Signaling social identity in referential communication

Any choice of words simultaneously conveys information about the world and, at the same time, conveys information about the speaker, revealing aspects of their social identity. In this paper, we investigate how speakers strategically modify referential language to signal group membership. Across four experiments using a minimal referential communication paradigm, we find that speakers with the explicit goal of signaling social affiliation (1) choose more concise utterances, (2) preferentially select group-specific referents and descriptions, and (3) resist the otherwise strong tendency to be understood by everyone in the audience. Standard models of referential communication that focus on the trade-off between informativity and efficiency cannot explain these patterns; we argue instead for a model where speakers trade off the referential utility of being understood against the social utility of being identified as an in-group member.