Say Not to Say (Emerging Communication:Studies in New Technologies and Practices in Communication, 3)

SAY NOT TO SAY

Emerging Communication Studies in New Technologies and Practices in Communication Emerging Communication is publishing state-of-the-art papers that examine a broad range of issues in communication technology, theories. research, practices and applications. It presents the latest development in the field of traditional and computer-mediated canmunication with emphasis on novel technologies and theoretical work in this multidisciplinary area of pure and applied research. Since Emerging Communication seeks to be a general forum for advanced communication scholarship. it is especially interested in research whose significance crosses disciplinary and sub-field boundaries.

Editors-inchief Giuseppe Riva, Applied Technologv,for Neuro-P.yvcholog\*Lab.. Istituto L4ifi010giC~1 Italiano. Verbania,ha!\* Fabrizio Davide, Headquarters, Learning Senices, TELECOM ITALI.4 S.p.A., Rome. Italv Editorial Board Luigi Anolli, Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Milan, Itall. Cristina Botella, Universitat Jarrme I, Castellon, Spain Martin Holmberg, Linkoping Universih,, LinkGping, Sweden Ingemar Lundstrom,L inkoping Universiiy L inkoping, Sir lederI Salvatore Nicosia, Universih. oj-Tor Vergata. Rome, Itall. Brenda K . Wiederhold, CSPP Research and Senice Foundation. San Diego, C.4. CS.4

Volume 3 Earlier published in this series Vol. 1. G. Riva and F. Davide (Eds.), Communications Through Virtual Technologies: Identity. Community and

Technology in the Communication Age Vol. 2. G. Riva and C. Galimberti (Eds.). Towards CyberPsvchology: Mind. Cognition and Society in the Internet Age

ISSN: 1566-7677

Say Not to Say New Perspectives on Miscommunication Edited by

Luigi Anolli Centerfor Communication Psycho logy, Catholic University, Milan, Italy

Rita Ciceri Centerfor Communication Psychology, Catholic University, Milan, Italy

and

Giuseppe Riva Is tituto A uxologico Ita 1ian0, Milan, Italy

Amsterdam Berlin Oxford Tokyo Washington, DC

2002. The authors mentioned in the Table of Contents All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means. without the prior written permission from the publisher. ISBN I 58603 215 1 (10s Press) ISBN 4 274 90494 6 C3055 (Ohmsha) Library of Congress Control Number: 200 1099505

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PREFACE

We live today in the Age of Information and of Communication because electric media instantly and constantly create a total field of interacting events in which all men participate. McLuhan, I964

Communication has come to be regarded as a symbol of the age in which we live. Talk is frequently of “communication explosion”, of “communication technology” revolution, even of “communication society”. But what is communication and how can we make sense of it? Many of us, when asked about communication, usually think of it as a mere information transmission from a source to a receiver by means of coding-encoding processes. However, different studies during the last fifty years clearly underlined that one thing is what is said, another is what is meant. In fact, many meanings are characterized by fuzzy boundaries that are defined by the context in which they are expressed. Within this perspective, meaning is not a fixed system of univocal correspondences between expression and content, but a set of possible inferences that have different probability degrees of realization. This vision has a simple consequence: it is possible to communicate only to the extent that speakers share beliefs, recognize reciprocal expectations, and accept rules for interaction which serve as necessary anchors in the development and understanding of utterances. To make this process even more complex is the observation that communicators have at their disposal a plurality of signaling systems, verbal and nonverbal. The acknowledgment of a plurality of communicative systems involves the necessity of examining how they may be related to each other and how they can make up a unitary totality. This is one of the main goals of Say not to Say: New perspectives on miscommunication. By defining a new research area - the “miscommunication psychology” - the Editors try to provide some guidelines to understand the processes by which we manage our experience - make meanings, construct identities and search for friends and partners through the analysis of miscommunication processes. According to the approach proposed by the Editors, miscommunication is considered not only as a defect or a mismatch, but also as a plus and as a powerful device in the hands of the communicators. In this sense, miscommunication can be considered as a chance, because it enhances the degrees of freedom available to communicators in their interaction.

