Sorries Seem to Have the Harder Words:
People use longer words when apologizing and interpret apologies with longer words as more apologetic.
Iconicity in language is the non-arbitrary relationship between form and meaning.
The type of iconicity that is investigated in this paper, however, is context-dependent and will be referred to as dynamic iconicity. It is not between a word's form and its meaning but between a word's form and the meaning or attitude that the speaker would like to express in that context, not necessarily via the semantics of the word.
Dynamic iconicity, in contrast, examines whether the form of words that are semantically unrelated to effort (e.g. genuinely) can signal effort, and are even produced in order to signal effort, in certain contexts.
While prior studies focused on the cost that accompanied the message, it is possible that making the message itself costlier, that is, requiring more effort to produce, can also increase its perceived sincerity.
Prior work in pragmatics lends support to the claim that the effort one puts into communicating a message influences message interpretation. A general assumption is that both speakers and listeners aim to minimize their effort. Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995) further proposes that speakers produce messages that they believe are relevant, that is, that the cognitive effects that they would bring about in the listener are worth the cognitive effort of processing them. Similarly, Gricean Maxims (Grice, 1975) assume that communication is cooperative, and that, among others, speakers adhere to the maxim of manner, namely, to be clear. Deviations from the clearest formulation should thus give rise to a conversational implicature.