Pragmatics of deception

1. Pragmatics of deception Ole Togeby Scandinavian Institute Aarhus University

2. Plan • I. Introduction • II. Text interpretation • III. Communication failures • IV. Presupposition failures • V. False implicatures

3. Definition • Deceive : ‘to cause to believe what is untrue’, implies imposing a false idea or belief that causes ignorance, bewilderment, or helplessness; deception may involve lies, but is something different from lying. • Synonyms: beguile, bluff, cant, cheat, con, delude, fake, feign, fool, fox, frustrate by underhandedness, humour, hypocrisy, kid, lead astray, mislead, pass off, pretend, seduce, swindle, take in, trick.

4. In this paper I’ll define the differences between the following related phenomena: • Obscurity:infelicitous reference and predication • Lying: false predication • Be mistaken: unintended untruth: • Deceiving: false presupposition • Leading astray: false implicating • Seduction: infelicitous illocutionary force

5. Pragmatic methodology • All these concepts are pragmatic phenomena that can only be discussed when situated, that is to say when they occur as part of a situation in which all parts and elements have a fixed and known value, e.g. Who are the hearers? What do they know? What are their interests, and the speaker’s interest? And so on. • Consequently I’ll tell a couple of stories (in which all communication factors have fixed values) and only discuss communication failures committed in utterances made in such well defined situations.

6. Example: The Blue-eyed Boy • ‘When I was in Vienna twenty years ago,’ she began, ‘a pretty boy with big blue eyes made a great stir there by dancing on a rope blindfolded. He danced with wonderful grace and skill, and the blindfolding was genuine, the cloth being tied around his eyes by a person out of the audience. His performance was the great sensation of the season, and he was sent for to dance before the Emperor and Empress, the archdukes and archduchesses, and the court.

7. The Blue-eyed Boy • The great oculist, Professor Heimholz, was present. He had been sent for by the Emperor, since everybody was discussing the problem of clairvoyance. • But in the end of the show he rose up and called out: “Your Majesty,” he said, in great agitation, “and your Imperial Highnesses, this is all humbug, and a cheat.” • ‘ “It cannot be humbug,” said the court oculist, “I have myself tied the cloth around the boy’s eyes most conscientiously.”

8. The Blue-eyed Boy • ‘ “It is all humbug and a cheat," the great professor indignantly insisted. “That child was born blind.” ’ • Isak Dinesen 1934: “The Deluge at Nordeney” in Seven Gothic Tales

9. Example 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes • Many years ago there was an Emperor so exceedingly fond of new clothes that he spent all his money on being well dressed. (…) one day came two swindlers. They let it be known they were weavers, and they said they could weave the most magnificent fabrics imaginable. Not only were their colours and patterns uncommonly fine, but clothes made of this cloth had a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid.

10. The Emperor’s New Clothes • They set up two looms and pretended to weave, though there was nothing on the looms. All the finest silk and the purest old thread which they demanded went into their travelling bags, while they worked the empty looms far into the night. • "I'd like to know how those weavers are getting on with the cloth," the Emperor thought, "I'll send my honest old minister to the weavers," the Emperor decided. (…) So the honest old minister went to the room where the two swindlers sat working away at their empty looms. • "Heaven help me," he thought as his eyes flew wide open, "I can't see anything at all". But he did not say so. • "Don't hesitate to tell us what you think of it," said one of the weavers. • "Oh, it's beautiful -it's enchanting."

11. The Emperor’s New Clothes • The Emperor presently sent another trustworthy official to see how the work progressed and how soon it would be ready. (…) He looked and he looked, but as there was nothing to see in the looms he couldn't see anything. • (…) • He declared he was delighted with the beautiful colours and the exquisite pattern. To the Emperor he said, "It held me spellbound."

12. The Emperor’s New Clothes • All the town was talking of this splendid cloth, and the Emperor wanted to see it for himself while it was still in the looms. (…) • "What's this?" thought the Emperor. "I can't see anything. This is terrible! • Am I a fool? Am I unfit to be the Emperor? What a thing to happen to me of all people! • - Oh! It's very pretty," he said. "It has my highest approval."

