Introduction
The goal of Zeal for Truth is to find truth. If that were such an easy thing to do, we wouldn’t even need this blog and forum for there would be nothing to discuss, let alone argue or disagree about. The search for philosophical truth, Truth with a capital T, can be a lofty, life-long pursuit for some. Some of us might say even Pilate couldn’t find it when it was staring him in the face.
But my point here is no where near that lofty. I’m just talking about the technicalities of verbally telling the truth (telling the truth while writing is a different can of worms). Spoken communication is so full of potential pitfalls it is a wonder anyone is ever able to get their point across!
Part I — Telling the truth while accidentally communicating an untruth
There are many ways to accidentally tell an untruth. When this happens, an untruth is communicated, but it isn’t a lie. Lying implies the speaker has the motive of deceiving the hearer. In the cases I’m illustrating below, the hearer gets the wrong message, in spite of the pure motives of the speaker.
- Mistaken facts, when the speaker has no reason to suspect the thing he says is other than true. For example, “We can’t go to the library today because the library is closed on Tuesdays.” But in reality, the library schedule changed for the summer and is open on Tuesdays.
- Forgotten facts, when the speaker simply forgot. For example, I say, “I went to the mall on Tuesday” but in fact, I went to the mall on Wednesday–I just forgot what day I actually went.
- Assumed facts, when the speaker represents something as known for certain, but really the fact was deduced. “They went to the parade on the fourth of July.” They actually didn’t go, but the speaker assumed they had gone because they had gone every year in the past.
- Repeated untruths, originally told by someone else assumed to be trustworthy. For example, “Mom says we can’t go to the library today because it isn’t open on Tuesdays.” Another example, “If you go swimming right after eating you will get a stomach cramps.”
- Phonetic ambiguity, when a difference in idiolects causes miscommunication. For example, my husband once said “I’m going over to Don’s house” but I heard “I’m going over to “Dawn’s house.” This happened because in my husband’s dialect the words Don and Dawn are pronounced identically, whereas in my dialect they are distinguished.
- Recutting/reanalysis, when words are misunderstood to be other words by putting the word or morpheme breaks in the wrong place. For example, I said “My friend is Parvaneh Fakeri” but you heard, “My friend is part of a canary.” Another example from singing in church: “And he walks with me, and he talks with me” but someone thinks we are singing “Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me.”
- Ambiguity caused by lack of semantic precision. For example, he said to me: “I like you that way.” Does that mean the liking is in a certain way or does it mean he likes me to be a certain way?
- Ambiguity caused by sloppy grammar. For example, “I want to hire a woman to take care of my mother who does not smoke or drink.” OK, who is it with the virtuous lifestyle—the woman to be hired or the mother?
- Ambiguity caused by unclear pronoun referent. For example, “Suzie told Sally that they would take her away.” Who is being taken away–Suzie or Sally?
Stop by next week for
Part II–Telling the truth while intentionally communicating an untruth (aka How to not get caught lying)
Great article! I think this is an interesting idea - where one can tell non-truths but not lies. It means we need to reevaluate our opposites - lying and truth are not opposed as much as truth and untruth. What then would be the opposite of “lies”?
Miscommunication can arise when the listener doesn’t understand the jargon. If I said I bid on a Frisbee, you might assume I was trying to buy it on eBay, but you’d be wrong. (Read Ultimate Frisbee jargon and be enlightened.)
Colin, the word truth includes a number of meanings, but if we were to make opposites we might do something like fact:untruth and truth:lies. The main component of meaning in the word ‘lie’ is the speaker’s motive to deceive.
Which is why it is stupid and incorrect of people to say things like “We were told all these lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” You could only say that if the speaker of those words actually intended to deceive. If not, a better thing to say would be something like “Those idiots didn’t have a clue what they were talking about when they said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
Jew, I’m enlightened. Do you know all those words?
Jargon (technical language relating to a profession or specific area) is just one kind of specialty language that outsider’s often misunderstand. Slang is another example. And here are also languages with mechanisms for speaking in a non-standard way so that evil spirits won’t be able to understand.
I didn’t even mention idioms, which is another area where the meaning of the individual words doesn’t equal the meaning of the whole phrase so misunderstandings can occur.
Honesty. An honest answer is what the speaker believes to be accurate, and may have little to do with whether the response is true or false.