34.2300, Review: The Oxford Handbook of Lying

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Subject: 34.2300, Review: The Oxford Handbook of Lying

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Date: 20-Jun-2023
From: Heli Tissari [heli.tissari at umu.se]
Subject: Discourse Analysis, General Linguistics, Semantics: Meibauer (ed.) (2022)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/33.3592

EDITOR: Jörg Meibauer
TITLE: The Oxford Handbook of Lying
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Handbooks
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Heli Tissari

SUMMARY
In the preface to the Oxford Handbook of Lying, its editor Jörg
Meibauer tells us that the handbook is the first of its kind, namely
the first “collection of in-depth research surveys on lying and
deception” (p. ix). Somewhat surprisingly, Meibauer also says that he
would have wished that the book was even more comprehensive.
In the introductory chapter, Meibauer claims that “everyone is
interested in” lying (p. 1). There, he discusses definitions of lying,
the acquisition, processing and detection of lying, and the evaluation
of lying. These are topics that recur in the book, which is divided
into five parts. These parts are called “Traditions”, “Concepts”,
“Types of lies and deception”, “Distinctions”, and “Domains”.
The “Traditions” part of the book consists of overviews dealing with
the philosophy of lying, and linguistic, psycholinguistic, and
neurocognitive approaches to lying and deception. The “Concepts” part
treats concepts that are separate from, but relevant to, discussions
of lying, beginning from truth, assertion, and knowledge. As its name
indicates, the “Types of lies and deception” section includes chapters
on different types of lying and deception, for example, bald-faced
lies and bullshitting. The chapters in the section on “Distinctions”
distinguishes between lying and such things as fiction, irony, and
hyperbole. Lastly, the section on “Domains” discusses various domains
in which lying is being studied. These comprise, among others,
computational linguistics, economics and the law, and the arts.
Since the book is so long, I will not attempt to cover it
exhaustively, but will rather mention examples of things that are
discussed in it. I will begin from the first part of the book and move
in the order suggested by the book.
In his chapter on “Classic philosophical approaches to lying and
deception”, James Edwin Mahon treats, among other things, Plato’s idea
that lies can be good in some situations. Such situations include, for
example, the upbringing of children, and the ruling of a nation.
Basically, people who know something better than others may lie to
those others to make them behave as wished.
The chapters “Contemporary approaches to the philosophy of lying” by
James Edwin Mahon and “Linguistic approaches to lying and deception”
by Karol J. Hardin discuss several different definitions of lying.
While Mahon emphasizes that philosophers disagree about the
characteristics of lying, Hardin suggests that the following is a
“standard definition for lying” (tracing it back to Falkenberg 1982:
75; p. 57):
“S lied at t, if and only if
(a) S asserted at t that p,
(b) S actively believed at t that not p”
Hardin also quotes Anna Wierzbicka’s definition of lying (p. 58; the
reference is faulty), as follows:
        X lied to Y
        X said something to Y
        X knew it was not true
        X said it because X wanted Y to think it was true
        [people would say: if someone does this, it is bad]
        The chapter “Psycholinguistic approaches to lying and
deception” has been written by Lewis Bott and Emma Williams, who
discuss, among other things, the big question of whether “lying is
more difficult than telling the truth” (p. 78). Lying could be
expected to be difficult because it requires that one suppress the
truth, invent an alternative story, and stick to it, all the time
considering the perspective of the listener. However, lying does not
necessarily lead to, for example, errors in speech, slower speech, or
hesitations.
          The big question in Chapter Six, “Lying, deception, and the
brain” by Alexa Decker, Amanda Disney, Brianna D’Elia, and Julian Paul
Keenan is: “When did the first human lie?” (p. 87). They approach this
question by first thinking about animals and plants that somehow
deceive other organisms, such as orchids who can “look like a female
wasp, therefore attracting male wasps” for pollination (p. 84).
        Chapter Seven, “Lying and truth” by Stephen Wright, begins the
second part of the book, titled “Concepts”. Other concepts discussed
in this part of the book comprise assertion (author: Mark Jary),
belief, and knowledge (Matthew A. Benton), sincerity, and quality
(Andreas Stokke), deception (Andrew Ortony and Swati Gupta), certainty
(Neri Marsili), omissions (Don Fallis), implicating and presupposing
(Jörg Meibauer), self-deception (Kathi Beier), and lastly, testimony
and epistemic vigilance (Eliot Michaelson).
The second part of the book contains many definitions of concepts and
many examples of cases. One such case that is discussed many times in
the book appears, for example, in Stokke’s chapter on lying, sincerity
and quality. It is the case of the cheating student. This is how
Stokke explains the case (p. 137; referring to Carson 2006: 290):

