The force and the deceptive nature of the fallacy of equivocation lies in its dialectical nature. The speaker redefines a word in order to classify a fragment of reality, while the hearer draws a conclusion based on the ordinary meaning of such a classification. This difference between the interlocutors meanings is grounded on a crucial epistemic gap: how is it possible to know our hearer s mind, and his knowledge of the words we used? Building on Hamblin s account of equivocation, the speaker s meaning and the manipulative strategies based on redefinitions can be explained as the conclusion of an implicit reasoning based on a presumption of ordinary meaning. © Fabrizio Macagno. Informal Logic.