CoBRA: Quantifying Strategic Language Use and LLM Pragmatics

Abstract: Language is often used strategically, particularly in high-stakes, adversarial settings, yet most work on pragmatics and LLMs centers on cooperativity. This leaves a gap in systematic understanding of non-cooperative discourse. To address this, we introduce CoBRA (Cooperation-Breach Response Assessment), along with three interpretable metrics -- Benefit at Turn (BaT), Penalty at Turn (PaT), and Normalized Relative Benefit at Turn (NRBaT) -- to quantify the perceived strategic effects of discourse moves. We also present CHARM, an annotated dataset of real courtroom cross-examinations, to demonstrate the framework's effectiveness. Using these tools, we evaluate a range of LLMs and show that LLMs generally exhibit limited pragmatic understanding of strategic language. While model size shows an increase in performance on our metrics, reasoning ability does not help and largely hurts, introducing overcomplication and internal confusion.