referinduse

Referinduse is a term used in theoretical pragmatics to describe a process by which a speaker guides a listener toward a specific referent by coordinating linguistic signals with the listener's inferential reasoning. The word combines referential signaling and inducement of inference and was coined in contemporary discourse pragmatics to capture a pattern not fully characterized by existing categories.

Referinduse refers to the deliberate orchestration of referents through explicit reference, contextual cues, prosodic emphasis, and assumptions about shared knowledge to cause the listener to resolve ambiguity toward a chosen referent.

Mechanisms involve three components: referential signaling (such as pronouns, definite descriptions, and deictics); inferential guidance (claims about what the listener knows or should infer); and alignment with the relevant discourse context. It sits near deixis, anaphora, and implicature but emphasizes intentional steering of reference.

Examples include a team chat statement like “The chart on the left is the updated one,” which directs the listener to a specific chart through context, and a live presentation remark such as “As discussed, the forecast remains our baseline,” which leverages prior discussion to fix the referent.

Reception and status of referinduse remain theoretical and debated. Proponents argue that it clarifies how speakers shape reference beyond simple marking, while critics contend that it overlaps with established notions of implicature and reference resolution and can be difficult to isolate empirically.

See also pragmatics, reference, deixis, implicature, and discourse analysis.