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Part of
Current Issues in Intercultural Pragmatics
Edited by István Kecskés and Stavros Assimakopoulos
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 274] 2017
► pp. 33–52

Chapter 2
“Western” Grice?

Lying in a cross-cultural dimension

| 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.

Keywords: collectivism, deception, individualism, lying, maxim of Quality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A general definition of lying
  • 3.Investigating lying from a cross-cultural perspective
    • 3.1Standard situations of lying
      • 3.1.1Greetings
      • 3.1.2Refusal by untruthful excuses
      • 3.1.3Pedagogical contexts
    • 3.2Values associated with lying
      • 3.2.1Truthfulness and honesty
      • 3.2.2Modesty and face-saving
      • 3.2.3Narration and humor
      • 3.2.4Antisocial goals, e.g. gossip
      • 3.2.5Prosocial goals
  • 4.Is the Gricean approach ethnocentric?
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.274.03mei
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Meibauer, Jörg
2018. The Linguistics of Lying. Annual Review of Linguistics 4:1 ► pp. 357 ff. DOI logo
Jörg Meibauer
2018. The Oxford Handbook of Lying, DOI logo
Meibauer, Jörg
2023. On commitment to untruthful implicatures. Intercultural Pragmatics 20:1 ► pp. 75 ff. DOI logo
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 DOI logo

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