This vision has a strong effect on the possibility of improving the communication process: communicators have the opportunity to manage their communicative strategs in the best possible way, given the contextual constraints and their respective encyclopaedia of knowledge. Through the choice of specific linguistic and extra-linguistic hints and clues - intonation, the word order in an utterance, an extra stress and so on - the speaker can convey different meanings and adapt them to a specific context. Starting f'rom these premises, the topics discussed directly involve critical issues for many application areas such as marketing, advertising, group management. media and new media development, and are presented with scientific competence and suggestions for actual use. In fact the Editors included throughout the book a wide variety of chapters, that discussed topics as seduction, irony or deception with a careful attention to the links between the cognitive and social aspects of communication. Real-world examples offer clear, relevant, and accessible demonstrations of the points discussed. Appropriate for psychologists, communication and media researchers, students and even the casual reader, this book provides a unique perspective on communication in today's society and enables us to see more clearly how analyzing miscommunication can help us in better understanding the different facets of the communication experience.

Giovanni Ferrero Fondazione "Piera,Pietro e Giovanni Ferrero " Aha, Itall.

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POSTFACE

Since teachers have the most direct, sustained contact with students and considerable control over what is taught and the climate for learning, improving teachers ’ knowledge, skill and disposition through professional development is a critical step in improving student achievement. King and Newman, 2000

Teaching is a very difficult and demanding profession. Good professors must have a deep knowledge of their subject areas, but this is not enough: they must be skilled, too, in the difficult process of communicating their knowledge and interacting with the students. However, a good researcher or a good professional is not always also an effective communicator. This is why, everyone who is concerned about the quality of education should consider carefully the adoption of policies and practices that support teachers in the acquisition of communicative skills. In particular, in everyday communication teachers face the challenge of effectively communicating and sharing their knowledge with students, in order to engage them actively in the process of making sense out of their educational experience. This activity can be thought of as a contingent and dynamic activity strictly related to the situation in which it happens. It is a situation where the meanings are by definition an instable entity: it is not taken and given in a fixed and automatic way once and for all, but is built and shared though social interaction. In this context a significant role is played by communication: understanding how to improve the communication skills is a significant step in enhancing the efficacy of the educational experience. This book is a first step toward this goal. By discussing the different aspects of communication, the Editors underline the complexity of this process. In order to be effective, the teacher and the students should be able to share the same core beliefs, recognize reciprocal expectations, and define common rules for interaction. Many different components are involved in this process - semiotic choices, discourse genre and conventions, the aims of the interlocutors and the like - and all of them mutually affect each other during all the teachindlearning processes. Within this framework, the novelty of Say not to Say: New perspectives on miscommunication is the different focus given to miscommunication: it is not only a possible problem but also an enhancement of the communicative possibilities available to

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the teachers. According to the Miscommunication as a CHance Theory - MaCHT - presented in this volume, a strategic use of miscommunication may enhance the degrees of freedom available to the teachers during their lessons. In fact, it includes a set of communicative acts like exaggerating, flattering, joking, kidding, speaking sarcastically, euphemistically or metaphorically, that when correctly used can improve the communicative eficacy. However, Say not to Sa-v: New perspectives on miscommunication does more than present and review current communication theories. It is also important to realize that it offers a series of recommendations, based on extensive evidence from research, about how communicators can improve the eficacy of their presentations. Following these, the teacher may target hisher communicative strategy by using simple linguistic and extralinguistic tools such as intonation or an extra stress. In conclusion, both the educators who want to improve their communication skills and the readers who are interested in exploring the miscommunication area. should consider this volume as an interesting starting point.

Sergio Zuninelli Rector Magn@cus, Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Milan, Italt.

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INTRODUCTION Communication theorists generallyfocus more on the study of message-makingas a process, whereas semioticians center their attention more on what a message means and on how it creates meaning Danesi, 1994

