“I was only quoting”: Shifting viewpoint and speaker commitment
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Ronny Boogaart
Abstract
When people are accused of having said something objectionable, for instance because it is considered false or inappropriate, various strategies are available for denying or diminishing the speaker’s commitment to the contested utterance (Boogaart, Jansen & van Leeuwen 2021). In this chapter we take a closer look at one of these strategies, i.e. the so-called “viewpoint defence”, in which an arguer denies that the contested words were their own by attributing them to someone else. A typical instance is the claim that one was “just quoting”. Our goal is first, to provide an overview of the different forms the viewpoint defence may take and second, to provide criteria for determining if and when such a defence is a reasonable strategy or may be assessed as untruthful. We show that the very act of quoting triggers implicatures that are not easy to deny. Specifically, we argue in favour of a generalized implicature to the effect that the quoter is accountable for the contents of the quote - unless a convincing alternative purpose for the quote is provided or may be inferred from the context.
Abstract
When people are accused of having said something objectionable, for instance because it is considered false or inappropriate, various strategies are available for denying or diminishing the speaker’s commitment to the contested utterance (Boogaart, Jansen & van Leeuwen 2021). In this chapter we take a closer look at one of these strategies, i.e. the so-called “viewpoint defence”, in which an arguer denies that the contested words were their own by attributing them to someone else. A typical instance is the claim that one was “just quoting”. Our goal is first, to provide an overview of the different forms the viewpoint defence may take and second, to provide criteria for determining if and when such a defence is a reasonable strategy or may be assessed as untruthful. We show that the very act of quoting triggers implicatures that are not easy to deny. Specifically, we argue in favour of a generalized implicature to the effect that the quoter is accountable for the contents of the quote - unless a convincing alternative purpose for the quote is provided or may be inferred from the context.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents VII
- Introduction: On lying and disleading 1
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I Lies and deception: The landscape of falsehood
- Lying, deception, and related concepts: A conceptual map for ethics 15
- The morality of deception 41
- Kant tell an a priori lie 65
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II Lying, deception, and speaker commitment: Empirical evidence
- Is lying morally different from misleading? An empirical investigation 89
- “I was only quoting”: Shifting viewpoint and speaker commitment 113
- Memefying deception and deceptive memefication: Multimodal deception on social media 139
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III Puffery, bluffery, bullshit: How to not quite lie
- Bald-faced bullshit and authoritarian political speech: Making sense of Johnson and Trump 165
- Practice to deceive: A natural history of the legal bluff 195
- Just saying, just kidding: Liability for accountability-avoiding speech in ordinary conversation, politics and law 227
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IV Crossing the perjury threshold: Deceit and falsehood in the courtroom
- Perjury cases and the linguist 261
- Trickery and deceit: How the pragmatics of interrogation leads innocent people to confess – and factfinders to believe their confessions 289
- The context of mistrust: Perjury ascriptions in the courtroom 309
- What counts as a lie in and out of the courtroom? The effect of discourse genre on lie judgments 353
- Lies, deception, and bullshit in law 381
- Index 409
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents VII
- Introduction: On lying and disleading 1
-
I Lies and deception: The landscape of falsehood
- Lying, deception, and related concepts: A conceptual map for ethics 15
- The morality of deception 41
- Kant tell an a priori lie 65
-
II Lying, deception, and speaker commitment: Empirical evidence
- Is lying morally different from misleading? An empirical investigation 89
- “I was only quoting”: Shifting viewpoint and speaker commitment 113
- Memefying deception and deceptive memefication: Multimodal deception on social media 139
-
III Puffery, bluffery, bullshit: How to not quite lie
- Bald-faced bullshit and authoritarian political speech: Making sense of Johnson and Trump 165
- Practice to deceive: A natural history of the legal bluff 195
- Just saying, just kidding: Liability for accountability-avoiding speech in ordinary conversation, politics and law 227
-
IV Crossing the perjury threshold: Deceit and falsehood in the courtroom
- Perjury cases and the linguist 261
- Trickery and deceit: How the pragmatics of interrogation leads innocent people to confess – and factfinders to believe their confessions 289
- The context of mistrust: Perjury ascriptions in the courtroom 309
- What counts as a lie in and out of the courtroom? The effect of discourse genre on lie judgments 353
- Lies, deception, and bullshit in law 381
- Index 409
