Managing the reputation of trustworthiness in face-to-face communication

One prominent account of the speech act of assertion assumes that by asserting a proposition, the speaker commits to the proposition, that is, vouches for its truth. This predicts negative social effects on the reputation of the speaker, in particular, trustworthiness, or credibility, if the proposition turns out to be false (and conversely, positive effects if it is true). In this paper, I will show that there are modifications to assertive commitments that modulate these social effects, such as evidential or epistemic modifications of the asserted propositions, and strengtheners and weakeners of the commitment itself. I will present the results of such modifications on the trustworthiness of speakers from a rating experiment in German. The article is relevant for the special issue on trustworthiness in science communication, as it argues that markers that relate to trust are relevant to ordinary conversation as well.