Commissives, vows and pledges, are a peculiar class of rhetorical tool. I’ll argue that their predictive value vary by culture. Commissives as a cultural product I credit Liubertė and Dimov (2021) for telling me what a commissive is, and Trott (2013) for explaining just how important they are in American culture. A commissive is a vow, pledge, or a promise. I use the com- prefix to remember it. The com- prefix signals ideas like come together, commingle, community, or commitment. Trott highlights the difference between British culture, in which its fashionable to not commit, and American, where it’s expected. In America, you have to be all in. You have got to be stoked. To borrow from Komori (2015): it’s to[…]