communication should have no effect on a confrontational game such as the prisoners’ dilemma. Sally (1995) envisioned the augmented
game as the problem of whether to put the prisoners in the same holding cell before they are
interrogated and forced to choose confession or silence. Since players’ announced plans are
followed only if they “constitute a Nash equilibrium” (Farrell, 1987, p. 35), and since the
only equilibrium is to confess, the “cheap” promise to cooperate will be neither believed
nor followed. Communication in this setting is without content: while it occurs, it carries
no information, and after it occurs, it carries no influence. However, the empirical evidence
from laboratory experiments involving social dilemmas is that discussion significantly increases the rate of cooperation (Sally, 1995). Promises are frequent in these settings, and
subsequent choices reveal that people are both bound by their own promises and rely on the
commitment of others (Orbell et al., 1988). Discussion also helped buyers and sellers resolve their discordance over valuation and price in Valley et al.’s (1998) Acquire a Company
game.
5 A similar answer has been offered in the political science literature by Johnson (1993), Mackie (1998), and
Schiemann (2000). The first showed that Habermas’ (1984) theory of communicative action is an explicit critique
of game theory and strategic behavior and an implicit critique of cheap talk.
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
249
1.3. Talk as solely assertion
The type of messages conveyed by individuals within the world of cheap talk are propositional statements such as “I am type y.”6 Speech–act theorists, beginning with Austin
(1962) and continuing with Searle (1969), asserted that language is used to perform a wide
variety of acts and that assertion is but one among several categories of illocutionary acts.
Searle (1976) discerned five categories of speech acts that would correspond to the following
utterances in a cheap talk setting:
1. Assertives: the speaker commits to the truth of a proposition.
“I affirm I am type y.”
“I deny I am type x.”
2. Directives: the speaker tries to get the listener to act.
“What type are you?”
“I order you to tell me your type.”
3. Commissives: the speaker vouches for his own future action.
“I swear to tell you my type.”
“I promise to act like a type y.”
4. Expressives: the speaker expresses a feeling about a given proposition.
“I would thank you for telling me your type.”
“I apologize for not telling you.”
5. Declarations: the speaker’s saying makes it so.
“I will become the type who would and could make this statement itself.”
While this last category seems quite strange at first, social life contains a number of dramatic
examples: “I pronounce you husband and wife;” “I nominate you as a candidate for office.”
In the setting of a game, the speaker’s utterance can indirectly change either party’s type and
serve as evidence for such a change. I am claiming, on the one hand, that only friends can
make certain statements and that making certain statements makes you more intimate, and
hence, cooperative, toward another. On the other hand, the wrong utterance at the wrong
time will also alter the players’ types and heighten conflict, in part because it violates the
expectation of coordination leading to cooperation.
This typology of speech acts hints at the overriding limitation of cheap talk as a model
of language: its obliviousness to the creative act of communicating and its correspondent
neglect of the impact of language on the cognitive states of the participants. Cheap talk, then,
is one important manifestation of the general obliviousness to rhetoric among economists
and within economics, an unawareness sweepingly exposed by McCloskey (1985).
1.4. Language as costless
It is clear that, at a minimum, language consumes time and hence, as this sentence grows
longer and longer and longer (and longer), the opportunity cost of continuing to read it
6
Note that cheap talk also makes no distinction between this simple statement of fact and the more intricate and
intimate assertion, “I am the same type you would be if you were in my shoes.”
250
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
is increasing. Psycholinguists have discovered over the last two decades that cognitive resources, especially memory, are differentially used by various kinds of words, sentences and
discourses (Carpenter et al., 1995; McKoon and Ratcliff, 1998). More cognitive resources
are used by infrequent words, unusual syntaxes and ungrounded and unprepared phrases.
Respectively, “extol” is more costly than “praise;” “At the party, Bob talked” is more expensive than “At the party, Bob talked to Rachel;” “The diver asked the doctor, ‘How badly
did the nurse bite me?”’ is more dear than “The diver asked the doctor, ‘How badly did
the nurse shark bite me?”’7 Moreover, the processing heuristics espoused by speakers and
listeners reflect the scientific findings: we believe that the processing cost of an expression
increases as the expression is rarer, longer, more complex, more laden and more obscure
(Clark, 1996).
1.5. The primacy of literal meaning
Recall that Farrell (1993), Matthews et al. (1991), and Rabin (1990) refined cheap talk by
allowing each message to have a literal interpretation: suppose, then, that every word had but
one literal meaning. Communication would still be difficult because there is no clear one-toone mapping onto some unique subset of the objects of the world. Bronowski (1978) asserted
that no individual word is wholly “unambiguous:” even a simple word such as “table” does
not divide the entire world into tables and non-tables (p. 107, quoted in Lieberman, 1984).
Labov (1973) recounted the results of a series of experiments testing people’s abilities to
categorize cylindrical, upwardly concave containers as “cups,” “bowls,” or “vases.” Subjects
disagreed over a wide range of dimensions on the denotation of an object, and their names
shifted if they were told to imagine the object holding food or flowers. This ambiguous
mapping is also evident when I am questioned by my son about the categorization of certain
objects: when is a creek, a “stream;” a pond, a “lake;” a shout, a “yell?”
Moreover, the statement at the beginning of the previous paragraph is incorrect: many
words are polysemous.8 The graphs in Fig. 1 display the number of distinct dictionary
definitions for, on the left, 257 randomly selected words, and, on the right, the 100 words
used most frequently in writing (Britton, 1978).9 This latter group comprises almost half
of the total words found in the huge sample of Kucera and Francis (1967).
The entire English lexicon, based on this representative sample, may have a majority
of words that have just one literal meaning. Nevertheless, 44 percent of the lexicon is
polysemous, and 9 percent of its entries have more than four definitions. Furthermore, of
the words writers repeatedly employ, 62 percent have more than four meanings. Examples
of highly polysemous words (greater than 15 definitions) are “to” [4], “have” [22], “will”
[39], “time” [66], “for” [11], “back” [94], and “way” [99].10 The application of grammar
7 Interestingly, the “dear” in the last subclause may not have been more expensive despite its ambiguity, due to
the brain’s parallel processing abilities and the primed and salient context of “cost.”
8 See Miller (1999) on the importance of polysemy (multiple meanings) and the ease with which native speakers
resolve it.
9 Because this list contains the same verb in different tenses or, in one case, the plural of a frequent pronominal
adjective, I collapse these into one observation, so the graph is based on a total of 89 words.
