Language - the Loaded Weapon by Bolinger Dwight;

Author:Bolinger, Dwight;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 1980-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Power and deception

On 10 May 1978 a nuclear bomb, code-named Transom, was scheduled to go ofT at the bottom of a two-thousand-foot shaft in the desert at Yucca Flat, Nevada. Preparations apparently went well, and the Department of Energy announced that the explosion had taken place according to plan, at 8 am. But seismographs throughout the West told a different story; no tremors were detected. The bomb was a dud. The Department of Energy was caught in a barefaced lie.

Why a modifier like barefaced on the plain unvarnished lie? It is because lies are modified by their aims, and come in varying shades of intensity, detectability, literalness, and social acceptance. One may admit to lying and justify it as a social necessity, as when the painful facts are withheld from someone who is dying. Or one may call a lie by another name - a fib for one told in jest, a white lie for a serious falsehood where no harm is meant, a terminological inexactitude to spare one's parliamentary colleagues, or dancing on the edge of the truth, as one advertising man describes what he does 'for dramatic effect'.1 One may falsify for self-preservation, or for someone else's good, or for the good of the state. The prince, wrote Machiavelli, should always have 'legitimate grounds ... for the non-fulfilment of his promise;. . . those that have been best able to imitate the fox have succeeded best. But it is necessary to disguise this character well, and to be a great feigner and dissembler; and men are so simple and so ready to obey present necessities, that one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.'2 Deception for reasons of state has been called 'plausible denial' in the United States.

It will not do to condemn all lying. But it is necessary to understand the lie, for protection against it - if one prefers not to be among 'those who allow themselves to be deceived'.

Suppose we take the broadest definition possible of truth and falsity, to embrace the gradations and locate them in Verity Space.

A has information that may be useful to B. B may inquire of A, or A may volunteer. A is truthful to the extent that he conveys the information that he supposes B wants in the form and manner he believes B wants it. Complete truthfulness is synonymous with complete sincerity.

But ahead is a fork in the road. In one direction lies information about what has happened or is happening in the real world. In the other lie the intentions of the speaker toward FUTURE events. The first is the domain of reports, the second that of promises. It is possible to go with untruth in either direction, but promises are never objectively true or untrue, because intentions are private. If I promise to be loyal to King Mboto II and have no intention of fulfilling my promise, I am of course telling a falsehood, but it is not open to inspection.

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