Blackwell Reference Online

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The “truth-bias,” the expectation that, normally, one tells the truth, is proposed to be the cornerstone of humanity ( Bok 1978 ). Yet, it is the skill of displacement – speaking of things which are not present – and thus also the ability to deceive that is the basis of human language ( Aitchison 1996 ). A society of truthfulness, to highlight the downside of truth-telling, would be a society of hurtfulness. The discursive status of an act of deception has been the subject of some considerable debate. It focuses upon questions: (1) What is the act of deception? (2) What are its kinds? (3) What is its discursive and social status? Discussions of the definition of an act of deception focus upon truthfulness of the proposition of the act and the beliefs of the speaker and of the addressee. There is widespread consensus that falsity (or other misrepresentation) of the act's proposition, whether explicit or implicit, is not sufficient for the act to be deceptive. Thus, commonly, an act of deception is held to be one in which the speaker conveys information with the intention to induce false beliefs in the addressee. There are, however, attempts to reposition deception in terms of accuracy of the speaker's beliefs ( Ng & Bradac 1993 ), covert violation of Gricean maxims (→  Linguistic Pragmatics ) – i.e., covert failure to be truthful, to say as much as needed, or to be relevant ... log in or subscribe to read full text