What is communication? If we check Webster‘s New World Dictionary, 2nd College Edition, we can find the following definitions: “n. I . the act of transmitting 2. a) a giving or exchanging of information, signals or messages by talk, gestures, writing, etc. b) information, message, etc. 3. close, sympathetic relationship. 4. a means of communicating; specif., a) Epl.] a system for sending and receiving messages, as by telephone, telegraph, radio, etc. b) [PZ.] a system as of routes for moving troops and materiel c) a passage or way of getting from one place to another 5. [oftenpl. with sing. v.] a) the art of expressing ideas, esp. in speech and writing b) the science of transmitting information, esp. in symbols.” The number of definitions and the differences between them show clearly the difficulty of describing the communication structure. In fact, even after many attempts, a communication theory able to address all the features of this process is still lacking. The earliest communication frameworks were based on the process of signal transmission in telecommunication systems. Shannon and Weaver’s model is still the best known and most widely used. According to authors, communication is defined as the transfer of information - message - from a transmitter - source - to a receiver in the form of a signal, which is sometimes modified by disturbance - noise - in the transmission system itself. One undeniable advantage of technical communication models is that they provide a general description of communication. On the other hand, however, these models cannot take account either of the specifically linguistic features of verbal language, or of the process of sense-making typical of the communicative processes. One of the clearest theoretical rejections of the analogy between verbal communication and physical data transmission has come from Roman Jakobson, who links these six physical components of communication - sender, message, receiver, context, code, contact - to six linguistic functions - expressive, connotative, phatic, metalinguistic, denotative-referential,poetic - which establish the intentionality of the communicative act. However, the linguistic models of communication also proved unsatisfactory. In fact communication, though basically a linguistic phenomenon, is also affected by the psychosocial relationships between the subjects involved in it. Given these difficulties, some theorists used a different approach: they differentiated between standard communication and miscommunication. According to this vision, subjects are characterized by a “natural stance” towards language, as if communicating were a natural gift. However, this approach too has a strong limitation: the idea of a natural attitude towards language ends up by not recognizing the personal responsibility of the

communicator, given that the message would be automatically guaranteed by objective conditions. This book is intended to be a first attempt to overcome these frameworks. In particular, the book, accepting a difficult challenge, tries to define the background of a unitary theory of communication where communication and miscommunication are simply the two faces of the same coin. In particular, the main message of the book is the following: the borderline between what is communicated and what is miscommunicated cannot be split up and partitioned in two separate and discrete fields. In fact, miscommunication is everywhere, because it belongs to the communicative exchanges of everyday life. Miscommunication is central to interpersonal communication. Every day we are constantly confionted with the handling of miscommunication at every stage of the communication process, handling that will influence the effectiveness of the message and the relationships on which those messages impact. This is why this book tries to provide the reader with worthwhile options for a vast array of interpersonal situations - deceprion, irony. humor, seduction, computer mediated communication - and discusses the theory. research, and evidence bearing on the miscommunication process. After completing this text, the reader should thus be better equipped to make more reasoned. more reasonabfe and more effective communication decisions. We have put a great deal of thought and effort into the definition of the structure of the book and the sequence of the contributions, so that those in search of a specific reading path will be rewarded. To this end we have divided the book into four main Sections comprising I 1 chapters overall: 1 Towards a definition of miscommunication:A theoretical approach 2 Pretending to communicate:Deception, seduction and equivocation 3 Communicate to pretend: Iron?,and humor 4 Communicate in pretending: Computer mediated communication.

Each chapter begins with a brief abstract and a table of contents that help the reader to identify the relationships between the section's chapters. The starting point of the book is the assumption that a viable theory of communication has also to explain miscommunication in its different forms. Following this perspective, in Section 1 - Towards a definition of miscommunication:A theoretical approach - Anolli and Reboul try to outline some general principles that can connect communication and miscommunication processes in a coherent theoretical perspective. In particular Anolli, in the Chapter I , sketches out the miscommunication as a chance theon. (MaCHT). His purpose is to suggest a new unitary model of communication that embraces both communicative and miscommunicative phenomena. Within this perspective, he proposes a definition of miscommunication as "say not to say": the chapter tries to overcome the standard concept of miscommunication as a lack, fault and violation of rules, considering not only its negative aspects, but also the positive ones in the interaction. Reboul, expanding this view in Chapter 2, analyzes two well-known views of linguistic communication: the code model and the hypothesis of semantic transparency. After a quick analysis of their contents, the author describes how the most recent pragmatic theories have discarded them. This enables them to account for the whole range of communication mishaps. from mere misunderstandings to sophisticated deception strategies. In Section 2 - Pretending to communicate: Deception, seduction and eqirr\>ocation- the attention of the authors moves to the analysis of deception. seduction and equivocation. In

