Autism and Conversational Implicature:

Know What I Mean By What is Not Said

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Introduction

In the realm of being autistic one of the classic tell-tale traits is taking literally what is said in conversation. So much so that being literal is almost expected, a stereotype of an autistic person. Yet I have found in conversations with others often the problem of communication is not what is said, but what is not said. The meaning of the speaker is not in the utterance of words thus there is implicature, something implicit.

Conversational Implicature

This is termed "conversational implicature" and was a concept developed by philosopher H.P. Grice. The idea is that in conversation, two persons are cooperating--sharing relevant information, and then there exist some rules or guidelines for conversation. Break a rule, and then you can create a communication difficulty, a barrier, or an impediment to cooperation. Most often rules are not broken, but "flouted" for deliberate communication implicitly.

Often this communication is frustrating (at least for me as an autistic/aspie person) in that it is about avoidance of information. Consider a conversation with a friend:

William: "What did you think of the poem I read at the Christmas Party?"

Friend: "It was very well-constructed."

The implicature is that while well-constructed, other attributes such as length, style, rhyme, and so forth are avoided. The avoidance creates implicit meaning, and the implicit implicature is negative.

I am direct, and when asked I try to answer a question or inquiry accurately, and relevantly--I am honest in my response. One important aspect is that I can explain "Why?" and not just state a negative as "It sucks."

Implicature Requires Knowing the Person

The difficulty I have had is that until I know someone, their idiosyncrasies, communication style, and their nature as a person, conversational implicature I perceive as evasion, and not answering the question asked.

For example, whenever I cook, one person I know will always answer, when I ask how they liked the meal with, "It was good." I get the same answer every time, yet I know this person so it is their way of saying they liked it.

Yet, it takes time, and interaction to know someone. Thus for small talk and chit-chat, I find I have to go to the mindless generalities and pleasantries. Sometimes one-word responses such as "Okay." "Sure." and so forth. Such conversations are like a rusty nail across an old blackboard...I have to tolerate the situation, but I am gritting my teeth and my ears are ready to bleed.

Answering the Wrong Question

One area in communication I have found conversational implicature is in the workplace. Not just in interviews (and I have written an essay and a book about this...) but sometimes in simple communications. For example, I reached out with written communication to a former manager...

William: Hello, manager, can I use you as a job reference?

Manager: I will keep you in mind for any open positions.

Knowing conversational implicature, that is an implicit no, but the manager has "plausible deniability" in stating he never said that. So total CYA (Cover Your Arse) in that there is no explicit answer to the question.

Conversational Implicature in Work Tasks

Conversational implicature often comes up in expectations either in time to completion or methodology, how to do a task. Often this is cause-effect implicit as the how or methodology is implied, and then the time to completion is also dependent on the methodology.

Once I worked at a Fortune 50 company, early in the start of my career, and I was tasked with changing the style of identifiers, case style and use of underscores/dashes, and also correcting misspellings and choice of words.

Manager: "I want you to change the identifiers in the project files to the new standard."

William: "Okay. I'll get on it."

The implicature was that the methodology and the timing were not specified. Just "change the identifiers" which does not state how, and when the task is to be done.

For example, I found the word "temp" used, and it was not a temporary variable, but a temperature value. So I converted the identifier "temp" to "tmprtr_in_deg" to be more explicit. The manager who gave me this task wanted me to do it for many source code files.

So I wrote a tool that would do this, and also cross-check with a dictionary file so that a variable like "temp" that is a word would be flagged and reported.

After a few days, the manager very angrily told me how he would have done it, using vi and its regex, or grep a directory, and then manually change the identifier. A tool to do this was...well a waste of time. Yet the conversational implicature was to have it done in a day. The real conversational implicature is since this was not a debugging code fix, a new feature, it was a trivial and simple thing that as the newbie would help me to "learn" the source code.

Calling Out Conversational Implicature

When I call out a non-answer that is conversational implicature, I get an answer of a question to a question. Usually, "What do you want me to say?" This is...conversational implicature in that it implies wanting a specific response, but misses the point to simply answer.

In the science fiction television series "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" there was a character, Odo, who is a shapeshifter, and an outsider to all the different species around. Once Odo stated that communication was with so many words that had no meaning that solids often would say nothing. That is how I relate and perceive conversational implicature--saying nothing and then implying something, and then asking what is to be said.

Simple: Answer the question.

Conversations with an Agenda

I once had a "standing call" on video chat with fellow neurodivergent colleagues at a tech company. Unfortunately, one of them had an agenda. I like to write essays, and books, speak at webinars, participate in webinars, and share articles.

This person only did their job, which is fine. Yet this person from some deep-rooted psychological dysfunction of insecurity likes to bandy words, play one upmanship, and use conversational implicature. The end was to always insult, denigrate, and put me down with their conversation.

I ended all contact with this toxic person (and worse they claimed they were neurodivergent...rode the coattails of an autism hiring program to get a job...) and yet they had that deniability. Yet life is too short and time too precious to have someone use conversation, and conversational implicature for such toxic verbalizing.

