Deception-aware Pragmatic Inference

Pragmatic competence i.e., the ability to understand intended meaning is a long standing challenge in communication. This work proposes a computational framework for pragmatic inference that is based on reasoning by taking into account the realistic assumption that any communication could be deceptive and that intentions can be reflected in language use. Pragmatic inference is examined under the light of culture since as literature manifests, cultural differences is a crucial parameter in the communication process and often a cause of misinterpretations (e.g., false alarms about the deceptiveness of a message). In contrast to the current situation, the proposed approach takes a holistic stance, aiming to infer knowledge both from surface patterns in raw text and more formal structures beyond the text level.