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Chapter 3, Anolli, Balconi and Ciceri discuss a general model of deception - the Deceptive Miscommunication Theory (DeMiT) - that can explicate both the main characteristics of deceptive communication and the local management of the deceptive message in its different expressions. Seductive interaction is the focus of Chapter 4, proposed by Ciceri. This process is here analyzed as a flexible plurality of behavioral patterns, corresponding to the variety of communicative intentions: exhibition, approaching the partner, deepening reciprocal knowledge, and reaching a level of intimacy. Particularly, this approach makes it possible to analyze the connections between different systems of expression (verbal and nonverbal) and to describe several seductive strategies of obliquity and to disguise tactical communication, which are defined as miscommunication forms. In the final chapter of this Section, Chapter 5, Fernandez-Dols, Carrera and Casado try to give an explanation of a relevant inconsistency: the difference between the patterns of representation of emotional facial expression in most of the available art, and the patterns of emotional facial expression outlined by contemporary studies on recognition of emotions. Starting from the theoretical background presented in the first Section, Section 3 Communicate to pretend: Irony and humor - presents a framework for the analysis of Irony and Humor. Anolli, Infantino and Ciceri open this Section with a new theoretical perspective by proposing the fencing game (or irony situation) model. In Chapter 6 irony is not considered only as a comment or remark at a linguistic level but also as a complex communicative interaction between interlocutors, depending on contextual constraints and opportunities. Humor and Irony are the focus of Chapter 7. Attardo investigates the “performance” of humor by examining the motivations for a subject to use irony, and the responses that the interactant produces to it, which range from mode adoption to ignoring it. The last chapter of Section 3, Chapter 8, deals with the risks and rewards of ironic communication. In this chapter, Gibbs and Colston argue that irony cannot be characterized simply as having positive or negative social impact, but can serve multiple communicative purposes, depending on the social context and aims of the conversational participants. The final Section - Communicate in pretending: Computer mediated communication is devoted to the analysis of Computer Mediated Communication, CMC. In fact, this emerging form of communication may be described as a particular form of miscommunication: a necessarily “pared-down” form of conversation, which lacks the many features and some rules on which traditional forms of interaction depend. What are its characteristics? In Chapter 9, Riva outlines how CMC users are able to make order and create relationships out of the miscommunication processes typical of this medium. Moreover, it presented the emerging forms of CMC - instant messaging, shared hypermedia, weblogs and graphical chats - and their possible social and communicative effects. In Chapter 10, Mantovani addresses the effects of CMC on the development of interpersonal attraction, aiming at identifying the specific features that this process has in cyberspace. In fact, as clearly underlined by the author, CMC does not only support emotional and intensely involving communication between people, but it is also characterized by a specific allure, which makes it intriguing for many users. The last chapter, Chapter 11, focuses on the concealment in self-presentation, typical of CMC. To understand the characteristics of this process, Mabry analyzed the message contents of men and women participating in asynchronous online discussion. Research findings indicated that gender identity and communicator status were strongly related to message openness.

