Deception theory
I'm writing a paper on Information Manipulation theory. Neat stuff. Essentially, the theory is that there's a kind of unwritten code of how cooperative conversation is supposed to happen. Really - someone asks you a question, you're expected to answer it. But more importantly than that, there are expectations on HOW you answer it. Violate one or many of these expectations and you're being deceptive.
The interesting part is that the categories are Quality, Quantity, Manner, and Relation.
So imagine you have some sensitive information. You're going out on a date with someone later on tonight, and someone else you're dating asks if he can stop by for the evening. An honest, non-violating answer would be complete and truthful. "This is a bad night, I've got a date later on and I want to get ready for it." To breach expectations of Quantity, you'd just say "no, not tonight.". You're not really getting into the sensitive information. Although it's not breaking laws of Quality. To do that, you'd actually say something wrong, like "I'm not feeling well tonight". You're purposefully lying about the sensitive information. For relation violations, you'd just say something irrelevant "I've got a big test tomorrow that I really need to study for". Yes, you do, but it has nothing to do with any plans you're making for tonight. For Manner violations, you simply re-word it to be less harsh, while simultaneously avoiding any of the actual sensitive information. "Maybe tomorrow night, I'm really busy tonight".
Of course, any comments could violate several of these as well. "don't you have studying you need to do instead of visit me all the time?" would be a violation of relevance and manner. You can easily alter both quality (truthfulness) and any of the others at the same time too.
The quality category is one that a few of us try to avoid. We artfully use the other strategies instead. Some say this is still lying. I personally agree that it's deception, but not lying. Semantic difference I suppose. But I've heard conversations recently from "truthful" people who used multiple violations. Employing guilt trips to distract, breaking the relevance rules. Skirting around real issues with fancy wording, turning arguments into pointless semantic debates, violating both manner and relevance rules.
Neat stuff. Now back to writing in a more literary style. Odd that I take a break from writing about deception theory so I can write here about deception theory.
Zeus - god of reiterations
The interesting part is that the categories are Quality, Quantity, Manner, and Relation.
So imagine you have some sensitive information. You're going out on a date with someone later on tonight, and someone else you're dating asks if he can stop by for the evening. An honest, non-violating answer would be complete and truthful. "This is a bad night, I've got a date later on and I want to get ready for it." To breach expectations of Quantity, you'd just say "no, not tonight.". You're not really getting into the sensitive information. Although it's not breaking laws of Quality. To do that, you'd actually say something wrong, like "I'm not feeling well tonight". You're purposefully lying about the sensitive information. For relation violations, you'd just say something irrelevant "I've got a big test tomorrow that I really need to study for". Yes, you do, but it has nothing to do with any plans you're making for tonight. For Manner violations, you simply re-word it to be less harsh, while simultaneously avoiding any of the actual sensitive information. "Maybe tomorrow night, I'm really busy tonight".
Of course, any comments could violate several of these as well. "don't you have studying you need to do instead of visit me all the time?" would be a violation of relevance and manner. You can easily alter both quality (truthfulness) and any of the others at the same time too.
The quality category is one that a few of us try to avoid. We artfully use the other strategies instead. Some say this is still lying. I personally agree that it's deception, but not lying. Semantic difference I suppose. But I've heard conversations recently from "truthful" people who used multiple violations. Employing guilt trips to distract, breaking the relevance rules. Skirting around real issues with fancy wording, turning arguments into pointless semantic debates, violating both manner and relevance rules.
Neat stuff. Now back to writing in a more literary style. Odd that I take a break from writing about deception theory so I can write here about deception theory.
Zeus - god of reiterations