Irony, Deception and Humour

Marta Dynel

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781501507892
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book offers fresh perspectives on untruthfulness entailed in various forms of irony, deception and humour, which have so far constituted independent foci of linguistic and philosophical investigation. These three distinct (albeit sometimes co-occurring) notions are brought together within a neo-Gricean framework and consistently discussed as representing overt or covert untruthfulness. The postulates that represent the interface between language philosophy and pragmatics are illustrated with scripted interactions culled from the series House, which help appreciate the complexities of the three concepts at hand. Apart from affording new insights into the nature of irony, deception and humour, this book critically examines previous literature on these notions, as well as relevant aspects of Grice's philosophy of language. Giving a state-of-the-art picture of untruthfulness, this publication will be of interest to both experienced and inexperienced researchers studying Grice's philosophy, irony, deception and/or humour.

Chapter 1
Theoretical preliminaries, terminological conundrums and empirical foundations

House:	First of all, stop saying “a” truth. There is only one truth.
Lucas:	That may be true for you.
Season 5, Episode 3
Cameron:	I told them the truth.
[...]
Wilson:	Alison, their baby’s dying. If the parents weren’t in tears when you left, you didn’t tell them the truth.
Cameron:	That’s not how I see it.
Season 1, Episode 4
House:	Is a lie a lie if everybody knows it’s a lie?
Season 1, Episode 7

This chapter aims to tease out several concepts lying at the heart of this monograph. Besides presenting the notions of (un)truthfulness and sincerity against the backdrop of relevant philosophical and pragmatic literature, this chapter gives a short introduction to the linguistic phenomena under investigation, primarily irony and deception, as well as humour, which straddles the two (but may present truthfulness). It is shown that irony can be conceptualised as overt untruthfulness, whereas deception displays covert untruthfulness. This distinction – it is argued here – seems to be the easiest way of distinguishing between the two concepts, a problem that a number of philosophers and linguists have addressed in passing. Additionally, some rationale is provided for the use of natural, albeit scripted, language data in theoretical studies of deception and irony. The (un)truthfulness-based phenomena are illustrated with examples taken from a popular television series, which is briefly introduced in the last section of this chapter.

1Truth vs (un)truthfulness

According to the dichotomy first proposed by Augustine (1952) and restated by Aquinas (1972), as reported by Vincent Marrelli (2004: 30), truthfulness rests on a “formal”, i.e. believed, truth; as opposed to a “material”, i.e. objective, truth. In line with the traditional philosophical approach, a distinction must be drawn between the truth (i.e. a set of objectively verifiable conditions or facts, the real state of affairs) and truthfulness (i.e. what one believes to be true). Whilst “truth” concerns an objective, verifiable aspect of reality, “truthfulness” applies to the subjective aspect, namely “what the speaker believes to be true” (Meibauer 2014a: 86). In Kant’s (1949: 346) words, “truthfulness (veracitas)” is “the subjective truth in his own person”.

The distinction between truth and truthfulness naturally invites the dichotomy between falsity (i.e. lack of truth, also referred to as what is false or untrue objectively) and untruthfulness (that is what one believes to be false or untrue or what is believed false or untruthful). As understood here, “(un)truthfulness” captures not only an individual’s beliefs but also his/her communication/expression of true or false beliefs (on the polysemy of “truthfulness”, see Vincent Marrelli 2003, 2004, 2006). Hence, truthfulness is seen as a primarily verbal, as well as non-verbal, activity of communicating what one believes to be true, whose product is truthful meaning. In contrast, untruthfulness is commonly thought to lead to (an attempt at) deception,1 that is communicating (verbally or non-verbally) what one believes to be false, i.e. untruthful meaning, in order to sustain/invite a false belief in the targeted hearer (see also Mahon 2008a, 2015). On the whole, the truth vs falsity opposition belongs to the epistemological domain and concerns what is or is not genuinely the case; by contrast, the truthfulness vs deception opposition depends on the communicator’s intention (Bok 1978).

Following Augustine, Aquinas and Kant, many philosophers have observed the fundamental truthfulness-related dichotomies and embraced them in various theoretical frameworks. Truthfulness lies at the heart of the Aristotelian/Kantian category of Quality (Vincent Marrelli 2003, 2004, 2006), the conceptualisation further pursued and popularised by Grice (1989a [1975], 1989b [1978]). Grice’s (1989a [1975]) Cooperative Principle and four categories of maxims appear to have marked a watershed in the field of pragmatics. His perception of the category of Quality, notably the first maxim of Quality, is intimately connected to truthfulness, even though Grice never uses this term himself in any of his published lectures (see Vincent Marrelli 2004).

