Cognitive features of indirect speech acts

The offer of some cake can be declined by saying “I am on a diet” – an indirect reply. Here, we asked whether certain well-established psychological and conceptual features are linked to the (in)directness speech acts issue unexplored so far. Subjects rated direct performed same critical linguistic forms in different dialogic contexts. We find that replies were understood with less certainty, predictable by, coherent semantically similar their context question. These effects smaller when matched for type which they used, compared not act matched. Crucially, all measured cognitive dimensions strongly associated each other. findings suggest indirectness goes hand-in-hand set features, should taken into account interpreting experimental findings, including neuroimaging studies indirectness.