are many utterances that we use that are quite ambiguous when you think about them, such as “Please leave me alone.” This can mean “I’m busy,” or alternatively, “I’m mad at you.” A simple question like “How’s the salad?” could mean “Isn’t the salad terrible?” or “Why aren’t you saying anything nice about the salad I made?” Or, you could be literally asking how good or bad the salad is. And unlike with sarcasm, there really isn’t an agreed-upon intonation for each of those different meanings. In the study,
I love this chapter. Linguistics!
