Communicating quantities: a review of psycholinguistic evidence of how expressions determine perspectives
The way in which information about proportions, amounts, frequencies, probabilities, degrees of confidence, and risk is portrayed in natural language is not neutral, but reflects presuppositions and assumed norms. In this paper we present a review of evidence in support of this position. We show tha...
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Published in | Applied cognitive psychology Vol. 14; no. 3; pp. 237 - 255 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Chichester, UK
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
01.05.2000
Wiley |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The way in which information about proportions, amounts, frequencies, probabilities, degrees of confidence, and risk is portrayed in natural language is not neutral, but reflects presuppositions and assumed norms. In this paper we present a review of evidence in support of this position. We show that the choice of expressions for communication depends in a systematic way on the kinds of inferences communicators draw. We go on to discuss the consequences of this for attribution phenomena, aspects of reasoning, the portrayal of uncertainty, and responses to questionnaires. We also suggest that communicator preferences for using language rather than numbers may have to do with human reasoning being argument‐based, rather than with a preference for vagueness, as has been commonly claimed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
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Bibliography: | istex:D0F44DEBC76AF467C7C31EA80BAB8FB20A77C6E0 British Academy ark:/67375/WNG-C3LS5TL2-X ESRC ArticleID:ACP641 ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 |
ISSN: | 0888-4080 1099-0720 |
DOI: | 10.1002/(SICI)1099-0720(200005/06)14:3<237::AID-ACP641>3.0.CO;2-R |