10 [x] represents the frequency rank of the word in the Kucera and Francis sample.
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
251
Fig. 1. Number of dictionary definitions randomly chosen words most frequently used words.
and sentence structure may not be sufficient to distinguish among these literal meanings.
Hence, a trip to a financial institution, or a fishing expedition, or a particular billiards shot
may be indicated by the utterance, “Sue went to the bank.” Similarly, “this dish is hot” may
describe the temperature of a plate or of the food on a plate, or the spiciness of the food.11
A parallel process can occur with the transmission of vocal communication. Homonyms
may be ambiguous to the listener’s ear. A listener hears “we too är go’ing” and is uncertain
whether the speaker is indicating that she has a single companion in some outing or that
she believes that her group of some size will be joining the listener in going.12
Finally, certain words may be indefinite by nature or undetermined within the context of
the immediate utterance. The largest subset of these are pronouns, such as “she,” “him,” or
“that,” which are uncertain without knowledge of either previous utterances or of the setting
of the speaker and listener. Anaphora occurs when one phrase replaces a prior phrase, and
deixis, when it refers to an object physically present. The use of pronouns in anaphora
and deixis is pervasive in language: 15 of the most frequently used words are pronouns
(Britton). Another sub-group is indefinite quantifiers, such as “some” or “many,” whose
meaning depends on the specific context. For example, respondents in one study quantified
“few” in phrases of the form, “a few people standing in front of . . .:” if the blank was filled
by “a hut,” the average estimate was 4.5; if filled by “the building,” 7.0 (Hormann, 1983,
cited in Gibbs, 1994). A third sub-category is that of filler phrases, such as “what’s-hisface” or “thingamajig,” which are indefinite and are even explicit requests for help from the
audience.
11 Furthermore, one can easily generate figurative meanings, including “recent gossip,” “a swift pass of the
basketball,” and “an attractive individual.”
12 Goffman (1976) determines that the verbal request “do you have the time?”can take on so many different
meanings that it can elicit relevant responses in 6 major categories with 12 subcategories. He lists 30 examples,
such as “No, but I have the newsweek” and “I have the basil too,” but implicates the possibility of thousands.
252
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
Not only do multiple literal meanings abound, but a given utterance may have other levels
of meaning as well. First, at the basic level of what is said, words may have conventional
meanings distinct from their literal translation. The outstanding example of this fact is the
word “can” in a request such as “can you tell me the time?” The conventional meaning of
“will you” substitutes for the literal “are you able.” Logical operators, such as “and,” often
have a conventional sense quite distinct from their literal meanings: thus, the two sentences
“I woke up and had a cup of coffee” and “I had a cup of coffee and woke up” convey two very
distinct senses, based on the convention of attaching temporal ordering to “and” (Carston,
1988). Matthews et al. conflate conventional and literal in one of their examples of cheap
talk, claiming that “my type is either a or b” literally means that each type is equally likely,
although logically the statement makes no such assertion.
Most significantly, as Grice so clearly illuminated, the force of an utterance may be
implicated. The implied thoughts and meanings are known as implicatures. A seminal
example offered by Grice (1975) is the following dialogue taking place beside a parked car:13
A:
B:
I am out of gas.
There is a station around the corner.
[U.1]
B’s response literally may describe a train depot, yet A understands instantly both that
B is talking about a gas station, and moreover, that B believes that this garage is open and
is the easiest place for A to purchase fuel.
One type of speech act can implicate another, as in this example wherein an assertive
speech act has the implied illocutionary force of a directive:
You are standing on my foot.
[U.2]
We easily understand this literal, pedal assessment to be a request for us to move our
offending foot. The cooperative maxims of conversation discovered by Grice and elaborated
by others provide the logic by which we “translate” such a statement into the intended
request. Note that such indirectness would not always be as easily comprehended, as in this
instance:
You have placed the piano upon my big toe.
[U.3]
The implied request for the audience to act quickly seems at odds with the choice of the
utterer to employ an implicature instead of a scream of pain to communicate. In fact, there
is an element of humor to this sentence, both as an ironic parallel to example U.2, and as an
absurd use of language. Ultimately, such non-literal use of language, whether in the form
of humor, irony, metaphor, implication, or poetry, must be included in any conception of
language through which a theorist hopes to gain insight into human communication.
1.6. The irrelevance of the medium
As mentioned above, models of cheap talk ignore the mode of transmission. Yet, in one of
the very few articles by an economist on language, Marschak (1965) discussed the failure of
an attempt to replace phones in jet fighters with assigned buttons or switches, each dedicated
13
These utterances have been Americanized from Grice’s original: A: I am out of petrol. B: There’s a garage
round the corner. In English, garage may mean filling station or parking structure.
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
253
to one of the few necessary messages: “without the relief of verbal, voiced exchange, tension
might become intolerable” for the pilots (p. 135). A simple signaling system carrying the
same informational content could not provide the coordination and interconnection required
by the pilots. Furthermore, Sally (1995) presented strong evidence that the medium of
communication does affect the rate of cooperation observed in social dilemma experiments.
Face-to-face discussion had a much more positive impact on cooperation than did the
exchange of written messages (a result replicated by Valley et al. for their game).
Cheap talk fails linguistically for these five reasons: discussion can potentially be productive and consequential even in a direct conflict; talk is more than assertion; language is
cognitively costly; not all phrases have a single literal meaning, and many (if not all) have
figurative and illocutionary meanings as well; and media matter.
2. To talk is to coordinate
A number of authors have applied notions of rationality to the use of language (Jacobs
and Jackson, 1983; Kellerman, 1992; Sanders, 1987), arguing that some form of intentional
choice was involved in the production of many utterances.14 Lewis (1975, p. 3) elegantly
described the reasoned choice inherent in language:
He who produces certain sounds or marks does so for a reason. He knows that someone
else, upon hearing his sounds or seeing his marks, is apt to form a certain belief or act
in a certain way. He wants, for some reason, to bring about that belief or action. Thus
his beliefs and desires give him a reason to produce the sounds or marks, and he does.
He who responds to the sounds or marks in a certain way also does so for a reason.
He knows how the production of sounds or marks depends upon the producer’s state
of mind. When he observes the sounds or marks, he is therefore in a position to infer
something about the producer’s state of mind. He can probably also infer something
about the conditions which caused that state of mind.
