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The Roles of Linguistic Meaning and Context in the Concept of Lying

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The Roles of Linguistic Meaning and Context in the Concept of Lying THE ROLES OF LINGUISTIC MEANING AND CONTEXT IN THE CONCEPT OF LYING BY BENJAMIN WEISSMAN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2019 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Marina Terkourafi, Leiden University, Director Professor Tania Ionin, Chair Professor Peter Lasersohn Adjunct Assistant Professor Darren Tanner ii ABSTRACT This dissertation adopts an experimental approach to studying lie judgments. It focuses on lie judgments to different types of meaning within a pragmatic framework – namely bare linguistic meaning, explicature, and implicature – to study whether the (in)directness of communicated false content affects the extent to which an utterance is judged as a lie. In addition, it manipulates several contextual factors – namely the genre of discourse, pre-existing biases towards the speaker, the speaker’s intention to deceive, and the stakes of the situation – to investigate the extent to which these extralinguistic contextual factors affect lie judgments as well. Lastly, the project includes a reaction time experiment designed to investigate the mental representations of the categories of lie and mislead and how false explicatures and false implicatures are categorized. In exploring the variability in lie judgments, I gather evidence that support amendments to the discussion of lie judgments in the linguistic literature and additionally draw conclusions relevant to the broader discussion of frameworks of linguistic meaning. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Completing graduate school would not have been possible without the love and support from my parents, Susan Pasternack and Fred Weissman. I owe them immense thanks for their support throughout the years. Additional thanks to my mother, Susan, for having lent her keen editor’s eye to this dissertation, even when I insisted she didn’t have to! Completing school would also not have been possible without the love and support from my girlfriend, Vivian Shie, who has always provided love and encouragement and has constantly been there to support me at all times. Additional thanks go out to the UIUC professors who have gone out of their way to ensure my success during the PhD: Marina Terkourafi, Darren Tanner, and Ryan Shosted. Thank you to all the members of my committee for providing insightful feedback and comments along the way, even back in my second-year qualifying exam predecessor to this project. I would also like to thank the people in and around FLB 4036 for enabling and partaking in goofy times around the office, always keeping things light. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge my undergraduate advisor at William & Mary – Iyabo Osiapem – for being an invaluable mentor to me not only during my undergraduate studies but still to this day. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS 1: INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................1 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................7 2.1: Lying .................................................................................................................7 2.2: False Implicatures .............................................................................................9 2.3: Empirical Approaches in the Study of Lying .................................................13 2.4: Linguistic Meaning .........................................................................................18 3: METHODS ....................................................................................................................31 3.1: Data Collection ...............................................................................................31 3.2: Participants......................................................................................................33 3.3: Data Analysis ..................................................................................................35 3.4: Materials .........................................................................................................37 3.5: Terminology....................................................................................................42 4: GENRE ..........................................................................................................................44 4.1: Introduction .....................................................................................................44 4.2: Methods ..........................................................................................................50 4.3: Results .............................................................................................................51 4.4: Discussion .......................................................................................................58 4.5: Conclusions .....................................................................................................60 5: SPEAKER-RELATED BIASES ...................................................................................62 5.1: Introduction .....................................................................................................62 5.2: Methods ..........................................................................................................65 5.3: Results .............................................................................................................66 5.4: Discussion .......................................................................................................72 5.5: Conclusions .....................................................................................................75 6: INTENT TO DECEIVE.................................................................................................77 6.1: Introduction .....................................................................................................77 6.2: Methods ..........................................................................................................82 6.3: Results .............................................................................................................84 6.4: Discussion .......................................................................................................90 6.5: Conclusions .....................................................................................................93 7: SITUATIONAL STAKES .............................................................................................94 7.1: Introduction .....................................................................................................94 7.2: Methods ..........................................................................................................97 7.3: Results .............................................................................................................99 7.4: Discussion .....................................................................................................105 7.5: Conclusions ...................................................................................................107 8: LYING AND MISLEADING – A RESPONSE TIME EXPERIMENT ....................109 8.1: Introduction ...................................................................................................109 v 8.2: Methods ........................................................................................................116 8.3: Results ...........................................................................................................118 8.4: Discussion .....................................................................................................132 8.5: Conclusions ...................................................................................................135 9: DISCUSSION ..............................................................................................................136 9.1: Cross-Experiment Results.............................................................................137 9.2: Theories of Lying..........................................................................................147 9.3: Theories of Linguistic Meaning ....................................................................149 9.4: Epistemic Vigilance ......................................................................................157 9.5: Limitations and Future Directions ................................................................161 10: CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................166 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................169 APPENDIX A - MATERIALS ........................................................................................186 A1 – Chapter 4 – Genre .......................................................................................186 A2 – Chapter 5 – Speaker-Related Biases ...........................................................194 A3 – Chapter 6 – Intent to Deceive .....................................................................197 A4 – Chapter 7 – Situational Stakes ....................................................................203 APPENDIX B – RESIDUALS HISTOGRAMS .............................................................209 1 1 Introduction This dissertation investigates
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