Discourse and Democracy

This chapter summarizes the main analytical moves in the TRUST heuristic for analyzing untruthfulness. It then applies the heuristic to three short texts that have been widely called out as lies: Trump’s tweet about large-scale voter fraud just before the 2016 presidential elections; the “Brexit Battle Bus” claim that the United Kingdom sent £350 million per week to the European Union; and Tony Blair’s 2002 statement to Parliament about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. The cases share a common theme: the capacity of untruthful public discourse to undermine democratic legitimacy by, respectively, questioning the integrity of electoral procedures, harming the capacity of voters to make a rational choice, and undermining faith in the rational and responsible deliberation of one’s leaders. The chapter troubles the simple attribution of lying in these cases and shows how a TRUST analysis can lead to a deeper understanding of the types and ethical value of untruthfulness.

Culpability and Breach of Trust

This chapter sets out a framework for analyzing the relative culpability of the breach of trust represented by willfully insincere and/or epistemically negligent discourse. Given that blameworthiness is usually linked with intentionality, the chapter begins by arguing in favor of culpable ignorance. After illustrating why an analysis of the degree of culpability is necessary for the framework, it is argued that we can best establish degree of culpability by considering the gravity of the breach of trust involved. Nine contextually based trust-related dimensions are proposed (e.g. the vulnerability of the hearer, the institutional power of the speaker, and the perceived harm that might result from the untruthful discourse), and it is suggested that the ethical breach might be aggravated or attenuated accordingly. Finally the chapter considers further aggravating and mitigating circumstances that need to be taken into account when making a final ethical judgement of the discursive act of untruthfulness.

Claims of and Evidence for Untruthfulness

Chapter 3 focuses on the first two steps of the TRUST untruthfulness heuristic: CLAIM and EVIDENCE. It begins by noting four principal rational motives for calling out lies and bullshit (confession, detection, self-contradiction, and falsification), but stresses that in the majority of cases one relies primarily on falsification. This is problematic because Chapters 1 and 2 stress that both discursive insincerity and epistemic irresponsibility are subjective rather than objective notions. The reliance on falsification as a starting point for analysis restricts the application of the framework primarily to “factually significant” and “falsifiable” claims. A distinction is made between “salty-type” statements that invite further investigation and “tasty-type” statements that invite agreement or disagreement but not further investigation. Only “salty-type” claims are open to a TRUST analysis. Finally, the challenge of anti-realism is taken up, and it is argued that there is more consensus about evidence than the “truth wars” would suggest.

Insincere Discourse Strategies

This chapter sets out a framework for analyzing insincere discourse strategies. Though not equivalent, there is sufficient overlap between insincerity and deception to begin by considering typologies of deception based on Grice’s Cooperative Principle and the speaker’s communicative intentions and goals. However, the chapter argues for an approach to insincere discourse based on a number of communicative variables relating to pursuit of inquiry. Accordingly, the underlying insincere discourse strategy is considered to be withholding (failing to disclose what you believe you should disclose), while misleading involves linguistically leading the interlocutor astray with regard to that concealed knowledge either by suggestion (misleading without lying) or explicit assertion (lying). The insincere discourse strategies may be realized through sub-strategies (e.g., omitting, evading, and blocking) or more general pragmatic tactics (e.g., equivocating and falsely implicating). Insincere discourse becomes unethical or wrong when it is willful (i.e., it breaches trust and is not justifiably suspended).

Epistemically Irresponsible Discourse Pathologies

This chapter sets out a systematic but exploratory framework for analyzing epistemically irresponsible discourse pathologies. It begins with the bridge category of bullshitting, which is both insincere and irresponsible. It then explores in turn the three main discourse pathologies: dogma, distortion, and bullshit. Dogma, or closed-minded discourse that disregards counter-evidence, underlies both distortion and bullshit. Distortion (e.g. overstatement) misrepresents the evidence and/or the epistemic confidence we can justifiably have in it. Finally, bullshit is a form of radical distortion that misrepresents the evidence by appearing to ignore altogether the need for evidential grounding. Given our susceptibility to being epistemically irresponsible, the bar is set high for moral culpability. For speakers to commit epistemic negligence, they must (a) be performing a role requiring a duty of epistemic care; (b) fail to investigate sufficiently in accordance with that duty; and (c) fail to hedge their claims in proportion to the evidence.