A student accused of cheating on an exam is called to the Dean’s
office. The student knows that the Dean knows that she did in fact
cheat. But as it is also well known that the Dean will not punish
someone unless they explicitly admit their guilt, the student says,
(1) I did not cheat.
Many writers on lying think that, although the student says something
she believes to be false, she does not intend to deceive the dean.

Stokke explains this case through referring to Grice’s maxim of
quality. It is relevant because rather than assuming that the “maxim
of truthfulness is still in force and that the speaker believes what
she has said” (p. 137; Wilson and Sperber 2002: 586), the Dean knows
that the student is not telling the truth. Stokke points out that
according to some authors, the student is not even lying because both
the student and the Dean know the truth. Note that in this chapter,
lying and deceiving do not mean the same thing, so that it is possible
that the student is lying to but not deceiving the Dean.
Stokke begins his chapter with stating Grice’s cooperative principle
and his maxims of quality. This is relevant to mention not only
because Stokke’s chapter deals with quality but also because Grice’s
cooperative principle and maxims feature many times in different
chapters in the book (Grice 1989: 26–27).
        Andrew Ortony and Swati Gupta’s chapter on “Lying and
deception” is an interesting exception to the rest of the chapters in
this part of the book because it is based on empirical data. They are
interested in whether people lie because they want to promote
themselves (promotion focus) or because they want to “avoid a loss
(prevention focus)” (p. 150). They asked around a hundred people why
they had lied the last time they lied. The result was that most
people’s lies focused on prevention rather than promotion.
        Kathi Beier’s chapter on “Lying and self-deception” is
interesting because of the “paradoxical nature of self-deception” (p.
207). Beier quotes Demos (1960: 588; p. 207) who states this paradox
as follows: “In short, self-deception entails that B believes both p
and not-p at the same time”. Beier explains that self-deception can
also be understood in terms of someone “block[ing] a certain insight”
(p. 208). However, there is also the “dynamic paradox” (p. 209):
self-deception seems to be voluntary, but it cannot be intentional
because then it would not work.
        The term “epistemic vigilance” in Michaelson’s chapter “Lying,
testimony, and epistemic vigilance” refers to a hearer or reader’s
attitude towards what they are being told and to their ability to
distinguish truth from lie. In his own way, Michaelson also treats a
paradox because he treats the question how it is possible to acquire
knowledge from unreliable sources. He claims that when children grow
up, they acquire plenty of knowledge from adults who are often
unreliable sources of knowledge: “I think we very often lie to
children about things we’d prefer not to explain to them” (p. 224).
        Part Three of the book, “Types of lies and deception”, is in
the middle of the book and in some sense, it could be seen as the core
of the book because it very much focuses on what lying and deception
are in practice. It discusses knowledge lies and group lies (Julia
Staffel), selfless assertions (Jennifer Lackey), bald-faced lies (Jörg
Meibauer), bullshitting (Andreas Stokke), bluffing (Jennifer Perillo),
and white and prosocial lies (Simone Dietz).
        Staffel begins her chapter on knowledge lies and group lies
with an example that occurs several times in the book. This is how she
explains it (pp. 231-232):

A compelling example of a knowledge lie can be found in the movie
Spartacus (directed by Stanley Kubrick, USA 1960). The Roman general
Marcus Licinius Crassus is trying to find Spartacus among a group of
slaves, and tells the group that if they identify him, their lives
will be spared. Spartacus gets up to turn himself in, but as soon as
he gets up, one slave after another rises and declares “I am
Spartacus.” All the slaves are lying, but when they repeat “I am
Spartacus,” their intention is not to convince the general of any
particular false claim. They simply want to prevent him from knowing
which of them is Spartacus (Sorensen 2010).