There is only one way to argue with a fuckwit—don't. This person registered a 9.98 on the total fuckwit scale.

Again, conversational implicature, not saying but using implication—and deliberately. This person had their sixty-something years of life to learn to weaponize conversation and conversational implicature. Then able to deny having said that explicitly. Great way to dominate a conversation and win arguments, but pointless.

Over Explaining Something—Grice's Cooperation to the Extreme

One aspect of conversational implicature is the opposite—conversation explicature, or "too much information" or TMI. Frequently an autistic person will fill in the details, perhaps too much detail, but that is to avoid anything implicit. An autistic person is literal, not just in the meaning of words, but also in giving and sharing information.

Hence filling in the backstory, which is often called "over-sharing" when it crosses some social or cultural boundary. Yet this is to avoid any implicit implicature and to be direct with information. Such over-information usually is from open-ended questions, inquiries that provide no context or bounds to the information desired. While this is not a conscious, deliberate decision, the nuances of conversational implicature create the need to explain.

Sounds of Silence

I have often been rebuked by what I consider the ultimate conversational implicature—silence, or more simply no response. I have had more than my share of colleagues, and friends that rebuke me for taking their silence as a problem, or having an issue with me.

Yet when I communicate and have no response–not ever, I take it as a "go away." or in modern colloquial terminology, ghosting. But without communication, lack of communication can mean anything, and then the over-analyzing, trying to understand, and deciphering starts...and worse, with colleagues and friends, I am open about my autism, and my neurodiversity.

A simple: "Busy, will get back to you." would be enough. Yet silence is again, often used in a weaponized, toxic fashion. I have learned to simply wait, and after a certain time if I know the person, simply give up, that person is gone, possibly forever.

But it is galling how many find the anxiety, concern, and worry of non-response, silence is "over-thinking" or "over-analyzing" but it is the ultimate meaning with nothing--conversational implicature.

Negative Consequences from Implicature

Often from my perception, reading, and experience with conversation implicature is used to imply without saying some negative consequence or a threat. Only in retrospect have I realized the situations and scenarios where there was an implied threat or consequence. Once when I was focused on sending email updates to another team, apparently this was less important than another work task. An illustrative example:

Coworker: "Have you checked in those code changes?

William: "I'm finishing up my update on changes to team XYZ."

Coworker: "HR might be contacting you soon..."

I (at the time) was perplexed and puzzled with this referring to HR. Now I realize that at this company, HR was used by managers, and team leads, to "enforce" things, they were the company's "purification squad" as it were. The coworker was either threatening me or warning me with conversational implicature that HR would reach out and put me on corrective action, or my failure to do my job duties would be added to my "performance review"...etc.

I was glad when I left this toxic company, and when recruiters reached out, I added them to my spam list. Again, only in hindsight do I now understand the implicature of that conversation. One impact is that it was later that the emotion, the fear, panic, hit me after I had finally grasped this intention by implicature.

Less Conversational Implicature Better Communication

Thus in conversation, the less conversational implicature, the better. For the cooperation principle of Grice, for effective communication be direct, and explicit.

Otherwise, I know I and many other friends, colleagues, associates, and other autistic persons will spend more time trying to decipher and analyze what is missing, and what is meant. And in the process waste time, energy, and worst of all--create anxiety and get over-stimmed in the process.

Autism literalness is a stereotypical trait, yet conversational dynamics are more complex. Conversational implicature is one of those aspects in verbal (and often in written communication) where meaning is more by lack of information than by the words spoken or written. There is no literalness in things not explicitly stated.

I have had enough experience with conversational implicature to grasp what is communicated--mostly but not always. But this is a learning process by trial and error, only learning when a miscommunication breaks the implicit rule and the implied information. This is a painful, disillusioning process--to learn by error, mistake, and failure. Finding the boundaries of an invisible wall by the pain of hitting the wall, and then the wall moves so is an invisible barrier.

The simplest of things is to communicate and communicate that you cannot communicate. Share information and follow Grice's principle of cooperation to communicate. Simply put, communicate what you are communicating, or simply state communication is to follow later on at some other time.

Reading and discerning from what is _not_ communicated is impossible, and autistic persons do not have the psychic ability of telepathy or clairvoyance. I wish I did have those psychic abilities, in that I could then fully understand and know, and not keep hitting that invisible wall in communication. My head already aches and hurts enough...

References

• Grice, H. P. Logic and Conversation, Cole & Morgan 1975. https://courses.media.mit.edu/2004spring/mas966/Grice% 20Logic%20and%20Conversation.pdf, Accessed December 19, 2023.

• Nordquist, Richard. “Conversational Implicature Definition and Examples,” https://www.thoughtco.com/conversational-implicature-spe ech-acts-1689922, Accessed September 24, 2023

• Scott, Tom. “The Hidden Rules of Conversation,” Youtube!, 2020, Accessed December 19 2023.

Copyright & License

This work is copyright © 2023 by William F. Gilreath. All rights reserved.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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