Justified Untruthfulness

This chapter outlines a systematic framework for analyzing the many discursive circumstances in which speakers may justifiably suspend their commitment to truthfulness. Other approaches to ethical justifiability, such as the overtness of the communication and the epistemic categorization of conventional speech settings, are considered but rejected. The framework of suspensions set out here provides for a more flexible and nuanced analysis that does not prejudge the epistemic status of a given discursive context. Three main types of suspension—conventional, consequential, and condonable—are identified through application of the Golden Rule, and the chapter considers the conditions under which they are both justifiable in principle and justified in practice. While breach of trust is the primary determinant of whether or not a speaker’s suspension of commitment to truthfulness is justifiable in principle, there is no necessary correlation between discourse context and trust.

Poisoning and Partisanship

This chapter demonstrates an alternative “holistic” method of TRUST analysis in which the focus is not on individual claims or short sections of text with a few related claims, but on the general manifestation of untruthfulness with respect to a particular case. The chapter provides an extensive analysis of multiple claims regarding the poisoning of the Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England, in March 2018. It opens with the prime minister’s short statement to Parliament just after the attack, which superficially but confusingly reminds us of Blair’s Preface, but this is used as a springboard for exploring various types of untruthful discourse that have emerged in relation to this international crisis. The framework thus becomes a way of structuring a much broader analysis of untruthfulness in international discourse. The study also demonstrates very clearly the role of social media in promoting epistemic partisanship.

Conclusion

The TRUST framework represents a radical challenge both to existing notions of untruthfulness and to the relevance of this topic to language research. This conclusion to the book All Bullshit and Lies? returns to the three central propositions of the TRUST framework concerning the scope, ethical import, and discursive analysis of untruthfulness, and teases out some of their implications, limitations, and possible future directions. It then takes up the challenge of the relevance of this topic to language research and considers the possibility of an interdisciplinary Ethical Discourse Analysis. Finally, the potential impact of the framework is discussed in terms of the fight-back against epistemic partisanship, the judgment of knowledge on purely partisan grounds. It focuses particularly on applications to education, fostering a greater awareness of the economy of truthfulness, the training of journalists, fact-checkers, and advocates, and the regulation of political advertising and social media.

Bullshit, Inquiry, and Irresponsibility

This chapter teases out some key theoretical issues relating to the extension of the concept of untruthfulness from sincerity to epistemic irresponsibility, or a lack of care with which speakers act in forming, retaining, and conveying their beliefs. It argues that subjective responsibility is already embedded within the nature of assertion, but that epistemic responsibility is also both an intellectual virtue and a moral commitment. The growing work on bullshitting and bullshit enrichens our understanding of epistemically irresponsible discourse, but the focus on relating bullshitting to lying and insincerity prevents us from seeing bullshit as deriving from a distinct aspect of untruthfulness. Instead, taking dogma rather than bullshit as a point of departure opens up this aspect of untruthfulness to broader epistemic concerns. The chapter closes by comparing the recent notion of “negligent false assertion” to the account of epistemic irresponsibility in the TRUST framework.

Trust, Cooperation, and Insincerity

This chapter teases out some key theoretical issues relating to the scope, ethics, and situated analysis of insincerity, as one of the two faces of untruthfulness. It begins by grounding sincerity in an indispensable human need for trust and cooperation and notes how insincerity can breach trust. It then gives arguments for why the TRUST framework does not focus on deception. Grice’s implicature is considered fundamental to understanding insincerity within a framework of communicative cooperation, but his sincerity maxim unnecessarily narrows its scope. Instead, insincerity is viewed as the disruption of inquiry. By drawing on a psychological account of how untruthfulness works in situated discursive practice, the chapter argues that the concept of insincerity needs to be extended to cases of “editing out” where there is no textual clue to omission. This broadened conception of insincerity, which subsumes misleading and lying under withholding, is termed discursive insincerity.