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The eleven contributions selected are among the first scientific attempts to take a serious look at the different aspects of miscommunication. However, the authors did not start from scratch. Social sciences have a broad knowledge of the different factors that characterize communication processes. So, the chapters proposed for this book are descriptive and theoretical-oriented in nature. The wide array of research areas represented here strengthens the idea of miscommunication as a research field strictly integrated with the main flow of communication research. The Editors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of a number of people and institutions without whose help this project could not have been carried out. We have benefited from the friendship with Paul Ekman, Magnus Magnusson and Klaus Scherer and from their long research in this field. We also acknowledge the Fondazione Piera. Pietro e Giovanni Ferrero, Alba, Italy, for the continuous support given to the Centre-for Studies and Research in Communication Psycholop research (http://www.psicocomunicazione.net). We are grateful to Valentino Zurloni, too, who helped the Editors in the difficult editorial process required in the preparation of this book. A final thank you goes to Prof. Eugenia Scabini, Dean of the Faculty of Psychology at the Universitti Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy, and to Prof, Fernando Dogana, Head of the Department of Psychology at the same university, who supported the Editors in their research work. We want to thank the colleagues of the Centre .for Studies and Research in Communication Psycholoar for their help in carrying out the research lines discussed in this book. In particular, we are grateful to Alessia Agliati, Paola Colombo. Claudio Lucchiari, and Olivia Realdon for their support. Moreover, Riva wants to thank his directors and colleagues at the Istituto Auxologico Italiano, one of the leading research and health care center in Italy. In particular, his thanks go to the President of the Institute, Prof. Giovanni Ancarani, to the General Manager. Dr. Mario Colombo. and to the Scientific Director, Prof. Albert0 Zanchetti. Some of the chapters included in this book are the results of the following Italian Ministry of University and Research grants: Processi comunicativi in ambienti ad aha lirtualita (D 1 -2000: Communicative processes in high virtualih environments), and Cornurticazione linguistica ed extra-linpistica ( D I - 200 I Linguistic and extra-linguistic communication). In the end, we hope that the contents of this book will stimulate further integrated research in the communication area. In particular, we hope that in the near future miscommunication will be considered not only as a defect or a mismatch, but also as a plus and as a powerful device in the hands of communicators. Luigi Anolli, Ph.D. Universita Cattolica Milan, Itall.

Rita Ciceri, Ph.D. Universita CattoI ica Milan, Itall.

Giuseppe Riva. Ph.D. Istituto Aurologico Italiano. Milan, itall. Wniversita Cattolica Milan, Itail,

CONTRIBUTORS Luigi ANOLLI Centerf o r Communication Psychology, Catholic University Milan, Italy Salvatore ATTARDO Department of English, Youngstown State University Youngstown, OH, USA Michela BALCONI Centerf o r Communication Psychology, Catholic University Milan, Italy Pilar CARRERA Departamento de Psicologia Social y Metodologia, Universidad Autbnoma de Madrid Madrid, Spain Cristina CASADO Departamento de Psicologia Social y Metodologia, Universidad Autbnoma de Madrid Madrid, Spain Rita CICERI Centerf o r Communication Psychology, Catholic University Milan, Italy Herbert L. COLSTON Psychology Department, University of Wisconsin Kenosha, WI, USA Jose-Miguel FERNANDEZ-DOLS Departamento de Psicologia Social y Metodologia, Universidad Autonbma de Madrid Madrid, Spain Raymond W. GIBBS Psychology Department, University of California Santa Cruz, CA, USA Maria Giaele INFANTINO Centerf o r Communication Psychology, Catholic University Milan, Italy Edward A. MABRY Department of Communication, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, WI, USA

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Say Not to Say L. Anolli et al. (Eds.) IOS Press, 2002

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Semantic Transparency, Semantic Opacity, States of Affairs, Mental States and Speech Acts Anne REBOUL IAGO: Men should be what they seem, Or those that be not, would they might seem none. OTHELLO: Certainly, men should be what they seem. Shakespeare, Othello

If things were always what they seemed, how impoverished would be the imagination of man. Pursewarden, quoted by Durrell, Balthazar.

Abstract: There are two well-known views of linguistic communication: the code model and its counterpart, the hypothesis of semantic transparency. If both of these views were correct, then there would be only one possible type of mishap in communication, that due to noise in the communication channel. However, none of these views is correct. I will sketch a quick history of pragmatics relative both to the code model and to the hypothesis of semantic transparency. As we will see, the most recent pragmatic theories have discarded them. This enables them to account for the whole range of communication mishaps, from mere misunderstandings to sophisticated deception strategies. Incidentally it also enables them to propose a solution to Moore's paradox.

Contents 44

2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6

Introduction.. ....................................................... The code model of communication and the birth of pragmatics ........................................................... Going beyond the code model: relevance theory.. ............. Lies ................................................................... Moore's paradox.. .................................................. Conclusion.. ........................................................

2.7

References.. .........................................................

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2.1 2.2

45 50 60 64 68

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2.1

.4 Rehoul ’Semantic Transparens\.