For his part, the philosopher Habermas (1998 [1976]) regards truth and truthfulness as two validity claims, which include also normative rightness and comprehensibility. Except for comprehensibility, the other three were originally proposed in correspondence to several reality types (the material world, the speaker’s belief world and the interpersonal social world), as well as types of illocutionary force: regulative (what is now known in Speech Act Theory as directives and commissives), cognitive (nowadays, assertives) and expressive acts. Most importantly, truth is related to the representation of facts, central to cognitive language use, whereas truthfulness pertains to the disclosure of the speaker’s subjectivity, which is crucial for expressive language use. Truthfulness concerns the illocutionary force of expressive acts, which is to represent the speaker’s state of mind (Habermas 1998 [1976]).

The distinctions between truth and truthfulness, and between falsity and untruthfulness serve as the bedrock for the philosophy of deception. With only a few exceptions, most deception scholars (e.g. Chisholm and Feehan 1977; Bok 1978; Vincent and Castelfranchi 1981; Davidson 1984; Mahon 2008a, 2015; Meibauer 2014a) are unanimous that deception (in particular, lying) needs to be defined with reference to the speaker’s beliefs, and hence what is dubbed here “untruthfulness”, not objective facts, and thus falsehood, which sometimes escapes unequivocal verification (e.g. when the speaker’s inner feelings or subjective evaluations are involved). As Davidson (1984: 258) puts it, “[i]t is sometimes said that telling a lie entails what is false; but this is wrong. Telling a lie requires not what you say be false but what you think is false. Since we usually believe true sentences and disbelieve false, most lies are falsehoods; but in any particular case, this is an accident”.

Essentially, truthfulness and its opposite, untruthfulness, intrinsically depend on the speaker’s beliefs and intentions. (Un)truthfulness underlies meanings which may not be objectively verifiable, being a matter of the speaker’s mental states at a given moment, encompassing his/her beliefs, as well as emotions. According to Vincent Marrelli, truthfulness pertains to the relationship between “a speaker’s mind (beliefs, or ‘propositional attitude’ and goals or intentions) and a speaker’s communicated beliefs and intentions” (2004: 77). Defining truthfulness in the context of the speaker’s communicative intent, Ozar (2008: 6) states that “the concern with the truthfulness of speakers is not limited to statements that can be true or false, but applies to nearly all communicative acts”. This accords with Habermas’s (1984) conclusion that each speech act carrying regulative, cognitive or expressive force can be judged on the three validity claims, drawing on knowledge from the three worlds. Thus, all speech acts are amenable to (un)truthfulness evaluations, and the speaker can (and should) “express truthfully his [or her] beliefs, intentions, feelings, desires, and the like” (Habermas 1984: 308). Consequently, following Habermas’s train of thought, (un)truthfulness encompasses not only assertive acts but also other acts, such as commissive or directive acts, which do not communicate beliefs per se.2 Therefore, it is argued here that the notion of “belief” in which the prevalent definition of truthfulness is anchored may concern the speaker’s evaluation of the communicated meanings (or illocutionary force), regardless of the form that his/her utterance may take (statements, questions or imperatives) (see also Marsili 2016). This understanding of truthfulness as a very broad psychological notion brings it very close to the construct of sincerity.

2Truthfulness vs sincerity

Sincerity is of immediate relevance to truthfulness, but the relationship between the two notions is a particularly thorny one, as borne out by the literature. Typically, authors focus either on sincerity or on untruthfulness, not addressing the other term at all and using the preferred one with reference to essentially the same concepts. The choice of either label seems to depend on the central topic of discussion and/or underlying theoretical framework.

Untruthfulness is a notion prevalent in the philosophy of deception (see Chapter 4). In his influential encyclopaedic entry, Mahon (2008, 2015) sees an untruthful statement/assertion (a condition for lying) as a statement/assertion the speaker believes to be false. On the other hand, endorsing a speech-act account of lying, a few authors (e.g. Williams 2002; Fallis 2012; Meibauer 2011, 2014a; Stokke 2014; Marsili 2014, 2016, forth) regard lies as insincere assertions. Stokke (2014: 496) states that “an insincere utterance is one that communicates something that does not correspond to the speaker’s conscious attitudes”. Reporting on extant research, Marsili (2016) concludes that a lie is an insincere assertion, a speech act whose content is believed to be false (by the speaker), which Marsili (2016) duly extends to mental states other than beliefs, notably intentions, which he shows to entail beliefs. Despite the diverging labels, the definition of lies as insincere assertions is practically identical to lies depicted as untruthful assertions.