13. The Emperor’s New Clothes • Then the Emperor himself came with his noblest noblemen, and the swindlers each raised an arm as if they were holding something. They said, "These are the trousers, here's the coat, and this is the mantle," naming each garment. "All of them are as light as a spider web. One would almost think he had nothing on, but that's what makes them so fine."

14. The Emperor’s New Clothes • So off went the Emperor in procession under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, "Oh, how fine are the Emperor's new clothes! Don't they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!" Nobody would confess that he couldn't see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool.

15. The Emperor’s New Clothes • "But he hasn't got anything on," a little child said. • "Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?" said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, "He hasn't anything on. A child says he hasn't anything on." • "But he hasn't got anything on!" the whole town cried out at last.

16. The Emperor’s New Clothes • The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, "This procession has got to go on." So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn't there at all. • Hans Christian Andersen: The Emperor’s New Clothes, a translation of "Keiserens nye Klæder" 1837 by Jean Hersholt.

17. Example 3: Three fools • Three fools should pass a test to be discharged from the madhouse. The first one was asked: With what body part do you make your thinking? He pointed at his fist and said: I use this one, and he was sent back to the madhouse. The second one was asked the same; he pointed at his fist and was sent back to the madhouse. • Then the third fool was asked; he said: With my head and he was therefore discharged. Then they asked him: How could you figure it out? He pointed at his fist and said: • I used this one.

18. Example 4: Examination • A candidate at the examination desk draws a question, and whispers to the examiner while the co-examiner overhears it: • This is not the question that we have arranged that I should have • Alternative version: This question is not one that we have arranged I should have. Example 5: The Bricklayer • A poor bricklayer brought a big lunch pack with him, but he was embarrassed only to be able to afford one type of filling for his sandwiches, viz. cheese. So when he had finished nine cheese sandwiches and set about eating the tenth and last one, he said: • Now we end up with the cheese sandwich.

19. Example 6: Freud • In 1938 the Nazis had promised Sigmund Freud an exit visa from Austria on condition that he sign a declaration purporting that he had been ”treated by the German authorities and particularly by the Gestapo with all the respect and consideration due to my scientific reputation”. • When the Gestapo official brought the document for his signature, Freud asked if he would be allowed to add one more sentence. Obviously sure of his one-up position, the official agreed, and Freud wrote in his own handwriting: • “I can heartily recommend the Gestapo to anyone”.

20. II. Text interpretation • I. Introduction • II. Text interpretation • III. Communication failures • IV. Presupposition failures • V. False implicatures

21. Non-linguistic deception Lying is always linguistic, while leading astray and deceiving can be linguistic or not linguistic. It is possible to mislead someone only by deceitful behaviour: e.g. in The Emperors new Clothes: They set up two looms and pretended to weave, though there was nothing on the looms. All the finest silk and the purest old thread which they demanded went into their travelling bags, while they worked the empty looms far into the night. The blue-eyed boy did not lie, but pretended without words to be sighted by being blindfolded In this paper I’ll only talk about linguistic deception.

22. Inferential text interpretation • Regular text interpretation is a process of building a mental model of the situation talked about in the text and relate it to the model of the current situation. • The mental model is build by the hearers by • 1) determining what is said from what is pronounced, • and is related to the current situation by • 2) determining what is communicated by what is said

23. A model of interpretation process What is communicated Inference of what is implicated Integration of what is presupposed What is said – what is said Extraction the relevant implications Enrichment of elliptic expressions Disambiguation of lexical items Recognition of reference What is pronounced–what is pronounced–what is pronounced Inferential Accessible Optional Unconscous Involuntary obligatory

24. Inferential text interpretation • If we take the oral situation as basic, we can thus distinguish between: • 1) what is pronounced (known as what is explicit) in uttering a text, • 2) what is said by what is pronounced (called the explicature or the coded meaning), and • 3) what is implicitly communicated by what is said (both presupposition and implicature).

25. Inferential text interpretation • On another dimension we can distinguish between • a) information that the speaker indicates as something that should be taking for granted, • b) information that the speaker states as new in order to make the audience take it in • It gives six type of information: • names, predicates, what is named (the reference), what is predicated, what is presupposed and the implicature.

