It is something that it would be wiser to discuss with those for whom I would infer different motives and where I would predict different usages of any supplied text.
Producing texts for social goal purposes is called signalling (usually, but depends to what you’re trying to do).
When I engage my Hansonian reasoning I can describe everything humans do in terms of their signalling implications. Yet to describe things as just signalling is to discard rather a lot of information. Some more specific goals that people could have in a given argument include:
Learning information from the other.
Understanding why the other believes the way they do.
Tracing the precise nature of disagreement.
Persuading the other.
Providing information to the other.
Combining your thinking capabilities with another so as to better explore the relevant issues and arrive at a better solution than either could alone.
Persuade the audience.
Educate the audience.
Mitigate the damage that the other has done through advocating incorrect or undesired knowledge or political opinions.
Entertain others or yourself.
Make oneself look impressive to the audience.
Alter the feelings that the other has towards you in a positive direction.
Practice one’s skills at doing any of the above.
Demonstrate one’s ability to do any of the above and thereby gain indirect benefit.
Some of those can be better described as ‘signalling’ than others.
Rule one: Have a social goal in any given conversation. It needn’t be a fixed goal but as long as there actually is one the rest is easy.
Hmm. What’s your social goal here? Producing texts for social goal purposes is called signalling (usually, but depends to what you’re trying to do).
It is something that it would be wiser to discuss with those for whom I would infer different motives and where I would predict different usages of any supplied text.
When I engage my Hansonian reasoning I can describe everything humans do in terms of their signalling implications. Yet to describe things as just signalling is to discard rather a lot of information. Some more specific goals that people could have in a given argument include:
Learning information from the other.
Understanding why the other believes the way they do.
Tracing the precise nature of disagreement.
Persuading the other.
Providing information to the other.
Combining your thinking capabilities with another so as to better explore the relevant issues and arrive at a better solution than either could alone.
Persuade the audience.
Educate the audience.
Mitigate the damage that the other has done through advocating incorrect or undesired knowledge or political opinions.
Entertain others or yourself.
Make oneself look impressive to the audience.
Alter the feelings that the other has towards you in a positive direction.
Practice one’s skills at doing any of the above.
Demonstrate one’s ability to do any of the above and thereby gain indirect benefit.
Some of those can be better described as ‘signalling’ than others.