presents itself as something other than a refusal of sex. By understanding this
connection, one which Langton (1993) recognise is present but doesn’t explain how it
comes about, we are able to see that scenarios 1 and 2 are not too dissimilar as an
explanation of the “no-means-yes phenomenon” (Hesni, 2018, pp. 954) presents a case
that uptake and thus refusal is present in scenario 1.
Hesni (2018, pp. 954) points to a model of nonliteral speech to explore the “no-
means-yes phenomenon” (Hesni, 2018, pp. 954). It goes as follows. When the speaker
says x, the hear hears x. The hearer first interprets the speaker to mean x, yet for some
reason, this interpretation doesn’t make sense to the hearer. The hearer then proceeds
to go through other options of what the speaker could have meant. This is “based on
pragmatic/cultural/social rules and norms and…behaviour.” (Hesni, 2018, pp. 954).
The hearer then finds y as a meaning for x. This leads the hearer to the conclusion that
the speaker means y not x. The hearer’s actions then follow from them understanding
x as y. An example of this can be seen in the following example: Two colleagues are
having a serious conversation about what grade to award one of their students when
one colleague stops and says, “There’s the door” (x). The other colleague, the hearer,
hears the utterance of “There’s the door” and understands/ uptakes the literal
interpretation of the statement, that there…is…the…door. However, they then render
this to be infelicitous as it doesn’t fit within the boundaries of the situation at play. The
hearer doesn’t believe the speaker is just making the factual statement of pointing out
that there is a door. The speaker then searches for a more appropriate meaning and
reaches the conclusion that their colleague is asking them to leave the room (y).
In relation to the example above, in scenario 1 the hearer does not believe the
speaker to be speaking literally otherwise it would be scenario 2. The point here is that
scenario 1 is an example of non-literal speech. If this can be accepted, then when
applied to the model of nonliteral speech the hearer can be understood as firstly
understanding “no” as a refusal (as this is the literal interpretation of the word no)
before thinking that the speaker may mean something else. The hearer, due to social
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