Introduction

It is often considered that language is - and has evolved as - a tool for communication and that it is semantically transparent relative to what is communicated by a given sentence. In other words, there would be nothing more to linguistic communication than encoding and decoding. In the scientific formulation of that hypothesis, which strongly relies on Shannon and Weaver’s theory of communication [ 11, the only possible ground for misunderstanding is the noise which may interfere with the transmission of the signal. There are two sides to the hypothesis of the semantic transparency of utterances: the first one, according to which utterances are semantically transparent relative to the states of affairs they represent - which was called by Austin [2] the descriptive .fallacv -, has been largely discredited after the advent of speech acts theory; the other, according to which utterances are semantically transparent relative to the mental states of the speaker is still very active and speech acts theory has been instrumental in making it so. Whatever its version, semantic transparency is wrong not so much because language cannot represent reality, whether by reality one designates public states of affairs or private mental states. but because language is semantically underdetermined as has been shown by. notably. Grice [3]. The semantic underdeterminacy of language entails a corresponding semantic opacity of utterances and this, in its turn, can be a rich ground for miscommunication. be it mere (involuntary) misunderstanding or willful miscommunication. The semantic opacity of utterances has a main consequence: the interpretation of utterances cannot be a simple matter of decoding and, more generally, the process of linguistic communication is not only a matter of encoding and decoding either. Rather the whole process rests on a complicated “system” of communicative and informative intentions on the part of the speaker and the (more or less correct) recovery of these intentions on the part of the hearer. Going from the purely linguistic interpretation of the utterance to its “complete” interpretation entails passing through a pragmatic process of “free enrichment”, relying on a piecemeal context. The present paper will be squarely in the theoretical framework of Relevance Theory [4]. and will, among other things, assume its distinction between informative and communicative intentions. From that vantage point, I will try to give a general panorama of misunderstandings and various kinds of miscommunication, going from the case where the speaker is misleading his hearer unwillingly, because he himself is mistaken about the state of affairs he is describing, to the case where the speaker is willfullymiscommunicating. leading his hearer to believe that he (the speaker) is lying and not telling the truth. when. in fact, he is telling the truth but merely exploiting the mistrust of his hearer and leading him to the (false) belief that the propositional content of his utterance is false when it is in fact true. I will try to elucidate how those kinds of more and more Machiavellian and complicated miscommunication rely on the human ability to metarepresent one’s own and others’ representations or metarepresentations. I shall show that this is the basis of what Dennett [ 5 ] has called the interpretive stance and that it exploits the so-called principle of charity which is generally operative in human communication. Finally I shall draw the consequences of that for the Gricean and neo-Gricean accounts of communication and for the strong version of speech acts theory (Vanderveken’s [6]) where some types of speech acts are supposed to anah~ricalh.imply some types of mental states on the speaker‘s part.

A . Reboul /Semantic Transparency

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The code model of communication and the birth o f pragmatics

Suppose that you have two communicating devices, for instance human beings. These communicating devices are able to entertain internal representations, which we will call messages. They also are able to send signals, which, according to Sperber and Wilson [4], can be defined as ' I . . . a modification of the external environment which can be produced by one device and recognized by the other" (p. 4). In other words, the message which is an internal representation of communicating device CD 1 is encoded as a signal, transmitted through a channel to communication device CD2, which then decodes that signal to uncover the message. Communication is successful if, at the end of the process, CDl and CD2 both entertain the message which, initially, was an internal representation of only CDl. Under the code model of communication, the whole process, following a diagram by Shannon and Weaver [ 11, can be represented as follows [4, p. 51: received acoustic \signal

/Thougm\

thought

\ I thought processes

II I

decoder

encoder

thought processes

f SPEAKER

noise

Figure 2.1 The code model of communication

According to this view, there are two important hypotheses which must be taken into account in any analysis of communication: 0 The only possibility for miscommunication is a misunderstanding due to noise in the communication channel; 0 Communication is successful in as much as the message recovered is the same as the message sent, i.e. if both communicative devices share the same internal representation as a consequence of the communication process. As we shall see, both of these hypotheses, which are still widely accepted in some linguistic circles, are mistaken.

