Every remark made by a speaker contains two messages for the listener: text and subtext. The text says, “Here’s a new piece of information,” while the subtext says, “By the way, I’m the kind of person who knows such things.” Sometimes the text is more important than the subtext, as when a friend gives you a valuable stock tip.22 But frequently, it’s the other way around. When you’re interviewing someone for a job, for example, you aren’t trying to learn new domain knowledge from the job applicant, but you might discuss a topic in order to gauge the applicant as a potential coworker. You want
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