A Game Theoretical Approach To Communication

Language in communication serves to transmit information and regulate interpersonal relationship. Producing an utterance on any occasion is an act that integrates these two roles. To make sense of an utterance, it is necessary to combine the cognitive mechanism at the micro level and the social-cultural system at the macro level. Since brain and society are complex systems, using language is also a complex process. So the reductionism-based meaning theories cannot present any mechanism of meaning generation in communication. The present pragmatic theories, including Cooperative Principle-based classic pragmatics, neo-Gricean pragmatics, and the cognitive science-based Relevance Theory on the one hand, and the social communication protocol-based theories like Speech Act theory, Politeness- and face-based theories on the other, fail to capture this point in their respective theory construction. These theories adopt the Cartesian paradigm, approaching the pragmatic phenomena from a local perspective. Consequently, they cannot explain the use of language and the relevant phenomena that are fundamentally complex in nature. Saying is a collaborative act; it also shares some features with other ordinary human behaviors. In communication, people have to balance themselves in the safety zone defined by observing the linguistic convention and challenging the linguistic convention, while reconciling the contradiction between the minimization of formal composition and maximization of information. The zone, a topological structure, is communicators'strategy space. It is assumed it is necessary to have a uniform theoretical framework, integrating the two research modes (cognition-based mode and the culture-based mode), to provide for an overall description and explanation of pragmatic phenomena.Cognitive pragmatics applies the tools provided by cognitive linguistics to pragmatics, and investigates the mechanism underlying language use from a cognitive perspective. Since cognitive linguistics is a usage-based interdiscipline, it has three-fold implication in pragmatic research: (i) Using language is a collective activity and thus involves strategy selection. (ii) The knowledge of using language is accumulated through embodied interaction with the world. (iii) Using language is an individual activity in terms of biology, but it is primarily a social activity in terms of sociology. So all the linguistic acts are exposed to cultural protocols of the language community to which the communicator belongs. (iv) Cognitive activity is open and dynamic, so is using language. The interpretation of an utterance in communication context should take into account the emergent nature of meaning generation.In a game-theoretical cognitive pragmatic framework, using language demonstrates features of activity-type relatedness. Activity types are families of resemblance, and interpreting an utterance is to identify the activity type on the basis of which the utterance is produced. When communicators exploit the contextualization cues to update their beliefs, an activity type will emerge from the self-organizing process in the brain. The activity types are contingent, but normally they are predictable because in order to significantly reduce complexity in updating beliefs, communicators tend to'hold true'what is said. Additionally, they may expect the activity type involved in virtue of their empathetic capacity.Communicators in communicative games are'economy man'with bounded rationality, whose choice of linguistic act is modified by moral force to the extent that they sacrifice part of their own interest to complete communication game. Communication game is the extension of survival game in cultural society where spiritual survival is no less important than physical survival; however, the ethical code of conduct does not expel egoism but only to suppress it in the unconsciousness. The egoism-motivated optimization governs the overall process of their interaction with the outside world, using language is not exception. To optimize an act is to produce most possible or actual benefit by taking the act. Since communicators prefer the act that produces the most benefit, the key to explaining a linguistic act is to find out the structure of one's preferences, viz., to understand the reason that communicator selects one utterance instead of another is to show how the utterance selected produces the best utility. The theory is formulated by dividing the utility of a linguistic act into that of truthfulness, which derives from the propositional content, and that of appropriateness, which derives from the regulatory content. Given this formulation, the communicator's preference over language acts can be accounted for by analyzing the sources of their compound utility. On the ground of the above account, a cognitive pragmatic theoretical framework combined with game theory is proposed as follows:The general principle: Communicators attempt to maximize their utility in communication gamesMaxim 1: Communicators pursue truthfulness unless reasonably indicatedMaxim 2: Communicators pursue appropriateness unless reasonably indicatedConstraint condition: The utterance made is the optimal act producing maximal utilityCharity condition: Communicators are capable of empathetic thinkingThe general principle is not meant to guide communicators'act, rather it underlies the entire process of communication. It is universal. The two maxims relate to the propositional information and the functional information of an utterance. Obviously, they respectively correspond to the cognitive mode (maxim 1) and the social-cultural mode of pragmatic research (maxim 2). These two modes are bound by the optimal thought and optimal act that underlies each and every act of using language and is characterized by the game theory. The default presumption in interpreting an utterance is to take a'hold-true'attitude to what is said, i.e., the linguistic act produced is assumed to be the strategy that produces the best utility (constraint condition). The communicators'preference over the strategies is available to each other due to the fact that they are capable of empathetic thinking (charity condition).