2.2.2 Two versions of the hypothesis of the semantic transparency of linguistic communication

The hypothesis of the semantic transparency of linguistic communication is obviously dependent on the code model of linguistic communication. Indeed, it is hard to see how semantic transparency could be secured outside of the code model. However, depending on the nature of the message which is communicated, it can be said that the hypothesis of the

.4. Rehoul /Semantic Transparent\*

46

semantic transparency of linguistic communication has two sides: the first one is relative to the case in which the message being communicated is the representation of a state of affairs in the world; the second is relative to the case in which the message being communicated is not the representation of a state of affairs but is itself a state of mind of the communicative device which entertains it. A state of mind, in this instance, can be a belief, a desire, etc. The hypothesis of the semantic transparency of linguistic communication in the case in which the message is a representation of a state of affairs in the world claims that a given signal can be decoded in such a way that it will yield a full proposition, i.e. a representation which can be evaluated in terms of its truth-value. The hypothesis of the semantic transparency of linguistic communication in the case in which the message is itself a state of mind claims that a given sentence is, so to speak, a window to the speaker's mind. For a long time, philosophers considered that the aim of linguistic communication, and indeed the function of language was the representation of reality. They adopted the hypothesis of semantic transparency. A sentence was thus considered as a means of conveying the description of a state of affairs and its interpretation was considered as yielding a proposition, in the truth-conditional sense. In keeping with the code model. communication would be seen as successful in as much as the proposition recovered by the hearer is identical with the proposition that was communicated. Thus, until the fifties, the code model of linguistic communication as well as the semantic transparency hypothesis were concentrated on linguistic descriptions of states of affairs in the world. However, some obvious problems were pointed out, notably regarding the use ofdeixis. Indeed, if John says sentence ( 1 ) in London in 1897. the proposition he expresses is quite different from the proposition that Giovani expresses when Giovani says the same sentence in Roma in 200 1 : ( 1)

I am here

OM'.

This encouraged philosophers to distinguish between the fype (or sentence) and the token (or utterance). The sentence or type is an abstract entity, which is realized on different occasions as different tokens or utterances. A given utterance of a sentence is interpreted relative to a set of parameters (i.e. speaker. addressee, time and place of utterance). There is no need to go beyond the code model. Sentences such as (1) can still be considered as expressing propositions when they are uttered, though the proposition expressed by a given utterance of a sentence can differ with that expressed by another utterance of the same sentence, if deictics are involved. Thus, the propositions expressed by John and by Giovani are respectively represented (informally) as (2) and (3): (2) (31

John is in London in 1897. Giovani is in Romn in 2001

2.2.2 Austin and the notion of speech act This was the situation in 1955 when John Austin, an Oxford philosopher, gave the William James Lectures at Harvard [2], roughly a year before a symposium at MIT which involved Allen Newell, Herbert Simon, Noam Chomsky and George Miller and which is considered as marking the birth of cognitive sciences. Austin's William James Lectures are the true origin of a discipline, which at that time did not see itself as a cognitive science. i.e. pragmatics. Austin described the position adopted by previous analytic philosophers as the descriptive fallnq-. He attacked the notion of language as a tool for the description of

A. Reboul /Semantic Transparency

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reality, by pointing out that, even if only affirmative sentences are considered, some - if not most - of them cannot properly be analyzed in terms of truth-conditions and as describing reality. Hence, evaluating them for truth-value was just ineffective, most of them not yielding to an analysis according to which they were true or false. Indeed, properly considered, without any a priori prejudice, affirmative sentences could be ranged in two classes depending on whether they actually were, or were not, describing reality: the first class is the class of constative utterances, while the second is the class ofperformative utterances, so called because such non-descriptive affirmative utterances were used to act on the world rather than to describe it. Below, examples (4)-(5) and (6)-(7) are respectively examples of constative and of performative utterances: (4) (5) (6) (7)

The cat is on the mat. It's raining. Ipromise that I will come tomorrow. I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