In the field of pragmatics, sincerity is traditionally associated with Speech Act Theory (SAT), where it functions as one of the felicity conditions. The sincerity condition, as originally formulated by Austin, holds that a person invoking a given (performative) procedure must have the designed “thoughts, feelings, or intentions, and the participants must intend so to conduct themselves” (1962: 39). According to the revised versions of this approach, a speech act is sincere only if it is compatible with the speaker’s psychological state or mental attitude (Searle 1969; Searle and Vanderveken 1985; see also Hare 1952; Moran 2005a; Stokke 2014; Marsili forth). In other words, the speaker needs to have the psychological attitude expressed by a given act for it to be sincere. For example, an assertion expresses a belief, an apology expresses regret, and thanking expresses gratitude. Therefore, the sincerity of an assertive act is defined in terms of the speaker’s belief that his/her proposition is true, whilst the sincerity of a directive act is presented in view of the speaker’s wish that the hearer should perform the act specified in the proposition. Consequently, insincerity can be defined as a mismatch between the psychological state of the speaker and the psychological state expressed by the linguistic act the speaker makes (e.g. asserting, committing oneself to doing something or requiring that someone should do something) (Searle and Vanderveken 1985; Marsili forth).

The similarity between the understandings of (un)truthfulness and (in)sincerity shows in the fundamental tenets proposed in the two distinct pragmatic-philosophical traditions. Grice’s first maxim of Quality, “Do not say what you believe to be false” (1989a [1975]: 27), bears strong resemblance to Searle’s sincerity condition for assertions, according to which “the speaker commits himself to a belief in the truth of the expressed proposition” (1979: 62). Some may claim that sincerity is broader in scope than truthfulness, insofar as the former addresses all utterance types. This is because each speech act type has its own sincerity condition, whilst truthfulness can be applicable only to statements, given the “belief” component. However, Grice’s maxims, including the first maxim of Quality, are designed to cover all kinds of utterances in a conversation (see Chapter 2, Section 3), and thus the “belief about the utterance” interpretation of the pivotal maxim may fill in the interpretational gap.

On the whole, unless (in)sincerity and/or (un)truthfulness is/are the principal focus of discussion, the labels are most frequently applied intuitively in conformity with the underlying theoretical backdrop. Interestingly, some authors use the two labels interchangeably. This is what Vincent Marrelli (2003, 2004) appears to do in her discussions of a variety of communicative problems, even though she differentiates between the two notions in her extensive literature survey. Also, one of Habermas’s (1979) validity claims tends to be translated as both “truthfulness” and “sincerity”. Commenting on his output, McCarthy (1979: xviii), the translator, explicitly equates truthfulness with sincerity.

Nonetheless, some authors choose to distinguish between the two constructs, not referring to Gricean or Austinian/Searlean philosophy. For example, according to Akmajian et al. (2001: 371), sincerity pertains to the speaker’s genuine beliefs and intentions, and truthfulness consists in “attempting to say something true”. In this vein, Vincent Marrelli (2004: 26) suggests that sincerity is a component of truthfulness and that it concerns “accuracy of representation of speaker’s ‘truth’/beliefs/intentions, one sense of ‘meaning what you say’ (not being dishonest, no trickery, not making spurious promises)”. This perspective seems to echo Kant’s philosophy. Although Kant’s views of lying revolve around the notion of truthfulness, he does introduce the concept of insincerity, which he presents as “a mere lack of conscientiousness, that is, of purity in one’s professions before one’s inner judge, who is thought of as another person when conscientiousness is taken quite strictly” (1996b [1797]: 553). Sincerity is then a matter of inner states. On the other hand, as opposed to the truth (based on the comparison of what “we say” with “the object in a logical judgment”), truthfulness concerns “one’s declaration or confession”, of which one has immediate consciousness, and hence declarations “what we hold as true” (Kant 1996a [1791]: 34]).

For his part, Williams seems to picture truthfulness as a superordinate notion, “a reflex against deceptiveness” (2002: 1) which implies “a respect for the truth” (2002: 11), and the truth encompasses sincerity. He states that “the two basic virtues of truth” are “Accuracy and Sincerity: you do the best you can to acquire true beliefs, and what you say reveals what you believe” (Williams 2002: 11). In other words, accuracy is pertinent to the state of developing correct beliefs about the real world, involving “care, reliability, and so on, in discovering and coming to believe the truth” (Williams 2002: 127). Sincerity, by contrast, captures the idea that “a speaker says [i.e. verbally communicates] what he believes [to be true]” (Williams 2002: 126).

Castelfranchi and Poggi (1994) distinguish between untruthfulness and insincerity depending on the content of the knowledge that is manipulated in deception. Untruthfulness concerns the speaker’s knowledge about the world, whereas insincerity pertains to the knowledge of the speaker’s mental state (beliefs, goals and feelings). This distinction fails to account for the fact that the knowledge of the world is also a matter of beliefs (which may be inconsistent with “objective facts”, as seen by others).

Simpson (1992) differentiates between insincerity and untruthfulness in his definition of lying, which he presents as dependent on both intentional untruthfulness and insincerity, and as involving the invocation of trust through open sincerity. Simpson states...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Contents
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Epilogue
• References
• Index