Hedging as prepositional focusing: A learnable-theoretic account of the persuasive sweet spot

Abstract

This paper develops an account of why hedging, the linguistic marking of uncertainty, can in specific configurations increase rather than diminish persuasive impact, extending recent evidence that hedges combining high-likelihood language with personal perspective occupy a communicative sweet spot. Using the conceptual apparatus of Learnable Theory, the Learnable Enhanced Bhaskarian Ontology (LEBO), prepositional focusing and defocusing, the Complementary Semantic Distance Index (CSDI), the umbra cone construct, and Differenza Inversa (Inverse Difference), the paper reframes hedging not as a graded modulation of propositional certainty but as an act of prepositional attachment occurring at the Learnable stratum, in which a speaker either anchors a claim to a locatable subject, the self, or leaves it ownerless. The sweet-spot register is shown to carry a predictable CSDI signature, Self-Actualization-Positive, which produces an umbra cone effect shadowing Safety-domain content within the same message, so that maximal persuasiveness and maximal disclosure pull in opposite directions. Differenza Inversa, originally an intrapsychic operator for reinterpreting autobiographical memory, is extended here, as a proposed analogy, to the interpersonal resolution of unmarked speaker/claim attribution, and seven testable propositions are derived from the resulting account. The framework offers organisational communicators, leaders, and designers of human-AI interaction a mechanism-level explanation of when and why hedged language builds trust rather than undermining it, together with the boundary conditions under which personal anchoring ceases to buffer a low stated likelihood.