26. Types of information

27. Terminological note • The verb imply and the noun implication • is used about entailments (logically necessary conclusive information). • The fact that the child was born blindimplies ‘that he was and had always been lacking the power to see’. • The Verb implicate and the noun implicature • is used about pragmatically generated, but logically cancellable information. The answer “-There is a garage round the corner” to the car driver’s remark “-I am out of petrol” implicates that’you can probably get some petrol there’.

28. Terminological note • In Grice’s original article Logic and Conversation 1967 the term conventional implicature is the name for’what is presupposed’, and what I here call implicature Grice calls conversational implicature. Grice’s terminology did not catch on, however, so I will here use Levinson’s terminology: • Presuppositions are conventional, semantic and triggered by lexical items and syntactic constructions when they are uttered in a proposition. • Implicatures are conversational, pragmatic and triggered by the guarantee of relevance for the current purpose of talk exchange, given by the utterance of a speech act.

29. What is said • What is said ( the explicature) is defined as follows: • What is said is information about the stated relations between named things, information that the audience extract from what is pronounced and its context, in order to grasp the meaning of the whole proposition that can be ascribed truth value. • This extraction takes place solely on the basis of knowledge of the grammatical rules and the lexicon of the language

30. What is said • This extraction of what is said from what is pronounced consists of four operations: The audience must: • 1) recognize what the pronounced names (np’s and adverbials) refer to, • 2) disambiguate (monosemiate) the lexical items and the syntactic constructions, • 3) enrich the meaning of the proposition by the information omitted by ellipsis, and • 4) extract the logical entailment (the implications) of the proposition that are necessary for the building of a mental model of the situation

31. What is said • 1) Recognition of what the pronounced names refer to. • In When I was in Vienna twenty years ago,’ she began, • the audience must recognize that I (like she) refers to ’Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag’, and twenty years ago refers to ’the year 1815’ (because it is said in 1835).

32. What is said • 2) Disambiguation of lexical items and syntactical constructions. • The readers have to decide that sensation, in this context, means ‘a sensational event’, and not a sort of ‘feeling’ or ‘sense’; sensation as a lexical item can have both meanings. • In the construction by dancing on a rope blindfolded it has to be recognized that it is ‘the dancing boy’ that is ‘blindfolded’, and not ‘the rope’ although this attachment pattern is possible too, compare with: by dancing on a rope fastened to a tree

33. What is said • 3) enrichment of the meaning of the proposition by the information omitted by ellipsis • He danced with wonderful grace and skill has to be enriched with the information ‘on the rope’; it has been left out by ellipsis.

34. What is said • 4) Extraction of the logical entailments (implications) of the proposition that are necessary for the building of a mental model of the situation. • From the fact ‘that the child was born blind’ the readers have to extract the implication ‘that he was and had always been lacking the power to see’

35. What is communicated • The next step in the inferential text interpretation process is to determine what is communicated by what is said in uttering the speech act in a specific situational setting. • It involves for members of the audience: • a) accepting and integrating in the mental model what is presupposed, and • b) inferring what is implicated.

36. What is presupposed • Presupposition (called a conventional implicature by Grice) is defined as: • What is presupposed is the pieces of information that the speaker by lexical and syntactic choices signals to the audience that they must take as given (and incorporate in their mental model if it isn’t already there) in order to understand what is said as part of existing mental model of the situation talked about. • What falls outside the scope of the sentential negation.

37. What is presupposed • Normally what is presupposed is signalled by lexical items, e.g. all verbs of transition (perfective verbs) presuppose that the previous state was in force when the transition sets in: • In But in the end of the show he rose up and called out: • It is presupposed ‘that he was sitting’ when ‘he rose up’, although it has not been said explicitly. But this is trivial and uncontroversial and is not noticed as something it is necessary to incorporate.

38. What is presupposed • A well known example of presupposition is: • When did you stop beating your wife? • In this example your wife presupposes that the addressee is married, stop presupposes that the process or activity was in force when it stopped; When presupposes that the information in the rest of the sentence is true. If the addressee hasn’t stopped beating his wife, has not ever beaten her, is not married, or is not male, what is presupposed is not given. This is called bullying, which is a sort of presupposition failure. (Harder & Kock 1976)

39. What is presupposed • It is often said that the verb know presupposes the truth of what is known. When uttering the sentence • The professor knew that the boy was born blind • the speaker takes for granted that it is a fact ‘that the boy was born blind’. • And with the sentence: • The court oculist did not know that the boy was born blind • it is also taken for granted ‘that the boy was born blind’. In this way it is a simple test for what is presupposed that it is outside the scope of the sentential negation.