        Staffel defines a group lie as follows (p. 239): “Group G lies
to B if and only if (1) G states that p to B, (2) G believes that p is
false, and (3) G intends to be deceptive to B with respect to whether
p in stating that p.” It is important to study group lies, for
example, because companies and government authorities represent
groups, and their representatives make statements that can sometimes
be lies. In such situations, the study of group lies can help us
decide who is or are responsible for the lie.
        What is a “selfless assertion”, then? This is how Lacey
defines it (p. 248): “There are three central components to this
phenomenon: first, a subject, for purely non-epistemic reasons, does
not believe that p; second, despite this lack of belief, the subject
is aware that p is very well supported by all of the available
evidence; and, third, because of this, the subject asserts that p
without believing that p.” Lackey refers to a “classic instance of a
selfless assertion” (p. 248; Lackey 2008: 48), a devoutly Christian
school teacher who believes in creationism but teaches evolutionary
theory to her pupils.
        I have already mentioned an example of the category
“Bald-faced lies” that are discussed by Meibauer in the chapter by the
same name. It is the example of the cheating student and the Dean
which reoccurs in Meibauer’s chapter (p. 260). Meibauer also discusses
several further examples of bald-faced lies such as the one that he
titles “Don betrays Betty” where an unfaithful husband explains to his
wife that he “spent the night in the office” although both know that
this is not true (p. 261; Meibauer 2014: 140). The challenge that
bald-faced lies present to research on lies has already been
mentioned, that is, that it is possible to say that people who tell
bald-faced lies do not intend to deceive.        A similar condition
applies to bullshitting, as suggested by Frankfurt (2005: 17; as
quoted by Stokke, p. 265):  “the orator does not really care what his
audience thinks about the Founding Fathers, or about the role of the
deity in our country’s history, or the like. At least, it is not an
interest in what anyone thinks about these matters that motivates his
speech.”
Stokke, however, does not fully agree. He refers, for example, to
propaganda that “is designed to make its audience believe particular
things, even if the propagandist herself is indifferent toward them”
(p. 268).
        Perillo’s example of “Bluffing” in the chapter by the same
name gives an idea of how serious the consequences of bluffing can be.
She mentions the case of the rape and murder of 15-year-old Angela
Correa in 1989. The police told a suspect that “they would be testing
the DNA evidence found inside Correa” (p. 277) and managed to acquire
a false confession which led to the wrong person being imprisoned.
Perillo points out that innocent suspects may confess to a crime under
pressure while believing that their innocence will be proved later.
        The fourth part of the book, titled “Distinctions”, draws
parallels and distinguishes between lying and fiction (Emar Maier),
lying and quotation (Matthew S. McGlone and Maxim Baryshevtsev), lying
and humour (Marta Dynel), lying, irony, and default interpretation
(Rachel Giora), lying and vagueness (Paul Egré and Benjamin Icard),
lying, metaphor, and hyperbole (Claudia Claridge), and lying and
politeness (Marina Terkourafi).
        In his chapter on “Lying and fiction”, Maier discusses, among
other things, in what sense it is true to say that “Sam carried Frodo
from Mount Doom” (p. 303). He talks about the common ground, that is,
the “shared body of information that the speaker and hearer take for
granted” (p. 308), referring to Stalnaker’s framework (1970, 1978).
        McGlone and Baryshevtshev’s chapter on “Lying and quotation”
discusses the problems that occur when quotes are “truncat[ed] in a
way that distorts the meaning of the excerpted words” (p. 316). They
focus on, for example, the so-called “Yew tree controversy that
plagued former Vice-President Al Gore in the late 1990s” (p. 319).
Referring to a truncated quote from his 1992 book Earth in the
Balance, his opponents suggested that he cared more for trees than
people.
        Dynel’s examples of “Lying and humour” come from the medical
drama “House”. She discusses, among other things, lie-based teasing.
Giora in her turn suggests that irony is the default interpretation of
some utterances while it is the nondefault interpretation in other
cases, making the latter related to lying. Egré and Icard’s chapter on
“Lying and vagueness” deals systematically with different kinds of
vagueness. They draw a main dividing line between pragmatic
imprecision and semantic indeterminacy. Claridge discusses such
examples as “You look gorgeous today!” and “[on coming home late for
dinner] There were thousands of people at Tesco” (p. 375). Terkourafi
begins her discussion of “Lying and politeness” with discussing white
lies but then continues to blue, red, yellow, and green lies.
