How to trick respondents into revealing implicit attitudes – talk to them

Abstract This paper outlines the cognitive processing involved in cases of language regard and shifts the focus from receivers/hearers to producers/speakers. Investigation of the latter by means of established pragmatic and discourse techniques can uncover features of language use (e.g. implicature, presupposition) that just as surely reveal implicit characteristics of a speaker’s beliefs and regard for language and variety as any of the long-standing (e.g. matched guise) or more recently developed (e.g. the IAT) experimental techniques that seek to uncover implicitness in this area.