All Bullshit and Lies?

Insincerity, Irresponsibility, and the Judgment of Untruthfulness

Chris Heffer (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

352 Seiten

2020
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-092328-0 (ISBN)

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Drawing on linguistic pragmatics, philosophy, psychology and law, All Bullshit and Lies? develops a comprehensive framework for analyzing not just the deliberate insincerity of lying, misleading, and withholding, but also pathological forms of untruthfulness such as dogma, distortion, and bullshit, deriving from an irresponsible approach to knowledge.

In a postfactual world in which claims are often held to be true only to the extent that they confirm pre-existing or partisan beliefs, this book asks crucial questions: how can we identify the many forms of untruthfulness in discourse? How can we know when their use is ethically wrong? How can we judge untruthfulness in the messiness of situated discourse?

Drawing on pragmatics, philosophy, psychology, and law, All Bullshit and Lies? develops a comprehensive framework for analyzing untruthful discourse in situated context. TRUST, or Trust-related Untruthfulness in Situated Text, sees untruthfulness as encompassing not only deliberate manipulations of what is believed to be true (the insincerity of withholding, misleading, and lying) but also the distortions that arise from an irresponsible attitude towards the truth (dogma, distortion, and bullshit). Chris Heffer discusses times when truth is not “in play,” as in jokes or fiction, as well as instances when concealing the truth can achieve a greater good. The TRUST framework demonstrates that untruthfulness becomes unethical in discourse, though, when it unjustifiably breaches the trust an interlocutor invests in the speaker.

In addition to the theoretical framework, this book provides a clear, practical heuristic for analyzing discursive untruthfulness and applies it to such cases of public discourse as the Brexit “battle bus,” Trump's tweet about voter fraud, Blair and Bush's claims about weapons of mass destruction, and the multiple forms of untruthfulness associated with the Skripal poisoning case.

In All Bullshit and Lies? Chris Heffer turns a critical eye to fundamental questions of truthfulness and trust in our society. This timely and interdisciplinary investigation of discourse provides readers a deeper theoretical understanding of untruthfulness in a postfactual world.

Chris Heffer is Reader in Linguistics in the School of English, Communication, and Philosophy at Cardiff University. He is the author of The Language of Jury Trial (2005) and editor of Legal-Lay Communication: Textual Travels in the Law (OUP 2013).

Acknowledgments

Preface: On Epistemic Partisanship and Trust

INTRODUCTION

PART 1: THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS
1 Trust, Co-operation and Insincerity
2 Bullshit, Inquiry and Irresponsibility

PART 2: THE TRUST FRAMEWORK
3 Claims of and Evidence for Untruthfulness
4 Justified Untruthfulness
5 Insincere Discourse Strategies
6 Epistemically Irresponsible Discourse
7 Culpability and Breach of Trust

PART 3: CASE STUDIES
8 Discourse and Democracy: The TRUST Heuristic and Sample Analyses
9 Poisoning and Partisanship: An Analysis of the Salisbury Nerve Agent Attack

CONCLUSION

References.

Erscheinungsdatum	05.08.2020
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	241 x 159 mm
Gewicht	626 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Sprachphilosophie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Kommunikationswissenschaft
ISBN-10	0-19-092328-8 / 0190923288
ISBN-13	978-0-19-092328-0 / 9780190923280
Zustand	Neuware