Abstract
While lying has been a topic in the philosophy of language, there has been a lack of genuine linguistic analysis of lying. Adopting such a linguistic perspective to lying, the book explores lying at the semantics–pragmatics interface on the ground that lying is related to the manipulation of truth as well as speech acts and pragmatic inferences. With an in-depth discussion of the various approaches to the semantics–pragmatics distinction, this book takes a contextualist stand by arguing and elaborating that untruthful implicatures and presuppositions are part of the total signification of the act of lying.
The book consists of seven chapters. Setting the scene for the rest of the book, the first chapter surveys lying in different domains of communication, including the private sphere, the Internet and politics. Then it discusses ethical and psychological/neurological perspectives on lying, issues such as the universality and acquisition of lying, and finally a distinction is made between lying and deceiving.
Chapter 2 discusses recent debates about the semantics–pragmatics distinction and develops a suitable linguistic frame (at both lexical and syntactic levels) for the analysis of lying. At the lexical level, Meibauer offers a prototype theoretical analysis of the lexical semantics of the verb ‘lie’, and at the syntactic level, he analyzes lying and sentence types, pointing out that although a declarative sentence is the prototypical form for lying, other sentence types also bear certain relations to lying.
Chapter 3 focuses on assertion and lying. Based on a discussion of the complexities involved in a proper definition of assertion, Meibauer proposes his own definition that fits into standard models of the semantics–pragmatics interface and paves the way for the definition of lying in the next chapter.
Chapter 4 presents Meibauer’s definition of lying, addressing critical issues of intention and self-deception. His new definition expands traditional lying to include untruthful implicature, untruthful presupposition, untruthful explicature/impliciture, false unconventional implicatures, as well as the phenomena of vagueness and impression.
Chapter 5 goes beyond minimalist or contextualist models of the semantics–pragmatics interface to scrutinize some additional and thorny issues and their respective relevance to lying. These issues include aspect-sensitivity, fiction, irony and tautology, understatement and overstatement, and bullshit.
Chapter 6 discusses lying and quotation. Meibauer argues that a quotation is a lie if the speaker of the quotation deliberately misrepresents the content of an original utterance or the attitude towards that content held by the speaker, including untruthful representation of implicatures.
Lying is relative to certain standards of assessment, that is, it has to do with subtle matters of accuracy, clarity and certainty. Chapter 7 explores some of these standards, drawing on recent contributions to relativism and disagreement. Meibauer emphasizes that a realistic theory of lying must respect issues of ‘relative’ lying, perspectivity and disagreement.
The book ends with an epilogue, which provides a cumulative summary of the findings, conclusions and contributions of the book. It also points out directions for further research in the future.
Recent approaches to lying (e.g. Fallis, 2012) tend to study lying from one particular angle, trapped by either the ‘lure of linguistification’, that is, ‘attributing linguistic properties to non-linguistic phenomena’ (Bach, 2013), or ‘the lure of pragmatification or philosophication’ (Bach, 2013), that is, attributing non-linguistic properties such as pragmatic or philosophical properties to linguistic items, and treating these properties as if they were linguistic. The present book endeavors to develop a broader and much more comprehensive perspective on lying, integrating insights from linguistic, philosophical and psychological disciplines. By bringing richer perspectives to bear on lying, Meibauer also offers a balanced and insightful evaluation of the various competing approaches concerning the issue of the semantics–pragmatics interface. The insightfulness is especially shown in his analysis of pairs of key notions such as ‘what is said’ versus ‘what is implicated’, ‘generalized conversational implicature’ versus ‘particular conversational implicature’, ‘implicature’ versus ‘explicature/impliciture’, ‘conversational implicatures’ versus ‘conventional implicature’. Moreover, lying, as a rarely explored special phenomenon in linguistics, can serve as suitable testing ground for the debates in semantics–pragmatics interface study which ‘usually deals with a rather restricted set of data’ (p. 2). Analysis of lying can either confirm and demonstrate the explanatory power of some notions in semantics–pragmatics studies or disconfirm and thus bring new challenges to other notions. For example, Meibauer challenges the mainstream stance by arguing that ‘some cases of explicatures are cancellable’ (p. 145).
On the other hand, a more open semantics–pragmatics framework provides a more linguistic analytical tool for the study of lying, complementing the neglect of linguistic structures in the philosophical and other research traditions. For instance, in view of the fact that the prototypical approach and the philosophical tradition tend to neglect formal aspects of lying, Meibauer explores which sentence types are suitable for lying and concludes that, apart from the prototypical declarative sentence that can be used by a liar, all sentence types have their lying potential. Besides expanding the definition of lying, the contribution of the book to lying can also be seen in Meibauer’s handling of critical aspects of ‘intention’ and ‘self-deception’. Admitting the important role of these aspects, Meibauer argues that it is not necessary to include them directly in the definition of lying. Another strength of the book is that, in addition to the example-based linguistic analysis, Meibauer also draws on findings from some empirical studies to support his arguments. But as he admits in the epilogue, we still need a comprehensive linguistic theory of lying and an understanding of how cultural and social aspects of lying fit into this theory. In order to gain insights in this respect, more experimental studies are needed.