The Pragmatics Of Hypocrisy

As a first attempt to date, this book addresses the notion of hypocrisy from a pragmatic perspective and devises a comprehensive model of verbal hypocrisy. The studies included adopt emic and etic approaches in order to contribute jointly towards an understanding of what appears to be a ubiquitous and multifaceted phenomenon. Going beyond hypocrisy as a mere moral vice, this volume establishes its pragmatic space and confronts it with adjacent notions which, unlike hypocrisy, have been subject to pragmatic examination. The Pragmatics of Hypocrisy is of interest to students and scholars in pragmatics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, rhetoric, communication and media studies, as well as corpus linguistics, and by its transdisciplinary nature, to researchers in philosophy, sociology, and political science. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in the interplay between language, culture and society, across varieties and registers of English.

The Pragmatics of Irony and Banter is the first book-length study analysing irony and banter together. This approach, inherited from Geoffrey Leech’s research, implies that the two notions are intrinsically related. In this thought-provoking volume, the various contributors (linguists, stylisticians, discourse analysts and literary scholars), while not necessarily agreeing on every aspect of this theoretical premise, discuss and develop the idea. In turn, they consider the workings of these two discursive practices in various corpora (face-to-face or digitally-mediated interactions, novels, comedy shows, etc.) thus providing a wealth of examples and case studies. This well-balanced positioning helps the reader to develop a better understanding of these complex discursive practices that play a crucial part in everyday interaction. Steering a course between traditional perspectives and new theoretical approaches, this innovative and exciting way of looking at irony and banter will no doubt open new avenues for research.

Corpus Linguistic Approaches to Deception Detection provides an innovative introduction to the use of the corpus linguistics methodology in the field of deception detection. Bringing together research from both forensic psychology and linguistics, this book uses traditional corpus-assisted methods to reconcile the different approaches used by these two fields and shows how “cues to deception” operate in their linguistic context. Arguing that current methods of analysis do not seem to be fit for purpose, this book shows the need for further development of context-sensitive methods to explore deceptive datasets. This book will be of interest to scholars and postgraduate students in the fields of corpus linguistics, psychology, discourse analysis, and forensic linguistics.

With close attention to the spheres of sport and religion as important sites of moral currency, this book draws on media coverage of major cases of hypocrisy, attending to differing meanings and consequences of hypocrisy within the US, France and Iceland. Instances come from scandals within the established churches, as well as cases from the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Tour de France, and the inquest into the Hillsborough Disaster in the UK. It considers the importance of the context within which moral conduct takes place and the relevance of this for the occurrence of hypocritical action, while exploring also the implications of advances in computer and information technology for controlling messages and monitoring deceit. Identifying the negative effects of the detection of hypocrisy at individual and institutional levels, the author engages with the work of Goffman to argue for the importance of trust in institutions, underlining the necessity of minimizing and correcting hypocritical acts by which this is undermined. A detailed study of hypocrisy and the need for trust, this volume will appeal to scholars and students of sociology with interests in social and moral conduct, sport, religion, Goffman and the notion of social life as artifice.

This user-friendly introduction to a new ‘performative’ methodology in linguistic pragmatics breaks away from the traditional approach which understands language as a machine. Drawing on a wide spectrum of research and theory from the past thirty years in particular, Douglas Robinson presents a combination of ‘action-oriented approaches’ from sources such as J.L. Austin, H. Paul Grice, Harold Garfinkel and Erving Goffman. Paying particular attention to language as drama, the group regulation of language use, individual resistance to these regulatory pressures and nonverbal communication, the work also explains groundbreaking concepts and analytical models. With a key points section, discussion questions and exercises in every chapter, this book will be an invaluable resource to students and teachers on a variety of courses, including linguistic pragmatics, sociolinguistics and interpersonal communication.

This volume presents new research on the pragmatics of personal pronouns. Whereas personal pronouns used to have a reputation of poor substitutes for full NP’s, recent research shows that personal pronouns are a fundamental, if not universal, category, whose pragmatics is central to their understanding. For instance, personal pronouns may indicate attentional continuity or social deixis, and take on genre-specific pragmatic effects. The authors of the present collection investigate such effects and analyse competing forms in context (e.g. she / her in subject position), as well as their pragmatic functions in an extensive range of genres such as advertising, TV series, charity appeals, mother/child interaction or computer-mediated communication. Moreover, one section is devoted to the pragmatics of antecedentless pronouns and so-called ‘impersonal’ personal forms. The volume will be of interest to both scholars and students interested in the pragmatics of functional words.

Irish English, while having been the focus of investigations on a variety of linguistic levels, reveals a dearth of research on the pragmatic level. In the present volume, this imbalance is addressed by providing much-needed empirical data on language use in Ireland in the private, official and public spheres and also by examining the use of Irish English as a reflection of socio-cultural norms of interaction. The contributions cover a wide range of pragmatic phenomena and draw on a number of frameworks of analysis. Despite the wide scope of topics and methodologies, a relatively coherent picture of conventions of language use in Ireland emerges. Indirectness and heterogeneity on the formal level are, for instance, shown to be features of Irish English. This volume is the first book-length treatment of the pragmatics of a national variety of English, or any other language. Indeed, it could be considered a first step towards a new discipline, variational pragmatics, at the interface of pragmatics and dialectology. This book is of primary interest to researchers and students in pragmatics, variational linguistics, Irish English, English as Foreign Language (EFL), cross-cultural communication and discourse analysis. Furthermore, the pragmatic descriptions provided will be of practical use in the increasingly important English as Second Language (ESL) context in Ireland. Finally, it is also of relevance to professionals dealing with Ireland and, indeed, to anyone interested in a deeper understanding of Irish culture.

This edited volume examines concepts of sincerity in politics and international relations in order to discuss what we should expect of politicians, within what parameters they should work, and how their decisions and actions could be made consistent with morality. The volume features an international cast of authors who specialize in the topic of sincerity in politics and international relations. Looking at how sincerity bears on political actions, practices, and institutions at national and international level, the introduction serves to place the chapters in the context of ongoing contemporary debates on sincerity in politics and international theory. Each chapter focuses on a contemporary issue in politics and international relations, including corruption, public hypocrisy, cynicism, trust, security, policy formulation and decision-making, political apology, public reason, political dissimulation, denial and self-deception, and will argue against the background of a Kantian view of sincerity as unconditional. Offering a significant comprehensive outlook on the practical limits of sincerity in political affairs, this work will be of great interest to both students and scholars.