title: Just saying, just kidding: Liability for accountability-avoiding speech in ordinary conversation, politics and law
abstract: Mobsters and others engaged in risky forms of social coordination and coercion often communicate by saying something that is overtly innocuous but transmits another message 'off record'.In both ordinary conversation and political discourse, insinuation and other forms of indirection, like joking, offer significant protection from liability.However, they do not confer blanket immunity: speakers can be held to account for an 'off record' message, if the only reasonable interpretations of their utt