Epistemic vigilance at the pragmatics–argumentation interface: a critical review of structural tensions and argumentative calibration (2010–2026)

Abstract Since Sperber and colleagues introduced the construct of epistemic vigilance in 2010, it has become central to cognitive pragmatics for understanding how hearers calibrate the acceptance of testimony during utterance interpretation. Its rapid uptake across pragmatics, argumentation theory, and communication research has produced two interrelated problems: theoretical fragmentation across heterogeneous frameworks, and operational heterogeneity in the way the construct has been used. This article addresses these gaps through a critical conceptual review of research on epistemic vigilance at the pragmatics–argumentation interface, drawing on more than thirty core sources. The review does not offer a theory of argumentation; it examines epistemic vigilance as a pragmatic construct whose implications extend to argumentative evaluation. It reconstructs four research strands and three structural tensions, engaging with presupposition, implicature, stance markers, and objectification strategies. The literature suggests four calibration dynamics: graded rather than binary acceptance; coupled automatic and reflective processing; conditionally weighted source and content assessment; and recalibration across pragmatic registers. The article argues that epistemic vigilance reflects a shift from resistance-based models toward calibration-based accounts of argumentative acceptance – a reframing that aligns vigilance with relevance-driven interpretive mechanisms and connects cognitive pragmatics with social-epistemological accounts of testimony in contemporary digital discourse environments.