40. What is presupposed • Conjunctions and adverbials can presuppose information too, e.g. but presupposes that there is an opposition between the preceding and the subsequent word: • The waiter is negro but well-groomed. • presupposes that there is an opposition between ‘being negro’ and ‘being well-groomed’ – an example of bullying which reveals the prejudice of the speaker, a controversial prejudice which is also forced on the audience; they cannot react against it, unless they impolitely interrupt the flow of information by discussing something that is not relevant for the message of the utterance.

41. Den kvinde, der blev fundet i Fredericia centrum sent fredag aften, er nu identificeret. Hun er en 28-årig tysker, der kommer fra en institution i Hamborg. Den retarderede kvinde blev fundet i en rundkørsel ved Norgesgade ved 23-tiden fredag aften, men hun har intet sprog. Politiken 8.4.2003 I side 6. The woman found i Fredericia Centre late Friday night, has been identified. She is a 28 -year-old German from Hamburg. The mentally retarded woman was found in a roundabout near Norgesgade about 11 o’clock Friday night, but she has no language If information bullied on the audience is neither given nor controversial, the result is only confusion:

42. What is presupposed • Here it is presupposed that there is an opposition between ’to be found in a round about’ and ’to have no language’, a statement that is neither given nor controversial and must be looked on as a communication failure. • (It is probably the case that the sub-editor of the paper has cut the last sentence which could have been: så man kan ikke finde ud af hvordan hun er kommet frem til rundkørslen i Fredericia. (So it was impossible to find out how she has come to the round about in Fredericia)

43. What is implicated

44. What is implicated • What is implicated (the implicature) • Grice’s conversational implicature, which I suggest called underforståelse in Danish, is defined: • What is implicated is the unspoken information that the members of the audience have licence to infer from what is said in order to see the relevance for them against the background of the current situation. By uttering the speech act the speaker issues a guarantee for the relevance for them of what is said, for the accepted purpose of talk exchange.

45. What is implicated • Optimal relevance is achieved if what is said is the shortest formulation of the truth and the whole truth about the situation talked about, such as required for the accepted purpose of talk exchange. • A: - I am out of petrol. • B: - There is a garage round the corner • Example from Grice 1975 • By B’s speech act it is guaranteed that it provides a piece of information relevant for A in the current situation, and that it is the whole truth. A can now infer that she presumably can get some petrol there, but that B does not know for certain (otherwise he would have said so).

46. What is implicated • The truth of the implicature is – contrary to what holds for presupposition – cancellable; B can cancel the implicature ‘that you can have petrol at the garage’ by adding: • B: - but perhaps it is not open

47. What is implicated • I am passing through the customs (where I can import up to two liters of spirits) carrying a bag with six bottles of aqua vitae. When asked by the customs officer I declare: • I have two bottles of aqua vitae in my bag. • That is not a blatant lie, because if I have six bottles it is a logical implication that I have two too. • It is in fact the truth and nothing but the truth. But it is not the whole truth, and that (the whole truth relevant for accepted purpose of talk exchange) is exactly what I have issued a guarantee for when uttering my remark. • So I am with justice accused for cheating (but not for lying).

48. What is implicated • Many remarkable examples will show both presupposition and implicature; in the example: • The waiter is negro but well-groomed • it is, as mentioned, presupposed that there is an opposition between for a waiter ‘to be negro’ and ‘well-groomed’, but it is at the same time implicated: • ’and therefore we can have our lunch at this restaurant’.

49. What is implicated • It is an implication that when the speaker introduces an opposition by means of the word but, the conclusion is drawn from the second of the pieces of information coordinated by but. The person who says: • The waiter is well-groomed but negro • implicates: • ‘and therefore we cannot have our lunch at this restaurant’.

50. What is implicated • ‘a pretty boy with big blue eyes made a great stir there by dancing on a rope blindfolded. • Here it is implicated, but not presupposed, • ‘that the boy had the capacity to see (if he was not blindfolded). • If he was born blind it would not be relevant that he was blindfolded.