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Abstract
This article examines the psycholinguistic impact of pragmatic opacity in political speech, focusing on how
deliberate flouting of Grice’s Cooperative Principle and its conversational maxims (Quantity, Quality, Rela
tion, and Manner) functions as a mechanism of persuasion. Adopting a cognitive perspective, we analyze
how such violations shape audience inference, modulate information processing and cognitive load, and
trigger inferential recovery strategies (e.g., implicature enrichment, relevance-guided search). The analy
sis argues that pragmatic opacity systematically cultivates ambiguity and strategic indirection, amplifying
perlocutionary effects and facilitating rhetorical control over shared situation models. We further show that
the processing of flouted maxims interacts with known cognitive biases (e.g., confirmation bias, fluency
effects), thereby strengthening attitudinal alignment while masking evidential weakness. These findings
position pragmatic opacity as a core lever in political communication, linking micro-pragmatic choices to
macro-level persuasive outcomes.
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