Neural responses to interpersonal requests: Effects of imposition and vocally-expressed stance

The way that speakers communicate their stance towards the listener is often vital for understanding the interpersonal relevance of speech acts, such as basic requests. To establish how interpersonal dimensions of an utterance affect neurocognitive processing, we compared event-related potentials elicited by requests that linguistically varied in how much they imposed on listeners (e.g., Lend me a nickel vs. hundred) and in the speaker's...