Strategic use of English quantifiers in the reporting of quantitative information

This study investigates how quantifiers are used strategically to serve differ-ent argumentative goals. We report two experiments on how English speak-ers describe the results of school exams when being instructed to frame theirdescriptions either as a good or bad outcome. Experiment 1 shows thatparticipants have clear preferences for specific quantifier combinations inthis task. Experiment 2 shows that, in situations where producing descrip-tions that meet one’s argumentative goals is difficult (i.e. framing very badoutcomes positively), participants tend to use quantifiers that are informa-tionally weaker than other salient alternatives. Experiment 2 also shows thatpeople have a bias to frame outcomes positively, even when the task asksthem to frame them negatively. Put together, these results shed light on thequestion of how language users strategically explore different linguisticstrategies to communicate quantity in pragmatically favorable ways, includ-ing how quantifiers are used vis-`a-vis other lexical expressions of quantity.