Besieged by Lies

Most theories of language assume its main function is to make cooperation easier and richer, but that optimistic idea is challenged by lies. Lying is so easy and the benefits so notable that truth would seem to have little chance of survival. Yet a society of liars would seem to be doomed. If everybody lied, nobody would listen. How could language have become universal amongst humans if it is so easily used to disadvantage others?The standard answer to this puzzle looks outside language. A popular theory holds that people who develop reputations as liars are shunned. But is that true?An excellent paper on this subject appears in the latest issue ofLanguage Sciences. “The role of the lie in the evolution of human language,” (abstracthere) byDaniel Dor is certainly the richest and fullest look I have found on the subject. In my next post I plan to discuss the lie and language origins, but in this post I want to look at another feature of Dor ’s paper, the sociology of lying.Just at this moment American newspapers are full of agonized treatises on the problem of having a president who is a chronic, unabashed liar. These essayists fret about whether a society can survive if people are willing to say and believe anything at all. America today has a chief of propaganda who is willing to go before a group of reporters and insist that in two, side-by-side, aerial photographs of crowds, the one showing the smaller crowd actually contains more people. How can society survive such...
Source: Babel's Dawn - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Source Type: blogs