Alternatively, I can think of two other variations.
Talk is cheap, but not free in some cases. As a subset of this, you can signal for the benefit of one audience (possibly a minority of the overall population, or your own ingroup, by saying things that will meet with moderate or minor social disapproval from the rest of the population
People sometimes expect costs to exist even when they don’t.
I was thinking more of people who make boasts that 99% of the audience would consider ridiculous. If they are already low status, the cost is low and they can still get an RoI on the 1%.
To me, signalling through cheap talk is like spam: it rarely works, but the costs are low and there’s a lot of it about.
Alternatively, I can think of two other variations.
Talk is cheap, but not free in some cases. As a subset of this, you can signal for the benefit of one audience (possibly a minority of the overall population, or your own ingroup, by saying things that will meet with moderate or minor social disapproval from the rest of the population
People sometimes expect costs to exist even when they don’t.
I was thinking more of people who make boasts that 99% of the audience would consider ridiculous. If they are already low status, the cost is low and they can still get an RoI on the 1%.