The study of indirect forms of communication has made great advances in recent decades. Once trashed into the “pragmatic wastebasket” (Bar-Hillel 1971) as a mere byproduct of direct communication that refuses rigorous investigation, indirect communication is now being examined with a wealth of theoretical notions and models such as various kinds of presuppositions and implicatures, elaborate views of the common ground and the conversational score, and different approaches such as formal and experimental pragmatics. So far, however, the focus has been on specific theoretical questions regarding a narrow set of cases. The richness of ways in which we communicate indirectly has not been fully acknowledged and the connection to practical issues, some of which of clear moral concern, is underexplored.

This project sets out to fill this lacuna. It aims to provide a holistic account of the different forms of indirect communication, offering an in-depth analysis both of the reasons that drive, and the moral challenges caused, by the use and abuse of indirect communication. Special emphasis will be given to the workings of evaluatively and normatively charged expressions, where theoretical and practical questions most clearly interact.