It is critical to Lewis’ description that these marks or sounds result from mutual consideration by the producer and audience of each other’s state of mind. The ability to see and make
inferences about the state of mind of the other, therefore, excludes a number of interesting
linguistic phenomena: the rantings of the insane, the cries of the startled, the babblings of
the infant, the murmurings of the sleeper, the musings of the solitary (see Goffman, 1981
on self-talk), and the utterances of the severely autistic (those who are mindblind, to use
the term of Baron-Cohen, 1995).
Even with these exclusions, we are left with plenty of words and speech to consider. The
purpose of this section is to demonstrate that every utterance creates a coordination game
along the lines of Schelling’s (1960) famous examples: the choose-the-same-color game, or
“heads-or-tails.” In fact, we will show that when a speaker utters a phrase, it is as though he
14 One alternative viewpoint is that communication (especially, verbal dialogue) occurs too rapidly for the participants to be mindful of pursuing their intentional goals (Bavelas and Coates, 1992). However, Motley (1992) offered
evidence from verbal slips of the tongue, such as “could you cut my meef” (beef and meat), which seemed to
indicate that people often do make detailed lexical decisions. In addition, as a referee noted, even an unintentional
choice might still be rational.
254
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
or she is proposing that a Schelling game be played (e.g., “guess what number I’m thinking
of” or “meet me in the city at three o’clock”). That is, an utterance is an invitation by the
speaker to the listener to play the pragmatic game, “what do I mean?”
To begin, assume that there are two fundamental sets for linguistic communication. The
first set is that of speech acts:
SA = {sa1 , sa2 , sa3 , . . . , saN }
(1)
This set includes all the actions that speech act theorists, beginning with Austin and Searle,
have catalogued: asserting a proposition, p, is true; naming an object; questioning whether
a proposition, q, is false; promising to take a future action; requesting that someone do
something, and so on. I will take this set as elemental, and therefore, I will not concern myself
with the great amount of philosophical work that has attempted to define partitions of the set
into speech act categories (see Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969, 1976; Bach and Harnish, 1979;
Habermas, 1984). It is the study of this set that distinguishes pragmatics from semantics,
which is concerned with the truth conditions of propositions, not with the expression of
propositions as one of a set of possible actions (Stalnaker, 1970).
Of no less importance than speech acts to a language is the second set of elements,
namely a set of comprehensible utterances. Such a set is produced from a collection
of morphemes, the linguistic atoms of a given language, that combine to form the lexicon, the molecules, that, in turn, are conjugated according to the production function,
the grammar. Together, the lexicon, which we will call L, and the grammar produce this
set:
ULG = {u∅ , u1 , u2 , u3 , . . . , uM }.
(2)
ULG includes sentences, phrases, single words, and u∅ , the null utterance, or silence. A given
element of ULG , ui , may be decomposed into a sequence (ui1 ui2 ui3 . . .), in which uik ∈ L for
all k. In other words, words.
Fauconnier (1997) contends that “mappings between domains are at the heart of the
unique human cognitive faculty of producing, transferring, and processing meaning” (p. 1).
Accordingly, we will define meaning as a mapping between ULG and SA. The set of all
speech acts to which a given utterance, ui , can be mapped is its “timeless meaning” (Grice,
1989, p. 119). The purpose here is to prove that the timeless meaning of each and every ui has
at least two elements. If this can be proven, then from the audience’s perspective, an utterance
would create a formal coordination game in which the multiple meaning mappings are the
possible moves for both participants. This game would be distinct from the determinant
meaning inherent in models of cheap talk.15
We begin by assuming that every language has a pool of conventional mappings of
words to the set of objects and events in this world and possible worlds (). In literate
15 By no means is what follows a general model of language. I am only focusing on the stage of interpretation
given a particular utterance. A more complete model would have to account for the speaker’s choice of the utterance
and the dynamics of turn-taking in the conversation. From the utterer’s perspective, the complete question is “What
do I say?—given what we said before, and given that we will play, ‘what do I mean?’.” Thanks to a referee for
emphasizing this point.
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
255
societies, these mappings are written down into a single volume, the dictionary; in nonliterate societies, these mappings are held solely in the memories of each individual speaker.
Axiom 1. There exists mD : L → .
As Lewis (1969) analyzed, this “dictionary” meaning arises from the conventional solution
to the pure coordination game arising from assigning verbal signals to an action or object.
It is a shared norm, for example, that horse drivers say “gee” when they want the team to
turn right and “haw” to turn left.
Literal meaning, mL , is a mapping such that for any ui ∈ ULG consisting of n words,
n
mL (ui ) = “
mD (uik ) ∈ ”. The literal image of an utterance is the assertion that the
k=1
intersection of all the events and objects referred to by the individual words is also part of
the world. For example, consider the utterance:
A brown dog is barking.
[U.4]
The literal translation of U.4 can be represented as: mL (“a brown dog is barking”) = “an
object” ∩ “objects of a certain hue” ∩ “canine objects” ∩ “objects making a particular sharp
yelp” ∈ .16 Although this is an admittedly rough way to characterize literal meaning, it
seems to correspond fairly well to our intuitive sense of literalness. It is clear from our
previous discussion of polysemy and deixis that for many ui ∈ ULG , mL (ui ) may have more
than one element.
Based on this definition of literal meaning, I will advance the following axiom:
Axiom 2. For every sai ∈ SA, there exists uj ∈ ULG such that sai ∈ mL (uj ).
This axiom states that every speech act may be literally expressed. Similarly, Katz (1981)
(p. 226) proposed the “principle of effability” in which every thought is “expressible by
some sentence in every natural language.” Given the unbounded length of utterances, this
axiom may be non-controversial (although with regard to creative speech such as jokes,
metaphor, etc., it may be dubious). It also fits with the perspective of cheap talk theorists
on the ubiquity of literal meaning. While there may be a way to say everything literally,
people do avail themselves of other ways to achieve speech acts, and a decision to employ a
literal utterance instead of another phrase may have other significant meanings, especially
with respect to the relationship of the speaker and listener.
Literal meaning also does not pertain to all utterances, as the next proposition demonstrates.
Proposition 1. There exist elements of ULG that are not mapped by mL into SA.
16
A more rigorous explanation would convert each of these words into specific speech acts. For example, m (mD
(brown)) = “I assert the proposition that there exist brown objects in this world.” The logical conjunction of these
individual speech acts would be the image of the literal mapping of the given utterance. For speech act types other
than assertion, one would have to assign an operator to the conjunction of the individual words.
