Jörg Meibauer | Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz
Lying is a cognitive ability serving the deception of interlocutors. Following Grice (1989), we can say that lying violates the first maxim of Quality. Yet there are scholars who argue that the “Western” (rationalist, individualistic) view of Grice cannot account for the social and cultural variation we find in non-Western cultures (e.g., Danziger 2010). This article discusses a number of arguments for and against “Western” Grice and argues that the universalist view of the first maxim of Quality is compatible with social and cultural variation.
1999 “The Role of Theory of Mind and Deontic Reasoning in the Evolution of Deception.” In Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, ed. by Martin Hahn, and Scott C. Stoness, . 7–12. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
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1993Discreet Indiscretions: The Social Organization of Gossip. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
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2005 “Five Approaches to Explaining ‘Truth’ and ‘Deception’ in Human Communication.” Journal of Anthropological Research 61: 289–315.
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2007Lies that Bind: Chinese Truth, other Truths. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
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2002 “Everyone Has To Lie in Tzeltal.” In Talking to Adults: The Contribution of Multiparty Discourse to Language Acquisition, ed. by Shoshana Blum-Kulka, and Catherine E. Snow, 241–275. Mahwa, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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2013 “Lying between English and Chinese: An Intercultural Comparative Study.” Intercultural Pragmatics 10: 375–401.
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1996 “Semantic Prototypes and the Pragmatics of Lie Across Cultures.” The LACUS Forum 23: 475–483
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2010 “On Trying and Lying: Cultural Configurations of Grice’s Maxim of Quality.” Intercultural Pragmatics 7: 199–219.
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1976 “Lies, Mockery and Family Integrity.” In Mediterranean Family Structures, ed. by John George Peristiany, 389–406. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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1993 “Truth and Intentionality: An Ethnographic Critique.” Cultural Anthropology 8: 215–245.
Eichelberger, Julie
2012A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis of the Spanish Word Lie: Implications and Applications for the Second Language Learner. MA Thesis: Baylor University.
2012 “Lying as a Violation of Grice’s First Maxim of Quality.” Dialectica 66: 563–581.
Gilsenan, Michael
1976 “Lying, Honor and Contradiction.” In Transaction and Meaning: Directions in the Anthropology of Exchange and Symbolic Behaviour, ed. by Bruce Kapferer, 191–219. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.
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1989 “Logic and Conversation.” In Studies in the Way of Words, Herbert Paul Grice, 22–40. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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2010 “The Spanish Notion of Lie: Revisiting Coleman and Kay.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 3199–3213.
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2013Intercultural Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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2000 “Culture and Information Manipulation Theory: The Effects of Self-construal and Locus of Benefit on Information Manipulation.” Communication Studies 51: 55–73.
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2013 “Little Liars: Development of Verbal Deception in Children.” Child Development Perspectives 7: 91–96.
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2014The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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2010Eavesdropping: An Intimate History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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2014 “Information Manipulation Theory 1.” In Encyclopedia of Deception (Vol. 2), ed. by Timothy R. Levine, 507–509. Los Angeles: Sage.
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2006 “Implicature.” In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (Vol. 5; 2nd edition), ed. by Edward K. Brown. 568–580. Oxford: Elsevier.
Meibauer, Jörg
2012 “Pragmatic Evidence, Context, and Story Design: An Essay on Recent Developments in Experimental Pragmatics.” Language Sciences 34: 768–776.
Meibauer, Jörg
2014Lying at the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Nishimura, Fumiko
2011Lying: Strategies to Manage Undesirable Communicative Situations in Japan and New Zealand. PhD Dissertation, University of Waikato. Available at: [URL] (accessed 4 April 2016)
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1976 “The Universality of Conversational Postulates.” Language in Society 5: 67–80.
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1975 “Everyone Has To Lie.” In Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Use, ed. by Mary Sánches, and Ben G. Blount. 57–80. New York: Academic Press.
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2002 “The Acceptability of Deception as a Function of Perceiver’s Culture, Deceiver’s Intention, and Deceiver-Deceived Relationship.” Western Journal of Communication 66: 158–180.
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2004 “A Cognitive Neurobiological Account of Deception: Evidence from Functional Neuroimaging.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 359: 1755–1762.
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1987 “The Definition of Lie.” In Cultural Models in Language and Thought, ed. by Dorothy Holland, and Naomi Quinn, 3–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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to appear): “Lying and Politeness.” In The Oxford Handbook of Lying ed. by Jörg Meibauer Oxford Oxford University Press
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2004Words in the Way of Truth. Truthfulness, Deception, Lying across Cultures and Disciplines. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane.
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2012 “When a Lie is Not a Lie: Understanding Chinese Working-class Mothers’ Moral Teaching and Moral Conduct.” Social Development 21: 68–87.
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1988 “The Impact of Confucianism on Interpersonal Relationships and Communication Patterns in East Asia.” Communication Monographs 55: 374–388.
Cited by (4)
Cited by 4 other publications
Mubashra, Saima & Ghazala Kausar
2023. The Truth About Mendacity: The Role of Deception Motives in Perception of Deceptive Communication in Pakistan. SAGE Open 13:4
Meibauer, Jörg
2018. The Linguistics of Lying. Annual Review of Linguistics 4:1 ► pp. 357 ff.
Jörg Meibauer
2018. The Oxford Handbook of Lying,
Meibauer, Jörg
2023. On commitment to untruthful implicatures. Intercultural Pragmatics 20:1 ► pp. 75 ff.
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