UC Irvine

Generic statements are a fundamental linguistic tool for efficiently passing along information. Yet they can leave a lot unsaid, such as how broadly they apply. In this dissertation, I examine how generic statements work as a pedagogical tool. To do so, I use the esport League of Legends as a naturalistic experimental setting in which to observe how people with varying degrees of expertise can use generic statements to teach and learn from each other. In Chapter 1, I discuss the decision to use an esport as an experimental setting. Esports offer many benefits for studying psycholinguistics because they provide complex yet relatively controlled environments, and many people are highly motivated to learn and talk about such environments. Yet we must be somewhat cautious about extending findings to a general population because players are inherently self-selecting. In Chapter 2, I describe a study investigating whether novices and experts interpret generic statements differently. I find that experts interpret generic statements flexibly, incorporating their prior knowledge as appropriate. In contrast, novices interpret generic statements unsystematically, varying their responses without any discernible pattern. Novices also tend to interpret generic statements as applying more broadly than experts do. In Chapter 3, I describe a study comparing how listeners interpret generic statements to how speakers use generic statements. I find that novice listeners tend to overestimate expert speakers' beliefs about how broadly a generic statement applies, while expert listeners do not. In Chapter 4, I describe a study investigating whether expert speakers might account for the differences between novice and expert listeners by adjusting their use of generic statements based on the expertise of their audience. In the process, I discuss a descriptive model that quantifies expert speakers' behavior in terms of a threshold at which they become willing to make a generic statement. I find that expert speakers do not meaningfully alter that threshold based on their audience. In Chapter 5, I conclude by highlighting the themes of this dissertation and by discussing opportunities for future research.