Instagram reel transcript: “So you know how autistic people just talk and we literally mean like exactly what we say?”
“So like I realized that when I’m talking to a neurotypical person, even when I’m saying exactly what I’m saying, they’re looking for like, the meeting underneath it, which is nothing.”
“So the other day at work…I had a feedback session and one of the things they told me was that my communication wasn’t clear… And their example was I asked ‘What is so-and-so’s job?’ And she said, 'I knew exactly what you meant. I knew that you meant, 'She’s not pulling her weight. Why is she on the team? Why haven’t you fired her yet?”
“And I was like, hold up. I asked about her job was because I didn’t know what her job was and I wanted you to tell me what her job was. And she was like, ‘Oh. Well, that wasn’t clear and you should really give more context when you ask a question.’ And I was like, 'Okay…?? so…'I don’t know what her job is…What is… her… job?”
Conversational implicatures. It’s basically the reason why plenty people say something, when they mean something else.
However what that coworker is doing is a bit beyond conversational implicatures, she’s reading too much into what Alyssa said. That’s clear because she then complained that Alyssa didn’t give her enough context - in other words, there was no context to implicate anything, and yet she still saw an implicature there. I call this a “ghost” implicature, dunno if there’s some actual name for that. But to keep it short, the coworker is likely the one to blame for the miscommunication, not Alyssa herself.