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A good hint is deniable in court
A Sopranos example
Picture a scene from The Sopranos: a mob associate meets an old acquaintance named Danny in a store and pays for his candy bar. He is glad a hardworking guy with a wife and two kids sat on that jury, doing a civic duty, and confident Danny will do the right thing. The meaning is that voting to convict Junior Soprano puts his family at risk, and the fear lands without the speaker exposing himself to a charge of extortion.
The hint works only if the plausibility of the denial differs for speaker and hearer. It can't be so subtle that it flies over the hearer's head, and it has to be subtle enough that it would fail a high standard of proof such as beyond a reasonable doubt.
A traffic stop
A traffic stop shows the same thing. Offering a cop $100 to make this go away is a bribe. Asking whether there is some way to resolve it without a lot of paperwork carries the same message, and if the cop turns out to be honest, it can't be the basis of a conviction.
Everyday conversation needs a much lower threshold. People take their chances that what was meant is obvious, and only a court demands deniability beyond a reasonable doubt.
Why do courts demand proof beyond reasonable doubt?
Criminal convictions can cost a person their liberty, so common-law courts set the bar very high. The eighteenth-century jurist William Blackstone wrote that it is better for ten guilty persons to escape than for one innocent person to suffer. That maxim is still widely quoted in discussions of the standard. Civil cases in the United States generally use a lower standard called preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not.
Why do people speak in hints instead of plainly?
Steven Pinker, Martin Nowak, and James Lee published a game-theory model of indirect speech in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2008. Their model analyzed cases such as a driver offering a veiled bribe to a police officer. It showed that a veiled offer can leave both sides better off than a blunt one, since the speaker keeps deniability and the listener can still catch the meaning. The same logic applies to veiled threats and to romantic come-ons.
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