Why “What do you mean?” is cognitive infrastructure hiding in plain sight
This isn’t the first time I’ve had this conversation, but in August 2007, inside a dimly lit tent during a military training exercise, a group of Marines and Sailors drifted from logistics into something heavier: obedience, moral certainty, and the old line, I’m just following orders.
My Lai came up. The Holocaust came up. One Marine said, with total conviction, that he would never harm civilians. Another admitted he wasn’t so sure, boot camp and service conditions you in ways you don’t fully see.
It was turning into a values contest. Identity. Honor. Who’s the “good” Marine.
Then someone asked a simple question: “What do you mean by ‘conditioning’?”
And the room changed.
The debate stopped being a moral performance and became an inquiry into a mechanism, how training shapes behavior, how obedience gets built, how a human being can be guided into actions they would swear, in calmer conditions, they’d never take. One clarification question changed the level of analysis. We moved the conversation from posturing to reasoning.
That moment is this series in miniature.
Because here’s the thing most people miss: meaning isn’t an object that travels from one mind to another. Meaning is negotiated in real time. Without a repair move, people can use the same moral vocabulary while running completely different internal models.
So when I say this series is about “What do you mean?” I’m not talking about manners; rather, I’m talking about a tool that keeps humans from talking past each other, at work, at home, online, and in public life.
Part 1 is the foundation. To see why this question works, we need a firm grasp of three ideas: pragmatics, speech acts, and implicature.
Quick orientation on what you’ll walk away with from this series:
A taxonomy of clarification targets (definition, scope, evidence, mechanism, implication, values, presuppositions, and more).
A set of micro-protocols (short scripts) for meetings, classrooms, online chats, and high-stakes conversations.
A repeatable habit for media literacy: slowing down meaning before the narrative takes over.
Each post ends with a field test, because this work is meant to be used.
1) Pragmatics: meaning in use
Most people were taught that language is basically a labeling system: words point at things, definitions settle disputes, and the dictionary is the referee.
Pragmatics comes in and says: watch what happens when people actually talk. Watch what the words do in context: who’s speaking, to whom, with what history, under what pressure, toward what goal. Pragmatics is the study of meaning as it’s used and inferred in real situations, not just encoded in sentences.
A phrase like “That’s interesting” can be sincere curiosity, a warning shot, or a polite exit ramp. A question like “Are you done?” can be a request for information, or a threat in business casual.
Pragmatics is why “What do you mean?” is a family of questions aimed at different failure points: definition, scope, reference, implication, evidence, mechanism, and more.
Later in this series, I’ll name those targets and give you a menu you can use in minutes.
2) Speech acts: words are actions
Speech act theory gives you a clean lens: every utterance has at least three layers.
Locution: the words spoken
Illocution: the act performed by saying them (requesting, warning, accusing, inviting, promising)
Perlocution: the effect it has (calming, provoking, motivating, humiliating)
We’re attuned in everyday conversation not primarily to sentences as strings of words, but to the acts those sentences perform.
This is why so many arguments feel “irrational.” People are often fighting over illocution, not content.
Think about how many conflicts start here:
“I’m just saying…” (The listener hears an accusation.)
“Relax, it was a joke.” (The listener hears contempt.)
“I’m asking a question.” (The listener hears cross-examination.)
Your nervous system is reacting to what you think the other person is doing to you with their words.
A sharp version of “What do you mean?” targets that layer directly:
“Are you asking me to fix this, or are you venting?”
The goal is conflict prevention and not pedantry.
In status-heavy settings, clarification can sound like a challenge: Are you unclear? Are you wrong? Are you being evasive? The craft is asking in a way that protects dignity while still demanding precision.
3) Implicature: the unsaid that runs the show
Now we get to the part that drives modern discourse insane: implicature, meaning that is implied rather than stated.
Grice’s core insight was simple: in conversation, we assume cooperation. We assume people are trying to be understood. So when a statement seems incomplete, we infer what “must” be meant. That inference is often where fights begin.
Example:
Person A: “The budget is tight.”
Person B hears: “So you want to cut the project.”
Person A hears the pushback as: “You’re refusing reality.”
Implicature is where someone can signal without owning the claim. It’s also where media manipulation thrives: scope creep (“everyone knows…”), presuppositions hidden inside questions (“why are they lying?”), insinuations that travel faster than evidence.
