Do note I wrote 'tantamount' just before that part of the sentence. My presumptuousness is heavily modified by that. - At any rate, in the case you're making, I do believe we have a bit of a conundrum here. Let's say: 1. Person presents a compliment involving stutter 2. Stutterer considers it dismissive Which "other factors" are you saying would be crucial here? There's certainly a context for 1, and there's also a context for 2, but since what we're dealing with is the interpretation done in 2, I daresay we should allow for 1 to influence this interpretation. What's the argument that there's no recourse to "investigate" in this particular case? - Perhaps we have different approaches to social interaction. In my view, everything we do is always already tangled up in the other. Trying to boil this sort of stuff down to any given individual doesn't make sense to me.