Question Marks and Crosswords

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the use of the “?” symbol in New York Times crosswords. If you’re a frequent puzzler, you’re probably aware of this symbol’s function. It alerts you to the fact that the answer to a clue is some kind of play on words. Since question marks usually just tell us whether a sentence is a statement or a question, I’ve always felt that this is a particularly opaque symbol for a first-time solver, and that it would be virtually impossible to figure out its meaning until someone told you directly about the secret powers of the question mark within the world of crosswords. 

However, one way that we could figure out the meaning behind this symbol is through what linguists call a pragmatic inference. Pragmatics is the subfield of linguistics that deals with contextual meaning, or meaning that is conveyed on top of the words that we say. For example, imagine that my friend went to see a new movie at the theater the other night, and that when I see them the next day, I ask them how it was. My friend responds, “It was like 10 hours long.” After hearing this response, I might conclude that my friend did not enjoy the movie, or that the movie wasn’t any good. However, nothing in the literal meaning of my friend’s words tells me this. So where on Earth is this meaning coming from??

The Cooperative Principle

The type of inference I make in the example above is generally described using Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle. The Cooperative Principle states that, in order to facilitate a given communicative exchange, speakers are always trying to make their contributions as appropriate as possible. It doesn’t matter whether the conversation is an argument or a pleasant discussion – participants will contribute information that moves the conversation forward in the intended direction. For example, if my friend asks me where we should go for dinner tonight, my most likely response will be a suggestion of a potential restaurant. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing my part to move our conversation in the intended direction, which should ultimately result in us deciding on a place to eat.

According to Grice, in order for a speaker’s contribution to be considered appropriate, it must adhere to four maxims, as described below. 

1. The Maxim of Quantity: Provide enough information, but not too much.
2. The Maxim of Quality: Say only what is true (don’t lie).
3. The Maxim of Relation: Be relevant.
4. The Maxim of Manner: Be brief, clear, and unambiguous.

The expectation that a cooperative speaker will always observe these maxims allows us to make pragmatic inferences. The classic example of a pragmatic inference in linguistics is what is called a scalar implicature. Scalar implicatures are based on the maxim of quantity. For example, if someone tells us that “most of the cookies were eaten,” we might assume that not all of them were eaten, even though it’s true that if most of them were eaten, all of them might in fact have been eaten. This inference is based on the fact that, if we assume that the speaker is trying to be cooperative, their contribution is as informative as possible. Therefore, if all of the cookies really had been eaten, they would have said so. 

Pragmatic inferences can also be triggered by blatant violations of the maxims. Let’s return to the example I brought up above, when my friend asks me where we should go for dinner tonight. Imagine that I respond with something like, “The weather is really nice out today, isn’t it?” This is a clear violation of the maxim of relation, which states that our contributions should be relevant to the discussion at hand. The current weather certainly has nothing to do with my choice of restaurant! What is the result of my blatant violation of this maxim? My friend probably infers that I don’t want to go out to eat with them or that this isn’t a good time to have this discussion. Even though I didn’t literally say this with my words, my violation of the maxim is what triggers this type of interpretation.

Violations of any of the maxims can trigger inferences. For example, violating the maxim of quality can convey exaggeration, metaphor, irony, or sarcasm. If I say that my sister is a pig, the fact that this is obviously untrue leads a listener to interpret this statement as a metaphor. In other words, my listener assumes that I think my sister is dirty rather than that she is an actual pig. Puns are also an example of violations of manner: they are clear examples of a speaker being overly wordy or ambiguous, leading a listener to infer that the intent of an utterance is to convey humor. 

Ok, so how do pragmatic inferences help us figure out the question mark?

Question marks typically signal that we should interpret what is written as a question rather than a statement. However, in situations where it is already obvious that something is a question, the use of this symbol could be interpreted as a violation of manner, relation, or even quantity (i.e., it could be seen as redundant). This redundancy can lead to an inference about the meaning of that symbol. This type of meaning inference has already been suggested for symbols like the period in digital communication. For example, some linguists suggest that, because a period is unnecessary in a text message, it has taken on new meanings about the speaker’s stance or emotion toward the situation (check out this great article on the meaning of the period in textspeak). 

In a sense, since crossword clues are always prompting us to provide information, they are all questions, and they could all be reasonably written with a question mark. We interpret a clue like Director of ET in the same way as we would interpret the question Who is the director of ET? This tells us that in this context (the context of a crossword), the question mark is redundant.

Assuming that the crossword constructor is trying to be cooperative, we can infer that they would not have included this mark were it not relevant. Therefore, we can make a pragmatic inference that there is another meaning that is intended for this symbol. The reality is that the question mark in crosswords is almost like a direct marker of a violation of Grice’s maxims. It signals to us that the answer to the clue will be a clear violation of manner, as it will probably be purposely ambiguous and should be interpreted as a pun/play on words.

While this type of pragmatic inference might not tell us the exact meaning of the question mark in a crossword, it at least alerts us to the fact that something is different about this clue. Try to implement this when solving: notice purposeful violations and think about what they might be telling you!