256
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
Proof. Choose an element of ULG , ui , containing two words such that mD (uij ) ∩ mD (uik ) =
/ SA. A
∅ (this null intersection is representative of oxymorons). In this case, mL (ui ) = ∅ ∈
classic example of an utterance which is semantically well-formed but literally meaningless
is Chomsky’s (1957) famous sentence:
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
[U.5]
Certainly, U.5 is an element of ULG , yet because mD (“colorless”) ∩ mD (“green”) = and
mD (“sleep”) ∩ mD (“furiously”) = , it is without literal meaning. Chomsky’s sentence, however, does appear to have some sense or force. In a Jabberwockian fashion, the combination of these words creates some coherent image
in the mind of the reader. One interpretation would be, “New, unelaborated thoughts
are busy in the subconscious.”17 Hollander (1971) even wrote a short poem using the phrase:
Curiously deep, the slumber of crimson thoughts:
While breathless, in stodgy viridian,
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
These explications are examples of a metaphorical or figurative mapping between utterances and speech acts. Let this mapping be mF .
The human ability to make sense even out of “nonsense,” as Alice’s reaction to Jabberwocky exemplifies, leads to the following strong axiom:
Axiom 3. For every ui ∈ ULG , {mL (ui ) ∪ mF (ui )} is a non-empty subset of SA.
In other words, every utterance can be assigned at least one speech act through literalness or
metaphor. This axiom states that a given grammatical structure may be randomly completed
by the appropriate types of words and that some thought will be produced by every single
set of substitutions.
Let us run the experiment right now. We will call it the Refrigerator Poetry Experiment,
after those magnetic lexicons that can be shuffled into random verses on metallic doors
in idle kitchen moments. Suppose I were to stop writing for a while and take this grammatical
blueprint—(NounPhrase = “the” + adjective + noun) + (VerbPhrase = verb + “the” + adjective
+ noun)—and randomly fill the slots with the proper elements from L.18 Do you
anticipate that they will have some sense for you? Here are the sentences I just
constructed using computer-generated random numbers and the dictionary on my
desk:
The nonagenarian confirmation foreclosed the replevisable19 spot test.
The exact southwesterner flooded the irremeable20 Powhatan.21
The licit hybrid tea maimed the determined flick.
17
[U.6]
[U.7]
[U.8]
Sanders (1987) and Searle (1982) have also suggested metaphorical readings of Chomsky’s sentence.
Walker Percy (1978) noted that this technique is employed by many a modern poet, one who “shuffles words
together, words plucked from as diversified contexts as possible” and gets “some splendid effects. Words are potent
agents and the sparks are bound to fly.” However, since the poet has no intention of meaning, communication falls
apart: “There is no celebration or hope of celebration of a thing beheld in common” (pp. 76–7).
19 “Capable of being repossessed through a legal action; applied to wrongfully taken or detained goods.”
20 “Irreversible.”
21 “Father of Pocahontas.”
18
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
257
Writing each sentence, I certainly feel as though I have a sense of their meanings and
I readily imagine a scene surrounding them: U.6—basically legal mumbo-jumbo, with an
old agreement leaving matters of privacy just the way they are; U.7—a desert-dwelling,
pernickety suitor begs a resolute father; U.8—literally, the thorn of a rose pricks the gardener’s finger; figuratively, an upper-class woman parries and counters the forceful insult
of a rival. In the end, our relatively successful word shuffling and substituting provides
some support for axiom three’s broad claim.
Wittgenstein (1958) (Section 16) pointed to another meaning mapping:
[W]hen I say to someone: ‘Pronounce the word “the,”’ you will count the second
‘the’ as part of the sentence. Yet it has a role just like that of a colour-sample in
language-game (8); that is, it is a sample of what the other is meant to say. It is most
natural, and causes least confusion, to reckon the samples among the instruments of
the language.
This particular linguistic sample is itself a sample of the broader phenomenon of “exemplification,” an utterance or action used to represent an entire category. Label this mapping
mE . At first, we might be struck by the triviality of mE , but the same cognitive process
it represents may play an important role in the interpretation of metaphors, an essential
linguistic phenomenon (Glucksberg, 1991; Glucksberg and McGlone, 1999).22
The following proposition demonstrates that the timeless meaning of every utterance
consists of more than one element. The important implication is that every communicative
interaction involves a recognizable coordination problem, namely, which speech act did the
speaker intend the addressee to believe?
Proposition 2. For every ui ∈ ULG , there exists mj , mk such that mj (ui ) ⊂ SA, mk (ui ) ⊂ SA,
and mj (ui ) = mk (ui ).
Proof. Consider the speech act of responding to the question, “What is an example of an
utterance?” Formally, let sau be the assertion, ui ∈ ULG . It is obvious that any utterance may
be mapped to this speech act by me . Therefore, because of Axiom 3 above, the proposition
is proved for all ui ∈ ULG such that sau ∈
/ {mL (ui ) ∪ mF (ui )}. We are left with a class of
utterances such as “this is an utterance” or “ui ∈ ULG .” Call this class “self-referential”
utterances. The speech act of asserting that an utterance is “self-referential” may be signified
by sasr , and it is distinct from sau because different logical propositions are involved. Accordingly, it is true for every element of this class that sasr ∈ me (ui ) and sau ∈ me (ui ). The coordination problems range from the trifling as presented in a long, technical
sentence with a pre-dominant literal meaning, to the consequential in such cases as
22
In this theory of metaphors (e.g., lawyers are sharks), the vehicle word, sharks, exemplifies a category (e.g.,
ravenous, sharp-toothed beasts) in which the target word, lawyers, is included.
258
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
He picked that up.
Meanings:
[U.9]
A particular man lifted some object.
Ben did not litter.
Michael caught the inference.
Rachel did not receive the signal. (Et cetera)
One plus one equals two.
Meanings:
Adding the integer “one” to itself results in the integer “two.“
Exemplifying the quality of simplicity.
Exemplifying the quality of lucidness.23
Exemplifying an “equation.” (Et cetera)
[U.10]
Slab!24
Meanings:
[U.11]
Helper, bring me a certain stone.
Builder, we sure had a long, hard day of work, didn’t we?
Bartender, I am parched, bring me a certain brand of beer!
Remember Wittgenstein’s elemental language?! (Et cetera)
Doowahdee!25
Meanings:
[U.12]
That is a yucky thing!
I want something else.
I am making a joke.
Remember how Tommy used to say this? (Et cetera)
Bebebe.
Meanings:
[U.13]
Look out, you are in danger of being stung.