        The fifth and last part of the book situates lying in domains
of study. It begins with a chapter on the “Development of lying and
cognitive abilities” (Victoria Talwar). It then discusses the domains
of lie detection (Samantha Mann), computational linguistics (Kees van
Deemter and Ehud Reiter), social psychology (Bella M. DePaulo),
psychology (Kristina Suchotzki and Matthias Gamer), neuroscience
(Giorgio Ganis), ethics (Thomas L. Carson), law (Stuart P. Green),
economics (Marta Serra-Garcia), education (Anita E. Kelly), discourse
analysis (Darius Galasiński), politics (Vian Bakir, Eric Herring,
David Miller, and Piers Robinson), history (Thomas L. Carson), the
arts (Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer), and different cultures (Fumiko
Nishimura).
        Talwar suggests that two cognitive abilities are required for
a child to lie, the “ability to attribute mental states to oneself and
others” (theory-of-mind, p. 403), and executive functioning which
“refers to a set of higher-order psychological processes that serve to
monitor and control thought and action” (p. 405; e.g., Zelazo and
Müller 2002). In other words, children need to be able both to tell a
convincing lie and to suppress the truth.
        Mann tells us that plenty of “recent deception research has
concentrated on developing methods that will make an interview
situation harder for a liar than for a truth-teller” (p. 413). Such
methods include imposing cognitive load, unexpected questions,
discussing processes versus outcomes, asking about verifiable details,
and the strategic use of evidence. The method of imposing cognitive
load is based on the idea that lying is “often more difficult than
telling the truth” (p. 413). Unexpected questions could include, for
example, asking a person to draw the place where an event occurred. A
person can also be asked about the “planning of an event, rather than
the event itself” (p. 414).
        DePaulo discusses various studies that answer the question how
often people lie. She points out that the claim that “people tell
three lies every ten minutes” is based on a mistaken account of a
“study in which undergraduates had a ten-minute getting-acquainted
conversation with another student (Feldman, Forrest, and Happ 2002)”
(p. 438). In this study, forty percent of the students in fact told no
lies, “and the others told an average of three lies in the ten-minute
conversations” (p. 438).
         As to the evaluation of lying, Carson discusses both authors
who think that lying is absolutely wrong, such as Augustine and Kant,
and the utilitarian idea that “one should always do whatever will have
the best possible consequences” (p. 477), represented by, for example,
Mill. However, he pays special attention to Ross’s (2002[1930]: 20-21)
“eight fundamental prima facie moral duties”, the second of which is
the “duty not to lie” (p. 478). Carson emphasizes that sometimes the
duties can be in conflict and that therefore, according to Ross, there
are situations where “lying is morally permissible” (p. 479).
In his chapter on “Lying and the law”, Green discusses, for example,
perjury, fraud, and rape by deception. The latter includes cases where
a victim is led to believe that they are “undergoing a medical
procedure” or that they are “having sex with their spouse” (p. 488).
Green also discusses lawyer and client lies and lies in politics and
the media.
        One of Galasiński’s examples of “Lying and discourse analysis”
comes from doctor-patient interaction. He compares the doctor’s notes
with the original discussion and observes that the notes distort what
the patient says. Galasiński suggests that the “greatest value that
can be gained from discourse analysis’ insights in
misrepresentation/reception lies in its ability to probe actual
communicative practices of social actors in a variety of contexts” (p.
525).
         Carson discusses “[h]istorically important lies (told by
leaders)” (pp. 543–548). In this category, he includes Roosevelt
deceiving the public about “his intentions concerning war with
Germany” (p. 543), and the Bush administration making false claims
about Iraq in order to justify the 2003 Iraq war. Carson also
discusses “[l]ying and deception about the historical record” (pp.
548–549), for example, Hitler’s lie in 1939 that Poland had attacked
Germany.
        Kümmerling-Meibauer asks, among other things, if pictures can
lie. She mentions the case of “Cottingley Fairies”, a photograph
“taken by two young girls in 1917” (p. 562). Although some people were
critical of the photograph, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, for example, took
it as a proof that fairies exist.
        Nishimura reports a study comparing New Zealanders and
Japanese people making excuses as to why they cannot join someone to a
bar for a drink. Several of the Japanese speakers referred to their
physical condition, while many of the New Zealanders referred to a
prior engagement (Nishimura 2011: 180).

