Third, people perceive language as a digital medium, which allows a sentence to generate common knowledge, to propagate a message with high fidelity, and to serve as a reference point in coordination games. The emotional costs of a mismatch in the assumed relationship type can create a need for plausible deniability and, thereby, select for indirectness even when there are no tangible costs.
Second, language has two functions: to convey information and to negotiate the type of relationship holding between speaker and hearer (in particular, dominance, communality, or reciprocity). This intuition is supported by a game-theoretic model that predicts the costs and benefits to a speaker of direct and indirect requests. First, indirect requests allow for plausible deniability, in which a cooperative listener can accept the request, but an uncooperative one cannot react adversarially to it. We propose a three-part theory of indirect speech, based on the idea that human communication involves a mixture of cooperation and conflict. Examples include sexual come-ons, veiled threats, polite requests, and concealed bribes. When people speak, they often insinuate their intent indirectly rather than stating it as a bald proposition.
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