The Manipulative Disguise of Truth : Tricks and Threats of Implicit Communication

"Becoming effective hunters of manipulative communicative moves is far from an easy capacity to develop. This book aims at offering a guide to the most dangerous traps of deceptive language as triggered by implicit communication strategies such as presupposition, implicature, topicalization and vague expressions. A look at different contexts of language use highlights some of the most remarkable implications of using indirect speech and of how it affects the correct comprehension of a message. Within the remit of communication and pragmatics studies, this work marks an advancement in the direction of delving into the linguistic manifestations of manipulative discourse, its most common contexts of use and the educational paths that can be undertaken to master it in everyday interactions"-- Provided by publisher P&BNS 322 The Manipulative Disguise of Truth 2 Editorial page 3 Title page 4 Copyright page 5 Dedication page 6 Table of contents 8 List of tables 12 List of figures 14 Acknowledgments 16 Introduction 18 Chapter 1. Features and functions of implicitness in verbal communication 22 1.1 Introduction 22 1.2 Implicit communication: A working definition 22 1.3 Manipulation in language 24 1.4 The “design features” of implicit communication 27 1.4.1 Presupposition 27 1.4.2 Implicature 32 1.4.3 Topicalization 38 1.4.4 Vagueness 41 1.5 Content commitment and discourse commitment 45 1.6 Evolutionary perspectives 47 1.7 Manipulation and persuasion 52 Chapter 2. Quantitative and experimental approaches to implicit and manipulative communication 56 2.1 Introduction 56 2.2 Persuasive presuppositions 56 2.3 Persuasive topicalizations 57 2.4 Persuasive implicatures 59 2.5 Persuasive vagueness 60 2.6 Persuasive effects of presupposition, topic, implicatures and vagueness in political discourse 62 2.7 Experimental perspectives on the processing of implicit communication 77 2.7.1 Behavioral evidence 77 2.7.2 Neurolinguistic evidence 80 2.8 Explaining the manipulative impact of implicit strategies between behavioral and neurological evidence 85 Chapter 3. The manipulative evidentiality of implicit communication 88 3.1 Introduction 88 3.2 Evidentiality as encoded by presumptive meanings 88 3.3 Evidential systems: A brief overview 89 3.3.1 The evidential value of assertion, presupposition and topic 92 3.3.2 The evidential value of implicature and vagueness 96 3.4 Presupposition, assertion and their evidential meaning in political discourse 99 3.4.1 Corpus 103 3.4.2 Predictions 105 3.4.3 Results 106 3.4.4 Discussion 108 Chapter 4. Manipulation in news discourse: The function of presuppositions in the language of journalism 114 4.1 Introduction 114 4.2 News language and manipulation 116 4.3 Text comprehension within “good enough” perspectives on language processing 118 4.4 Data analysis: Functions of presuppositions in Italian news language 121 4.4.1 The corpus 121 4.5 Types of presupposed content 122 4.5.1 Presupposition and neutral information 122 4.5.2 Evaluative presuppositions 124 4.5.3 Presupposition and blasting 126 4.5.4 Presupposition and irony 127 4.6 Distribution of presuppositions and content types in the Italian press 130 4.7 Discussion 134 Chapter 5. Manipulating translations 138 5.1 Introduction 138 5.2 Pragmatics in translation 138 5.3 Translation and manipulation 141 5.3.1 Translating topic and focus 142 5.3.2 Translating implicatures 147 5.3.3 Translating presuppositions 152 5.3.4 Translating vagueness 156 5.4 Towards translational criteria of implicit communication 160 Chapter 6. Teaching how to detect manipulative language 164 6.1 Introduction 164 6.2 Critically reading political messages on Twitter 166 6.2.1 Training students to detect implicit communication: A Polish-Italian pilot study 170 6.3 Making knowledge of implicit communication available to everybody 177 6.3.1 The IMPAQTS project and the OPPP! website 178 6.3.2 More on the OPPP! website 210 6.3.3 Educating to a “culture of implicitness” 212 6.4 Implicit communication as a way to distinguish between different text types 215 6.4.1 The corpus and the method 215 6.4.2 Results and discussion 216 6.4.3 Further remarks 218 Conclusion 220 References 226 Index 240