Choose life, Hamlet, choose life.
The answers to the next three multiple choice questions.
No, no, no, not “d.” (Et cetera)
u∅ (Silence).
Meanings:
[U.14]
I want you to say something.
I don’t like you.
I don’t know the answer.
You won’t like the answer.26 (Et cetera)
Formally, we can go a step further and show that the strategy space for both players in
the speaker’s meaning coordination game is the whole set of speech acts. The following
23 This was the point of an economist who stage-whispered “1 + 1 = 2” during a seminar, as a response to the
assertion that there were no unambiguous sentences. Of course, as listed above, there are numerous possible
meanings to this utterance, and in this particular case, the meaning was roughly, “Look, wiseguy, here’s something
that has only one meaning,” thereby contradicting the intended assertion.
24 Wittgenstein’s (1958) elemental language, used by a builder and helper to work with a variety of stones.
25 The favorite phrase of my son, Thomas, when he was a beginning speaker.
26 The following dialogue occurred in a doctor’s office (Frankel, 1983, quoted by Drew, 1995):
Patient :
This chemotherapy (pause) it won’t have any lasting effects on havin’ kids will it?
(2.2 s of silence)
Patient :
It will?
Doctor :
I’m afraid so.
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
259
proposition states no meaning can be excluded based on first principles: each and every
utterance’s timeless meaning is the entire set, SA.27
Proposition 3. There exists a situation and a mapping such that any utterance ui can mean
saj for any saj in SA.
Proof. Suppose that I have found a model of language that excludes at least one mapping,
namely, that u8 cannot mean sat8 . Now, imagine the following dialogue:
A:
B:
A:
B:
A:
B:
A:
MODEL. [Assertion and explication of the logical, analytical model.]
u8 −→not sat8 ? [Question about implication of model.]
Right!
Imagine a situation x such that I really want to do sat8 .
Ok.
“u8 !” [Quoted assertion in situation x.]
“sat8 .” [Quoted thought.]
If this dialogue does not strike you as a strong enough contradiction of the original supposition, it can be recast along the lines suggested by Wittgenstein’s previously cited phrase:
I: Can I say ‘bububu’ and mean ‘If it doesn’t rain, do you want to go for a walk’?
You: No!
I: Bububu?
You: Well, sure [agreeing to go for a walk if it doesn’t rain]. [U.15]
[U.16]
3. A game with talk is a changed game
The point of propositions two and three is that any game in which players can talk is,
of necessity, a two-stage game in which a coordination game precedes the original game.28
That players usually solve the coordination game is not in doubt, as demonstrated by this
sentence and those that have come before it. It is important to note, however, that a successful
meeting within any coordination game establishes a kinship between the players: we are
similar since we both chose Grand Central Station as the spot to meet in New York City.
Conversely, a failure to coordinate (or significant inefficiency in matching) may make salient
the differences between the players: I thought you were the kind of person who would choose
“rose” out of all varieties of flowers, and you disappointed me. This sense of similarity is
one of the key elements of sympathy (or fellow-feeling or role-taking), a factor that has
been shown to alter behavior and decisions in a variety of games (Sally, 2000, 2001).
27 The Linguistics Department of the University of Chicago is rumored to have played this game at the annual
department party. Each person would write down a speech act on one piece of paper and a phrase on another: the
papers would be gathered and then paired at random. The task was to devise a situation in which the utterance
would achieve the speech act.
28 This conclusion differs from that of Habermas who distinguished between non-teleological, communicative
action and success-oriented strategic action. In doing so, Habermas failed to see the essential continuity within
human behavior, in particular, the other-orientation of many strategic, game-related actions, and the distancing
caused by many communications.
260
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
How the players solve this coordination game is one of the mysteries of language.29
Lewis (1969) proposed that conventions were a partial solution: a sentence means what we
all know it has come to mean. Conventions are most useful in finite, bounded games, such
as “one if by land, two if by sea,” and by their nature rely on the existence and application
of common knowledge, as usually defined in game theory (Geanakoplos, 1992).
Another essential part of the solution was identified by Grice (1975) as the Cooperative
Principle (CP): a standard followed by utterers that guides them to make their “conversational contributions such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted
purpose or direction of the talk exchange” (p. 307). There are four categories of maxims
that support the CP: Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner. His suggested maxims may
be laid out as follows:
Quantity:
Quality:
Relation:
Manner:
1. Make your contribution as informative as is required.
2. Don’t make your contribution more informative than is required.
Try to make your contribution one that is true.
1. Don’t say what you believe to be false.
2. Don’t say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Be relevant.
Be perspicuous.
1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief.
4. Be orderly.
Sperber and Wilson (1995) refined these maxims, with some success, into Relevance
and Efficiency: “be relevant” and “be efficient.”
Return for a moment to U.4. Note that this particular phrase literally expresses a proposition that is continuously true in our world: somewhere, at all times, a brown dog barks.30
Accordingly, this phrase might be more realistic in the following setting: two owners of
a chocolate Labrador are reading in their living room; the dog stands by the front door
eager for a walk; one person says to the other, “A brown dog is barking.” The speech act
performed is not an assertion about the existence of such a dog because the listener can
surely hear the barking, but rather an indirect request that the other stop reading and take
the dog for a walk. Note that the listener derives this meaning based not on truthfulness or
convention, but rather the maxims that the speaker is being cooperative (saying something
I can understand) and relevant (saying something of significance to me).31
Consider, once again, the dialogue in U.1:
A:
B:
I am out of gas.
There is a station around the corner.
[U.1]
29 See Schiemann who tries to reconcile rational choice theory and critical theory in the context of coordination
games with multiple equilibria and in players’ use of salience to guide their choices.
30 The phrase is reminiscent of Stein’s (1957) line: “A dog which you have never had before has sighed” (cited
in Perloff, 1996).
31 Of course, these rules may be intentionally violated in return by the listener, who responds, “Really? I don’t
hear a thing,” thereby implicating that if the first speaker wants the dog walked, he should do it himself!
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
261
A says “I” instead of “my car” and B says “station” instead of “gasoline service station,”
in part, because it is efficient to use shorter phrases in place of more explicit ones. The idea
of relevance means that this piece of dialogue can be shifted to another situation and still
cohere: imagine A and B have been walking for many blocks without stopping or eating. By
applying the metaphoric equivalences of body and machine, and food and fuel, A indicates
that she is hungry, and B suggests that there may be an open restaurant nearby.
