Words in the way of truth: truthfulness, deception lying across cultures and disciplines

The book explores the concepts of truthfulness and deception from a theoretical and multidisciplinary point of view, irradiating from that of pragmatics to its neighbouring disciplines of linguistic philosophy, cultural and social anthropology, critical discourse analysis, sociolinguistics. etc. Its perspective throughout is inter- and cross-cultural. Besides the theoretical exploration of truthfulness within pragmatics and the invited implications of seeing definitions and perceptions of truthfulness and deception in contextual perspective (whether social, interpersonal or cultural) - it is ultimately also concerned with awareness raising for intercultural interaction and cross-cultural communication; the raising of mindfulness to avoid complacent certainty of assumptions in local (including industrialized ‘Western’ ) folk theories of language use; assumptions as basic as that of what constitutes truthfulness, on which level of meaning it is to be evaluated, and its place in different circumstances in communication. This is considered especially important with the increase in the global use of (supposedly lingua franca) English and the consequent potential danger that monolingual/-cultural and ethnocentric Anglo definitions and perceptions of truthfulness simply become uncritically hegemonic. The book consists of a Foreword, nine Chapters, three Appendices, a detailed Subject and Author index and an Extensive Bibliography. Brief Chapter summaries: Chapter One (‘Opening the Way’) gives a general overview of the issues across various disciplines, distinguishing crucially between the notions of and the different concerns with truth, truthfulness and truth-telling in the various literatures, and the polysemy and ambiguity of the term truthfulness in lay English, and across and within academic disciplines. Chapter Two (‘Engaging Ways with truthfulness and deception in pragmatics’) examines the role (and history) of truthfulness as an underlying principle or assumption in the fields of theoretical pragmatics and philosophy for the coordination of mutual understanding, and in descriptive and societal pragmatics engaged in the unmasking of the various types of manipulation of truthfulness (through terminology and or other discourse means). Chapter Three (‘More Ways than One. Types of Truthfulness and Non-truthfulness’) lays out the different parameters and dimensions (levels of interpretation) which distinguish the different types of truthfulness and non-truthfulness focusing especially on intentionality, to distinguish between physiological (indeterminate, figurative, indirect, etc), intentional, non-intentional, and intentionally deceptive non-truthfulness, and in cross-cultural perspective highlighting the notion of non-truth-relevant discourse worlds or contexts. Chapter Four (’Following the Gricean Way’) is a methodological exercise on generating types of non-truthfulness by different ways of failing to fulfill the Gricean Cooperative Principle categories, maxims and sub-maxims. Chapter Five (‘Getting in the Way of Truth. Deception and Lying’) focuses entirely on the intentionally non-truth-telling meaning of non-truthfulness, i.e. on lying and deception. It sets out and explores the different parameters of categorization and types of classification of deception to be found, variously concentrated on the whats, hows, whys, what fors and how bads of deception (often confusingly without distinguishing between the parameters). Chapter Six (‘Goals along the way to deception’) lays out the application of the Italian goals analysis model, ‘scopistica’, to the classification of ways of deception (first developed in 1977 by the author in collaboration with ‘scopistica’ ideator Cristiano Castelfranchi), based on levels of communicated and non-communicative goals, and enabling the description of, for example, pretending to be pretending to lie, presupposition faking, etc. Chapter Seven (‘A way with words. “Honest” Iago’s witcraft’) applies the goals analysis scopistica model to identifying and analyzing the different strategies used by Shakespeare’s Iago in Othello. Chapter Eight (‘Playing Away. Seriously?’) explores non-serious uses of language, involving intentionally non-truthful or light talk in, for example, mocking, teasing, irony, etc., also suggesting cross-cultural differences in means and functions of non-seriousness. Chapter Nine (‘Different cultures, different ways of truth and deception’) while explicitly drawing threads together from the previous chapters, overviews existing research and stereotypes from different perspectives on practices and attitudes regarding deception in different cultures, overviews parameters for describing cultural differences, highlights the reasons behind generated inter-cultural perceptions of differences, reviews histories of truth and truthfulness, moral issues, etc. The main body of the text is followed by four Appendices. Appendix One (‘Words for the Way of Truth and deception. Some suggestions for analyses’) is a lexicographical and etymological exercise in exploring the lexical and semantic fields in English and in Italian. Appendix Two (‘Ways to Truth? Notes on Theories of Truth’) provides a brief overview and personal compilation of (others’ compilations of) the different theories of truth to be found in the philosophical literature. Appendix Three (‘Some Synoptic Tables’) provides convenient and useful tabulated summaries of various scholars’ theories and models discussed or referred to in the volume, ranging from a comparative table of suggested Principles/Presumptions underlying understanding, Parret’s ‘Axioms of Logic of Communicability’, Gu’s levels of interaction and degrees of cooperation, and different scholars’ stages in moral development and the history of truth. Appendix Four (‘a few words of wisdom’) brings together some well-known aphorisms, sayings, proverbs on lying/deception and truthfulness. The detailed Index, which closes the volume, allows for considerable cross-referencing of topics and of cited authors, combined also with the extensive alphabetically listed Bibliography it follows.