The third volume of ‘Foundations in language and law’, comprising sixteen chapters grouped into four thematic parts, delves into the salient subjects of falsehoods, deceit, and dishonesty, which have gained increased prominence recently.
Part I lays the theoretical foundation, introducing key figures like Augustine, Kant, and Frankfurt. While it provides a crucial foundation for the subsequent empirical chapters, it may challenge readers unfamiliar with pragmatics and implicatures. Thomas L. Carson's opening chapter explores the terminology and concepts used to distinguish between various shades of falsehood. William G. Lycan builds on this to underscore the moral philosophical foundation, explaining intentional deception through implicature. Roy Sorensen explores a priori and a posteriori lies, addressing the question of responsibility in deception scenarios, on the part of the perpetrator or the victim.
Part II explores these theories through experimental research and empirical evidence on people's judgements of various forms of dishonesty. Alex Wiegmann & Neele Engelmann use hypothetical scenarios to confirm a preferential tendency of misleading over outright lying when faced with personal choice. Ronny Boogaart, Henrike Jansen, & Maarten van Leeuwen examine the ‘viewpoint defence’, a strategy of quoting others to deflect personal commitment, showing that quoting can give rise to implicatures, potentially holding quoters accountable for the cited content. Marta Dynel offers insights into multimodal deception on social media, which provides numerous avenues for resource manipulation, exploring online trolling and hoaxes in the ‘post-truth’ era.
Part III deals with puffery, bluffery, and ‘bullshit’ as means of skirting the line between truth and falsehood. Tim Kenyon & Jennifer Saul focus on political speech and infamous ‘bullshit artists’, who manipulate outcomes regardless of the truth or falsity of their audience's beliefs. Laurence Horn shifts the focus to the legal bluff, using Richard Dawkins’ and John Krebs's ‘sneaky fucker strategy’ to explore its application in the courtroom, where intentional misleading to create false inferences is commonly employed, with the onus on the prosecutor to uncover it. Elisabeth Camp addresses ‘crafty insinuators’ and their accountability-avoiding speech, which allows for plausible deniability.
Part IV focuses on perjury. Roger W. Shuy examines the language evidence in perjury cases, exploring the roles of legal actors and the use of linguistic analyses. Saul Kassin deals with suspect interviews and the guilt-presumptive process, highlighting the risk of false confessions. Izabela Skoczeń & Aleksander Smywiński-Pohl explore whether intent to deceive or objective truth determines perjury in the non-cooperative courtroom setting, using scalar implicatures. An editorial error involves references to a postulated appendix that is, in fact, missing. Benjamin Weissman considers technically true statements with false implicatures and their interpretation in court. Lawrence M. Solan discusses the ‘literal truth’ defence, citing the US Supreme Court's decision, alongside landmark perjury cases, evaluating the law's response and tolerance of dishonest conduct.
The book's strength lies in its cohesive narrative from various perspectives, drawing on a diverse group of scholars and evidence, raising important epistemological questions. Incorporating empirical evidence and examining how ordinary individuals perceive dishonesty adds practical relevance, especially in the context of free speech and its legal and political implications. This book is well-suited to attract a broad readership interested in exploring the complex landscape of lying and falsehoods.