The Cooperative Principle demands that individuals utilize as accurate a mental model
of the other as possible.32 Mead (1934) writes, “Language as such is simply a process by
means of which the individual who is engaged in co-operative activity can get the attitude
of others involved in the same activity” (p. 335). This mutual understanding will quite
naturally reduce the psychological distance between the speaker and listener and affect
their behaviors. As Clark (1992) notes, “When two people use language, it is like shaking
hands, playing a piano duet, or paddling a two-person canoe: It takes coordination, even
collaboration, to achieve” (p. xvi). Again, mutual identification and psychological closeness
have been shown to affect a wide range of games (Bohnet and Frey, 1999; Sally, 2000, 2001).
In addition, the usual cooperative mode of language provides an expectation and background
against which deliberate miscoordination is noticed and has a negative impact: when you
paddle only when I do not, our canoe moves chaotically and slowly.
All utterances, therefore, have implicatures concerning the relationship between the
speaker and the listener that depend upon the intimacy of the participants’ mental models and
their utilization of mutual identification. These implicatures are analogous to the following
literal situation: when a speaker and hearer are together, both of these statements are truthful,
yet have divergent implications for the relationship.
We are here.
I am here, you are there.
[U.17]
[U.18]
What we say and how we say it often draws a circle around ourselves and conveys our
interpersonal intentions; is the other within as in U.17, or without as in U.18?
This basic principle of language, “there is no entirely neutral style” (Sperber and Wilson,
1995, p. 218), has been recognized by philosophers (Wittgenstein), anthropologists (Goody,
1995) and psychologists (Clark, 1992, 1996; Higgins, 1992). The reason that we often place
weight on a speaker’s words (and that talk is not cheap) is, according to Goffman (1969),
our “belief that the very design of his construction provides a window into his intent, a
window to a room that is lit from within by emotional expression” (p. 128).
A number of experimental results verify the presence of common knowledge and mutual
identification. Testing a variety of pure coordination games, including Schelling’s original
situations, Mehta et al. (1994) have shown that the awareness that a coordination game is
happening raises the coordination rate significantly compared to what would be expected
from the pairing of independent responses. For example, when we know that we are trying
to choose the same flower, each of us is much more likely to pick “rose” than when we
were simply, outside of a matching context, picking any flower that occurred to us. In other
32 Much of this process happens below the level of consciousness and with a certain automaticity. The “interactive
alignment” of dialogue creates implicit common ground that substitutes for explicit mental modeling (Garrod and
Pickering, 2004).
262
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
words, the shared knowledge that we are trying to meet each other within a puzzle increases
the likelihood that we will find each other.
More importantly, we will utilize all elements of the common ground between us to
guide coordination. Subjects in one coordination game experiment, selecting from displays
of common household objects, made quite different choices if they were trying to match
“conservative Uncle George” rather than “jet-setter Cousin Amy” (Clark et al., 1983).
Involvement in a coordination game, therefore, necessarily commits both partners to the
mental activation, consciously or unconsciously, of their common ground. Hence, both
parties are primed to perceive similarity, and this predisposition will be reinforced by smooth
and successful coordination.
The achievement of successful coordination may temper the conflict in the embedded
game. Camerer and Knez (1997) (Knez and Camerer, 2000) reported that they found a
spillover effect among subjects playing a coordination game first and then a social dilemma:
coordinators were more likely to be cooperators. Utilizing a similar protocol, Ahn et al.
(2001) found that experimental participants who coordinated successfully on an earlier
sequence of eight coordination problems were much more likely to cooperate in a linked
prisoners’ dilemma. The magnitude of this effect is revealed by their reported logit model;
assuming average levels for all other variables, the expected cooperation rate for a player
whose counterpart failed to coordinate on all eight trials is 16 percent, whereas it is 65
percent for a series of successful matches.
Similarly, group identity, often created in the laboratory by a manipulation as simple
as grouping people who pick the same color poker chip or overestimate the number of
dots on a page, has been shown to increase cooperation in mixed motive games (Orbell et
al.). Blue poker chip pickers are, from the present perspective, “successful” coordinators
whose collective sense rests on a single, salient datum of similarity. As mentioned earlier, the
meta-analysis of Sally (1995) has shown that discussion in social dilemmas has robustly and
significantly altered the cooperation rate. The successful coordination of mutual promises
commits both utterers to cooperation. Rather than being cheap, these promises appear to
act as clear “windows” into the “intent” in the conjoined game.
The fact that there is no entirely neutral style means that language is intertwined with the
relationship between the speaker and the listener. Between new acquaintances, language is
one factor that may signal similarity and goodness to the counterpart and can potentially
build a positive relationship. Meaning coordination builds rapport and primes the situation
to be less competitive. There are numerous economic domains in which this is manifest:
in the interview, successful linguistic coordination is a tangible basis for the interviewee’s
sense that things went well or not; on the sales call, vocabulary and indirectness signify
competency and affiliation; in negotiations, more concessions will occur when the audience
is smaller, the setting is less formal, and the speaking is less literal (Drolet and Morris,
2000; Sally, 2000; Nadler, 2004). In a domain directly relevant to us, think of the academic
seminar: to be credible and perceived positively, a speaker has to know how to pronounce
“Amartya” to an audience of economists, “Zajonc” to psychologists, and “Derrida” to deconstructionists. Lastly, meaning may be determined by affiliation: the same phrase, “you
are such a jerk,” is a tease to a friend, an anomaly to an acquaintance, and an insult to an
enemy (Slugoski and Turnbull, 1988; Jorgensen, 1996) (for more examples of the linguistic
effects of relationships, see Sally, 2002, 2003).
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
263
However, the evidence that we share a vocabulary and a manner of speech may be dominated by other facts, such as our differing skin colors, accents, interests, or agendas. Just
as a relationship will not affect players’ strategy choices in a zero-sum game (Sally, 2001),
the closeness signaled by meaning coordination between enemies may be overwhelmed
by other emotions and strategic considerations. It is possible to spit your words into the
face of your enemy: just as other similarities are overlooked in order to maintain psychological distance, so too will the utilization of common ground in forming and interpreting
an utterance be neglected. Moreover, adversaries will proactively structure the communication in order to negate any possible kinship effects. For example, third parties, such as
translators or agents, may be used to transmit all utterances between the two sides. Discussions may occur only in group settings so that every speaker is constrained by a two
audience problem that forces his utterances to implicate to his own side that “we are here”
[U.17], and to the other side that “you are there” [U.18] (Fleming, 1994). Adversaries
may employ the same blatant disregard of convention and common knowledge that was
explored in Garfinkel’s experiments: an uncooperative witness says to a hostile questioner,
“It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” The inability to solve the coordination problem
represented by “is” indicates the level of conflict, distances the players, and shows that
negative speech is not necessarily cheap either. “Sticks and stones can break my bones,
but names can never hurt me;” however, names, curses, and slurs can potentially make any
linked game more competitive. There is no doubt that Ali’s repeated flinging of insults in
the weeks leading to the Thrilla’ in Manila made Frazier fight that much more ferociously
(Hauser, 1991).
