What would you understand if someone told you "you don't pay your tailor enough"? [closed]

It seems that it can be interpreted in a positive or negative way. Positive in the sense that your dress looks great and you should pay the tailor even more. Negative in the sense that the dress looks terrible because you are cheap with your tailor. Therefore, is it correct to think that the real meaning depends on how that sentence is said?

Solution 1:

Yes, considered apart from the context and from the manner in which it is uttered, the sentence is ambiguous: the intended meaning could be 'The outfit looks so good that the tailor deserves to be paid more than he was actually paid' or 'The outfit looks bad, probably because you did not pay the tailor enough to motivate him of produce something better'. Whether it is more frequently used in the first or the second sense is debatable; a reasonable guess is that the former use is somewhat more frequent, simply because people are more likely to compliment others on their looks than criticise them. In any event, in almost any real-life situation, the context and the tone of voice are likely to disambiguate the sentence.