President's Roundtable: “Tell Me a Story”: Stories that Inform, Transform, and Guide

Work on natural language meaning in linguistics and philosophy often assumes a highly idealized model of communication, one grounded in cooperation, honesty, and trust. Real-world communication is, of course, quite different. We use language both to assert what we believe to be the case and to directly deceive by lying. Lying, however, is just one tool among many we use to deceive with language. We use language to deceive indirectly as well. We bullshit, mislead, and insinuate (among other deceptive acts of speech). Further, the distinction between lying and other forms of deceptive speech is significant in a variety of domains, both formal and informal. For example, the lying-misleading distinction is one that has enormous import in our intimate relationships, politics, and the courtroom (among other venues). A range of fields beyond linguistics have contributed to our understanding of deceptive speech, including philosophy, psychology, sociology, political, and legal studies. But, despite the significance that deceptive speech plays in our lives and several millennia of inquiry, we have a poor understanding of the taxonomy of verbal deception and only preliminary answers to foundational questions (including: How should we characterize the different kinds of deceptive speech?; How do we acquire the ability to deceive through language?; How can we reliably detect verbal deception, if at all?; etc.). Quite a bit of work on deceptive speech has been devoted to articulating its taxonomy. A simple, albeit controversial, taxonomy has emerged in recent years: lying, misleading, and bullshitting. Following a section which presents General Overviews of deceptive speech, there are sections below devoted to each of Lying, Misleading, and Bullshitting, respectively, as well as a final section highlighting work that has sought to expand this taxonomy. In each section, key references and guiding questions are described.