Deliberate Misinterpretation from the Perspective of Socio-Cognitive Pragmatics

The paper investigates deliberate misinterpretation in conversational interaction, arguing that not all communication is smooth or fully cooperative. Beyond accidental misunderstanding, the authors focus on cases where the hearer intentionally diverges from the speaker’s intended meaning after first recognizing it, in order to achieve communicative goals (often humor). Drawing on Shen’s (2004) criteria—hearer’s intention, communicative strategy, and mismatch with the speaker’s meaning—the study targets scripted dialogues in the sitcom Friends to illuminate mechanisms visible in everyday talk. Adopting the socio-cognitive approach (SCA), which integrates cooperation and egocentrism and treats speaker and hearer as a dialogical whole, the authors examine how potential ambiguity, frame selection, and hearer egocentrism enable deliberate misinterpretation and its communicative value for humor and interactional management.

Prior work on misunderstanding and deliberate misinterpretation spans discoursal origins (e.g., Schegloff), contextual origins (e.g., Richard; Taylor), psychological origins (e.g., Sperber & Wilson; Keysar), and social origins (e.g., Gumperz; Tannen). Scholars have treated deliberate misinterpretation as a communicative strategy: Fisher’s “deliberate non-understanding” and Dascal’s distinction between standard (involuntary) and non-standard (voluntary, strategic) misunderstanding highlight intentional uses to manage relationships or protect oneself. The field still lacks sufficient dedicated data, a comprehensive framework for motivation and mechanisms, and broader theoretical application—gaps this study addresses using SCA and related theories.

Data source: Dialogues from the American sitcom Friends (video and transcripts). Cases were identified and marked when they met Shen’s (2004) three features of deliberate misinterpretation: (1) hearer’s intention, (2) hearer’s communicative strategy, and (3) mismatch between hearer’s interpretation and the speaker’s original meaning. Approach: Both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Occurrences of each type were counted and examined. Classification: Guided by SCA’s core vs emergent common ground and Relevance Theory distinctions. - Semantic meaning (core common ground): - Propositions: especially polysemy and homonymy. - Implicit meanings: indirect utterances, conversational implicature, figurative language (e.g., hyperbole). - Deictic expressions (emergent common ground): divided into discourse deixis, person deixis, and place deixis. Analytical framework: Socio-cognitive approach (SCA) integrates cooperative and egocentric processes, emphasizing the interplay between intention, attention, pre-individual contexts, and common ground. Egocentrism is treated as a cognitive tendency that can be deliberately leveraged by the hearer. Relevance Theory’s ostensive–inferential model accounts for how the speaker’s ostension targets anticipated common ground, while the hearer may exploit potential ambiguity to diverge. Frame Semantics informs how alternative frames (e.g., different senses of “doctor”) are recruited for reinterpretation. Mechanism steps: initial consensus/common ground is reached; hearer’s egocentrism (to achieve goals such as humor) prompts deliberate divergence; success requires the speaker’s utterance to be potentially ambiguous.

- Total cases analyzed: 259. - Distribution by category: - Deliberate misinterpretation of propositions: 106 total - Polysemy: 72 - Homophony: 16 - Others: 18 - Deliberate misinterpretation of implicit meaning: 89 total - Deliberate misinterpretation of deictic expressions: 64 total - Discourse deixis: 42 - Person deixis: 16 - Place deixis: 6 - Mechanism: Deliberate misinterpretation depends on (a) the speaker’s utterance having potential ambiguity (e.g., polysemy, homophony, indirectness, figurative language, deixis) and (b) the hearer’s deliberate, egocentric divergence after recognizing the intended meaning. - Role of egocentrism: Hearer egocentrism is consciously manifested to achieve communicative goals (notably humor), often by reframing or recontextualizing the utterance. - Communicative impact: Rather than causing breakdown, deliberate misinterpretation often facilitates interaction, eases tension, and helps achieve interactional goals (e.g., humor, facework). - Patterning: Semantic-meaning-based cases (especially polysemy) are most frequent; deictic-based cases are rarer, with discourse deixis more common than person or place deixis.

The findings support the research aim by showing that deliberate misinterpretation arises from the interplay between speaker-provided ostension/common ground and hearer-driven egocentric strategies that exploit ambiguity. Within SCA, communication is co-constructed: while the speaker signals intended common ground, the hearer can intentionally re-interpret via alternative meanings, frames, or deictic references to achieve goals such as humor or relational management. This demonstrates that deliberate divergence can positively contribute to interactional flow and does not necessarily constitute communicative failure. The prominence of polysemy-driven cases underscores how core common ground (lexical-semantic knowledge) provides fertile ground for deliberate reinterpretation, while deictic reinterpretations reflect context-sensitive, emergent common ground manipulations. Overall, the results highlight the value of integrating cognitive (egocentrism, frames, inferencing) and pragmatic (common ground, cooperation) perspectives to account for strategic misinterpretation in everyday-like dialogue.

The study advances a socio-cognitive account of deliberate misinterpretation, identifying two indispensable components: (1) hearer egocentrism that motivates goal-oriented divergence and (2) the speaker’s utterance possessing potential ambiguity. Typically, interlocutors first reach consensus on intended meaning, after which the hearer deliberately diverges to fulfill communicative goals (often humor), producing a constructive, rather than disruptive, effect on interaction. By combining SCA with Relevance Theory and Frame Semantics, the paper offers a dialogical framework that integrates speaker and hearer perspectives and explains the reflective inferencing involved in deliberate misinterpretation. The authors conclude that more systematic research on this phenomenon is needed, with theoretical grounding and broader data, and suggest that leveraging ambiguity can be a practical conversational strategy in daily communication to manage face and achieve interactional aims.

The study analyzes scripted, fictional conversations from the sitcom Friends, which differ from natural conversation; deictic-based examples are relatively rare; the broader research area has noted insufficient data and an incomplete systematic framework in prior work.