Abstract It is a common assumption that predicating truth over some assertion expresses the evaluation of that assertion as true (or false) with respect to its corresponding state of affairs. This assumption, combined with the norms that govern assertions, renders the use of ‘true’ redundant in natural discourse. In the following, we examine the two uses of ‘true’ discussed in the literature: the descriptive truth-evaluative use and the performatory intersubjective agreement use. We analyze the true tokens in two spoken American English corpora, and identify a unique discourse profile for each use. Nonetheless, the two uses of ‘true’ do not manifest a perfectly complementary distribution. On the contrary, they exhibit a bi-directional derivational relation, which may flip on the basis of the relevant context. When one use is foregrounded, the other is backgrounded, and vice versa.