EVALUATION
Since the concept of “lying” is defined in many of the chapters, there
is some repetition in the book. This is perhaps unavoidable and could
also be seen as cohesion, as several of the authors refer, for
example, to Grice’s maxims.
Some examples of cases also occur in more than one chapter. This
suggests that there are some prototypical cases of lying that
circulate in discussions about lying. It also suggests that many
authors have summarized some of the most important studies on lying,
which partially overlap from one chapter to another.
More generally, it seems evident that not everything in the book comes
as a surprise to the reader. While some of the authors have even
conducted new empirical studies on lying, others appear to repeat
major facts.
At the same time, although Meibauer himself expresses a wish in the
preface that the book be even more comprehensive, in my view, the
strength of the book is precisely that it covers so many aspects of
lying. It is a great achievement that one can compare views from
various disciplines by simply leafing through one and the same book.
The 71-page list of references is also a very valuable tool for anyone
interested in doing research on lying.
A good way to approach the book is to read a little here and there
instead of reading all the chapters in numerical order, as some of the
chapters are heavier to read and others downright entertaining. The
book is a treat to any academic interested in lies, lying, and
deception.

REFERENCES
Carson, Thomas L. 2006. The definition of lying. Noûs 40(2). 284–306.
Demos, Raphael. 1960. Lying to oneself. The Journal of Philosophy
57(18). 588–595.
Falkenberg, Gabriel. 1982. Lügen: Grundzüge einer Theorie sprachlicher
Täuschung.   Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Feldman, Robert S., James A. Forrest & Benjamin R. Happ. 2002.
Self-presentation and verbal deception: Do self-presenters lie more?
Basic and Applied Social Psychology 24(2). 163–170.
Frankfurt, Harry G. 2005. On bullshit. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton
University Press.
Gore, Al. 1992. Earth in the balance: Forging a new common purpose.
London: Earthscan publications.
Grice, Paul. 1989. Studies in the way of words. Cambridge,
Massachusetts & London, England: Harvard University Press.
Lackey, Jennifer. 2008. Learning from words: Testimony as a source of
knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199219162.001.0001
Meibauer, Jörg. 2014. Bald-faced lies as acts of verbal aggression.
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 2(1). 127–150.
Nishimura, Fumiko. 2011. Lying: Strategies to manage undesirable
communicative situations in Japan and New Zealand. PhD thesis.
University of Waikato, New Zealand.
<https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/handle/10289/5835>
Ross, William David. 2002 (1930). The right and the good. Edited by
Philip Stratton-Lake. Oxford: Clarendon.
Sorensen, Roy. 2010. Knowledge-lies. Analysis 70(4). 608–615.
Stalnaker, Robert C. 1970. Pragmatics. Synthese 22(1–2). 272–289.
Stalnaker, Robert C. 1978. Assertion. Syntax and semantics, volume 9:
Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole. New York, San Francisco & London:
Academic Press. 315–332.
Wilson, Deirdre & Dan Sperber. 2002. Truthfulness and relevance. Mind
111(443). 583–632.
Zelazo, Philip David & Ulrich Müller. 2002. Executive function in
typical and atypical development. Blackwell handbook of childhood
cognitive development, ed. by Usha Goswami. Malden, USA, Oxford, UK &
Carlton, Australia: Blackwell. 445–469.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Heli Tissari works as an associate professor of English at Umeå
University in Sweden. Her research interests include cognitive and
corpus linguistics, emotions, English historical linguistics, and
semantics. Her latest published work used Natural Semantic
Metalanguage to explain the concept of ‘chastity’ in 18th century
English.



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