A media-literate “What do you mean?” interrogates the implied payload:
“When you say everyone, who exactly?”
“What would have to be true for that claim to hold?”
“Are you implying X, or am I reading that into it?”
This is the difference between getting captured by a narrative and forcing a claim to show its work.
4) Why this matters in cognitive science
If pragmatics explains why misunderstanding happens, cognitive science explains why we’re so confident while misunderstanding each other.
Two biases matter here.
The illusion of transparency
We routinely overestimate how visible our intent is to others, how much our internal context “comes through.” Gilovich, Savitsky, and Medvec call this the illusion of transparency: we assume people can read our internal states far better than they can.
That’s why speakers feel misunderstood, and listeners feel blamed for “not getting it.”
The illusion of explanatory depth
We also overestimate how well we understand mechanisms. Rozenblit and Keil showed that people often feel they understand causally complex systems in much greater depth than they actually do—until they’re asked to explain how the thing works step by step. Confidence collapses on contact with mechanism.
This is where “What do you mean?” turns into an intellectual tool.
When you ask for the mechanism (How, specifically, does X lead to Y?), you’re clarifying and stress-testing certainty.
Fernbach and colleagues found that when people are asked to explain how political policies work, perceived understanding drops, and extreme attitudes often soften. Mechanism questions induce a kind of intellectual humility.
That matters for media literacy because modern platforms reward the opposite: hot takes, compressed claims, identity signaling, speed, and “I won.”
“What do you mean?” is a speed bump for the nervous system and a stress test for the claim.
5) Clarification is interaction design
A good clarification question is accurate, and it’s hearable. It reduces threat, signals goodwill, and then asks for precision.
Here are three micro-protocols I use (and teach) because they work across domains:
Workplace precision (A/B menu): “I want to execute this cleanly. When you say X, do you mean A or B?”
Heated debate (mechanism check): “Walk me through the mechanism. How, specifically, does X lead to Y?”
Crucial conversation (fact vs. story): “I noticed [observable fact]. I’m telling myself a story that it means [interpretation]. Is that what you meant?”
Notice the pattern: you’re not starting with a verdict. You’re starting with a request for meaning that keeps both people in the conversation.
This is where this series becomes a toolkit.
Over the next few posts, you’ll get two things you can keep on your desk:
A taxonomy of clarification targets (definition, scope, mechanism, implication, evidence, values, presuppositions, and more).
A set of protocols, short scripts for meetings, classrooms, online heat, and high-stakes conversations.
Careful promise: when the series is complete, I’ll compile the taxonomy + protocols into a single, printable field guide for readers who want the whole kit in one place.
Each part will end with a field test. This is meant to be usable and, with personal effort, understood.
6) Preview: repair—the human system for fixing understanding mid-stream
So far we’ve been in architecture: how meaning gets built (and how it breaks) through action, implication, and context.
Next, we go one level deeper into repair.
Conversation analysts noticed something most of us ignore: everyday talk has a built-in “quality control” system. Humans constantly test, correct, and renegotiate understanding turn by turn. When something goes off, we don’t abandon conversation; we need to repair it.
Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks famously described repair as addressing problems of “speaking, hearing, and understanding,” and they documented a strong preference for self-correction—people typically try to fix their own talk once a problem is flagged.
“What do you mean?” is one of the cleanest forms of other-initiated repair: a signal that the problem is meaning and not how loud it was said.
Next week: repair—what conversation analysts learned from how humans fix understanding mid-stream. We’ll look at why repair is structured the way it is, why conversation prefers self-correction, and how those patterns give us a practical template for clarification that works in real life.
That’ll be my bridge for you to “carry it into your week” posts that will anchor the series: the taxonomy and the protocols.
Field test (5 minutes)
This week, replace one rebuttal with one clarification. Ask exactly what you’re uncertain about (definition, scope, evidence, mechanism, or implication) and watch what happens to the temperature of the conversation.
If you try it, tell me what changed.
This is a great practice in inter-subjectivity. To see what assumptions and perspectives that both "you" and "I" are each captive to- and that provides the groundwork for making those things 'object'.
And I think some gentleness in words when we want to ask for further clarification is valuable too. Even with the right intent, the "what do you mean" questions can often be taken as an attack on identity, especially when we are unknowingly coupled with our thoughts and ideologies.
Thanks for writing this, such an important reframing.