This discussion of negative speech is not evidence against the fundamental cooperative
effect of language. Before duelists can shoot at each other, they still have to agree on
a time and place, weaponry, the number of paces, and so on. One reason the principals
send “seconds” to make arrangements is to avoid being exposed to the positive effects of
coordination. In combative discussion, a lie or an insult is worthless if it is not understood
by its target. The act of coordinating on dueling rules or on utterance meaning provides a
push toward cooperation and a context against which any negative speech has additional
implicatures (“screw you and screw Grice’s Cooperative Principle also”). Moreover, in the
long run, it is only the accretion of successful small coordinations, beginning necessarily
with the meaning of words and phrases, that creates enough common ground to make a
negotiated resolution of great conflict possible.
The argument here has been that talk is not cheap, rather it is complicated, creative,
implied, affective and effective, altering speaker and listener and any embedded game.
Some refinements of cheap talk have concentrated on the existence of literal meanings
within the message space. However, once you let in a drip or two of literal meaning, you
cannot prevent all of language from flooding in: poetry, promising, metaphor, irony, insult,
intimacy, and the rest. The search for games that are stable in the face of any utterance,
literal or figurative, is a vain quest. How can one of these utterances not change any game?
F you!
I love you!
Really?!. . .I am from Chicago, too!
Promise me that you will.
u∅ , u∅ , u∅ , u∅ [the silent treatment].
[U.19]
[U.20]
[U.21]
[U.22]
[U.23]
264
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
4. Conclusion
Bobobo.
References
Ahn, T.K., Ostrom, E., Schmidt, D., Shupp, R., Walker, J., 2001. Cooperation in PD games: fear, greed, and history
of play. Public Choice 106, 137–155.
Austin, J.L., 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Bach, K., Harnish, R.M., 1979. Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Baron-Cohen, S., 1995. Mindblindness. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Bavelas, J.B., Coates, L., 1992. How do we account for the mindfulness of face-to-face dialogue? Communication
Monographs 59, 301–305.
Bohnet, I., Frey, B.S., 1999. The sound of silence in prisoners’ dilemma and dictator games. Journal of Economic
Behavior and Organization 38, 43–57.
Britton, B.K., 1978. Lexical ambiguity of words used in English text. Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation 10, 1–7.
Bronowski, J., 1978. The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Camerer, C., Knez, M., 1997. Coordination in organizations: a game-theoretic perspective. In: Shapira, Z. (Ed.),
Organizational Decision Making. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 158–188.
Carpenter, P.A., Miyake, A., Just, M.A., 1995. Language comprehension: sentence and discourse processing.
Annual Review of Psychology 46, 91–120.
Carroll, L., 1871/1992. Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. Dell Publishing, New York, NY.
Carston, R., 1988. Implicature, explicature, and truth-theoretic semantics. In: Kempson, R.M. (Ed.), Mental Representations: The Interface Between Language and Reality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp.
155–181.
Chomsky, N., 1957. Syntactic Structures. Mouton, The Hague.
Clark, H.H., 1992. Arenas of Language Use. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Clark, H.H., 1996. Using Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Clark, H.H., Schreuder, R., Buttrick, S., 1983. Common ground and the understanding of demonstrative reference.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 22, 1–39.
Cooper, R., DeJong, D.V., Forsythe, R., Ross, T.W., 1989. Communication in the battle of the sexes game: Some
experimental results. RAND Journal of Economics 20, 568–587.
Cooper, R., DeJong, D.V., Forsythe, R., Ross, T.W., 1992. Communication in coordination games. Quarterly
Journal of Economics 107, 739–771.
Crawford, V.P., Sobel, J., 1982. Strategic information transmission. Econometrica 50, 1431–1451.
Drew, P., 1995. Interaction sequences and anticipatory interactive planning. In: Goody, E.N. (Ed.), Social Intelligence and Interaction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 111–138.
Drolet, A.L., Morris, M.W., 2000. Rapport in conflict resolution: accounting for how face-to-face contact fosters
mutual cooperation in mixed-motive conflicts. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 36, 26–50.
Farrell, J., 1987. Cheap talk, coordination, and entry. RAND Journal of Economics 18, 34–39.
Farrell, J., 1993. Meaning and credibility in cheap-talk games. Games and Economic Behavior 5, 514–531.
Farrell, J., Gibbons, R., 1989. Cheap talk can matter in bargaining. Journal of Economic Theory 48, 221–237.
Farrell, J., Rabin, M., 1996. Cheap talk. Journal of Economic Perspectives 10, 103–118.
Farrell, J., Saloner, G., 1988. Coordination through committees and markets. RAND Journal of Economics 19,
235–252.
Fauconnier, G., 1997. Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Fleming, J.H., 1994. Multiple-audience problems, tactical communication, and social interaction: a relationalregulation perspective. In: Zanna, M.P. (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 26. Academic
Press, New York, NY, pp. 215–291.
Frankel, R., 1983. From sentence to sequence: understanding the medical encounter through microinteractional
analysis. Discourse Processes 7, 135–170.
Garfinkel, H., 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
265
Garrod, S., Pickering, M.J., 2004. Why is conversation so easy? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8, 8–11.
Gibbs Jr., R.W., 1994. The Poetics of Mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Geanakoplos, J., 1992. Common knowledge. Journal of Economic Perspectives 6, 53–82.
Glucksberg, S., 1991. Beyond literal meanings: the psychology of allusion. Psychological Science 2, 146–152.
Glucksberg, S., McGlone, M.S., 1999. When love is not a journey: what metaphors mean. Journal of Pragmatics
31, 1541–1558.
Goffman, E., 1969. Strategic Interaction. Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press.
Goffman, E., 1976. Replies and responses. Language in Society 5, 257–313.
Goffman, E., 1981. Response cries. Language 54, 787–815.
