Overview

Deception challenges readers to think about their own lies – from their first lies in childhood to the clever, provocative ones they told just recently. Scouring a number of texts in philosophy, poetics, literature and theory, both western and eastern, the book urges that, at a time when phrases like ‘fake news’ ‘gaslighting’ and ‘false narratives’ have become an intrinsic part of global vocabulary, an interdisciplinary discussion on the intertwined future of the twins ‘lying’ and ‘truth-telling’ is an urgent imperative. Rukmini Bhaya Nair explores the distinction between lies, metaphor and narrative performativity, presenting them as part of an interactive continuum informing how cultures engage with the concept of truth. With an engaging intellectual energy, Nair’s discussion traverses an impressive diversity of writers and thinkers including Paul Grice, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Paul De Man, Noam Chomsky, the Natyashastra of Bharata, Sylvia Plath and Salman Rushdie. She argues that literary texts permit a re-evaluation of truth-telling conventions and offer a space to theorize and understand crises and problems in the world. Augmenting observations on philosophy, fiction, poetry and literary theory with scholarship in cognitive linguistics, the book shows how metaphors, fictions, and lies can function as potent cognitive stimulants. Deception lays the groundwork for a truly inter-disciplinary account of lying as a deep-rooted form of linguistic behavior, which will appeal to anyone interested in research on developmental psychology, philosophy of language, literary and cultural studies, and linguistics.

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9781350466579

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Reviews

Rukmini Bhaya Nair’s central argument that ‘deception’ is a core strategy that human beings use to ensure their survival is both bold in its claim and simple in its formulation. Deception is a book for the ages and must be on the shelf along with Darwin, Chomsky, Mead, and Arendt. * Peter Ronald deSouza, Former Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, India *

Author Information

Rukmini Bhaya Nair is Professor of Linguistics and English Emerita at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India.

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