Goody, E.N., 1995. Introduction: some implications of a social origin of intelligence. In: Goody, E.N. (Ed.), Social
Intelligence and Interaction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 1–33.
Grice, H.P., 1975. Logic and conversation. In: Grice, H.P. (Ed.), Studies in the Way of Words. Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 22–40 (1989).
Grice, H.P., 1989. Utterer’s meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning. In: Grice, H.P. (Ed.), Studies in the
Way of Words. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 117–137.
Habermas, J., 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action. Beacon Press, Boston, MA.
Haliburton, T., 1843. Sam Slick in England; or The Attaché. Routledge, London.
Hauser, T., 1991. Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.
Higgins, E.T., 1992. Achieving ‘shared reality’ in the communication game: a social action that creates meaning.
Journal of Language and Social Psychology 11, 107–131.
Hollander, J., 1971. The Night Mirror. Atheneum Publishers, New York, NY.
Hormann, H., 1983. The calculating listener or how many are einige, mehrere, and ein paar (some, several and
a few). In: Bauerle, R., et al. (Eds.), Meaning, Use, and Interpretation of Language. de Gruyter, Berlin, pp.
221–234.
Jacobs, S., Jackson, S., 1983. Speech act structure in conversation: rational aspects of pragmatic coherence. In:
Craig, R.T., Tracy, K. (Eds.), Form, Structure, and Strategy. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, CA, pp. 47–66.
Johnson, J., 1993. Is talk really cheap? Prompting conversation between critical theory and rational choice. American Political Science Review 87, 74–86.
Jorgensen, J., 1996. The functions of sarcastic irony in speech. Journal of Pragmatics 26, 613–634.
Katz, J.J., 1981. Language and Other Abstract Objects. Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa, NJ.
Kellerman, K., 1992. Communication: inherently strategic and primarily automatic. Communication Monographs
59, 288–300.
Knez, M., Camerer, C., 2000. Increasing cooperation in prisoner’s dilemmas by establishing a precedent of
efficiency in coordination games. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 82, 194–216.
Kucera, H., Francis, W.N., 1967. Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English. Brown University
Press, Providence, RI.
Labov, W., 1973. The boundaries of words and their meanings. In: Bailey, C.N., Shuy, R.W. (Eds.), New Ways of
Analyzing Variation in English. Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC, pp. 340–373.
Leech, G., 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. Longman, London.
Lewis, D.K., 1969. Convention. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Lewis, D.K., 1975. Languages and language. In: Gunderson, K. (Ed.), Language, Mind and Knowledge. University
of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, pp. 3–35.
Lieberman, P., 1984. The Biology and Evolution of Language. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Mackie, G., 1998. All men are liars: is democracy meaningless? In: Elster, J. (Ed.), Deliberative Democracy.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 69–96.
Marschak, J., 1965. Economics of language. Behavioral Science 10, 135–140.
Matthews, S.A., Okuno-Fujiwara, M., Postlewaite, A., 1991. Refining cheap-talk equilibria. Journal of Economic
Theory 55, 247–273.
McCloskey, D.N., 1985. The Rhetoric of Economics. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI.
McKoon, G., Ratcliff, R., 1990. Memory-based language processing: Psycholinguistic research in the 1990s.
Annual Review of Psychology 49, 25–42.
Mead, G.H., 1934. Mind, Self and Society. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Mehta, J., Starmer, C., Sugden, R., 1994. The nature of salience: an experimental investigation of pure coordination
games. American Economic Review 84, 658–673.
266
D. Sally / J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 57 (2005) 245–266
Miller, G.A., 1999. On knowing a word. Annual Review of Psychology 50, 1–19.
Motley, M.T., 1992. Mindfulness in solving communicators’ dilemmas. Communication Monographs 59, 306–
312.
Nadler, J., 2004. Rapport in legal negotiation: how small talk can facilitate e-mail dealmaking. Harvard Negotiation
Law Review 9, 225–253.
Orbell, J.M., Dawes, R.M., van de Kragt, A.J.C., 1988. Explaining discussion-induced cooperation. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 54, 811–819.
Percy, W., 1978. The Message in the Bottle. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, NY.
Perloff, M., 1996. Wittgenstein’s Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary. The University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Rabin, M., 1990. Communication between rational agents. Journal of Economic Theory 51, 144–170.
Sally, D., 1995. Conversation and cooperation in social dilemmas: a meta-analysis of experiments from 1958 to
1992. Rationality and Society 7, 58–92.
Sally, D., 2000. A general theory of sympathy, mind-reading, and social interaction, with an application to the
prisoners’ dilemma. Social Science Information 39, 567–634.
Sally, D., 2001. On sympathy and games. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 44, 1–30.
Sally, D., 2002. “What an ugly baby!” risk dominance, sympathy, and the coordination of meaning. Rationality
and Society 14, 78–108.
Sally, D., 2003. Risky speech: behavioral game theory and pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics 35, 1223–1245.
Sanders, R.E., 1987. Cognitive Foundations of Calculated Speech. State University of New York Press, Albany,
NY.
Schelling, T.C., 1960. The Strategy of Conflict. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Schiemann, J.W., 2000. Meeting halfway between Rochester and Frankfurt: generative salience, focal points, and
strategic interaction. American Journal of Political Science 44, 1–16.
Searle, J.R., 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
UK.
Searle, J.R., 1976. A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society 5, 1–23.
Searle, J.R., 1982. Metaphor. In: Ortony, A. (Ed.), Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
UK, pp. 92–123.
Slugoski, B.R., Turnbull, W., 1988. Cruel to be kind and kind to be cruel: sarcasm, banter and social relations.
Journal of Language and Social Psychology 7, 101–121.
Sperber, D., Wilson, D., 1995. Relevance, second ed. Blackwell, Oxford, UK.
Stalnaker, R.C., 1970. Pragmatics. Synthese 22, 272–289.
Stein, G., 1957. Lectures in America. Beacon Press, Boston, MA.
Valley, K.L., Moag, J., Bazerman, M.H., 1998. “A matter of trust”: effects of communication on the efficiency and
distribution of outcomes. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 34, 211–238.
Wärneryd, K., 1990. Conventions: an evolutionary approach. Constitutional Political Economy 1, 83–107.
Wittgenstein, L., 1958. Philosophical Investigations. Tr. Anscombe, G.E.M. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
Zeitlyn, D., 1995. Divination as dialogue: negotiation of meaning with random responses. In: Goody, E.N. (Ed.),
Social Intelligence and Interaction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 189–205.