What is more, constative and performative utterances differed not only in their functions but also in the way they could be evaluated. Constative utterances express propositions which can be evaluated for truth-conditions, while performative utterances are evaluated relative to their success, i.e. they are not true or false but felicitous or nonfelicitous. This was Austin's position in the first few lectures he gave in the William James Lectures cycle. However, in the following lectures, his position changed in as much as he realized that constative and performative utterances could not be contrasted relative either to their function or to the mode of their evaluation. Indeed, constative utterances are used to modifL the hearer's states of mind, i.e. to act and can be evaluated for felicity. And performative utterances do express propositions - for instance, (6) express the proposition that the speaker will come tomorrow - which can be evaluated for truth-value and their felicity may depend on the truth or falsity of the proposition expressed. This led Austin to a modification of his view, according to which any grammatical sentence uttered in "normal" conditions was ips0 fact0 the accomplishment of a speech act of a particular kind, i.e. an illocutionary act. Indeed, this new version of speech act theory introduced a triple distinction between kinds of speech acts: The locutionary act: the act of saying something; The illocutionary act: the act accomplished in saying something; 0 The pdocutionary act: the act accomplished by saying something. In other words, locutionary acts are the very acts of uttering something; illocutionary acts are, for instance, promises, orders, assertions; perlocutionary acts are, for instance, persuasion. Utterances which in the first lectures would have been classified as constative were classified as illocutionary acts of assertion in the following lectures. Austin's William James Lectures were the foundation of a new discipline in language studies, i.e. pragmatics. However, as we will see below, the Lectures were posthumously published and Austin's work was pursued by John Searle, an American philosopher. 2.2.3 Grice and the notion of non-natural meaning

Before we turn to Searle, it is interesting to note that another milestone for pragmatics occurred when another philosopher, Paul Grice, published a seminal paper in 1957, soberly entitled Meaning [7]. Ten years later, he also gave the William James Lectures in Harvard

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'4. Rehod/ Semantic Transparenel.

[3], thus securing as important a place for himself in the history of pragmatics as that of Austin. Grice's definition of meaning was formulated as follows: "'[the speaker] meant something by x' is (roughly) equivalent to '[the speaker] intended the utterance of x to produce some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention"' [7, p. 3771. This definition, in itself, does not indicate that the recognition of the speaker's intention should be done through a decoding process, neither does it indicate that any linguistic convention is involved. Thus, the Gricean definition of meaning can be considered as a first step out of the hypothesis of semantic transparency and the code model of linguistic communication. This was reinforced when Grice pronounced the William James Lectures [3], describing the communication processes involved in conversation and linguistic communication. He made it obvious that, indeed, there was more to communication than mere encoding and decoding. Grice introduced a distinction between what is said and what is communicated. What is said may indeed be recovered through an encoding-decoding process and thus may be subject to the hypothesis of semantic transparency. However, what is communicated is a different matter. While what is said is a proposition, what is communicated is both what is said (i.e. the proposition expressed) and other things which can be recovered from what is said but which are not part of the explicit content of the utterance. These are called by Grice implicatures and there is no question that the recovery of implicatures quite simply is not done through an encoding-decoding process. Grice's hypotheses on the processes through which implicatures are recovered are well known: according to him, conversation is a cooperative process in which the speaker and the hearer obey the cooperatitie principle. The cooperative principle is articulated in nine conversational maxims. which play a role in the communication process in as much as they give rise toimplicatures. Let us take the first maxim of quantiht: Make your contribution ns informative as i s required. Suppose that you are told: (8)

Anne has,four children.

On a strictly semantic understanding, (8) can be interpreted as Anne has four children and maybe more. This, however, is clearly not the meaning which the speaker intended to convey. That meaning is: Anne has not more than four children. It is recovered through an inferential process in which the hearer, relyng on the first maxim of quantity, makes the hypothesis that if the speaker had intended to communicate that Anne has at least four children, he or she would have said it explicitly and that his having said (8) is a good indication that he intended to communicate that Anne has no more than four children. Thus, Grice's account of linguistic communication goes beyond the code model in that what is said does not exhaust what is meant or communicated. Thus, though the code model applies to the recovery of what is said, it does not apply to the recovery of implicatures. Hence, the Gricean model of communication is mixed: it is codic concerning the semantic interpretation of what is said. and inferential concerning the recovery of implicatures. What is more, the communicative intentions of the speaker, or hypotheses on these, play a role in this inferential process. In this sense, Grice clearly anticipated Dennett's notion of intentional stance [S].which can be informally defined as follows: The intentional stance is adopted whenever one interprets another's behavior on the basis of two general principles: 1. Other individuals are rational agents. They have beliefs. desires and other mental states. -. 7

A. Reboul /Semantic Transparency

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Though, as we will see, Grice's position is not entirely satisfactory, the intentional stance is very much to the fore of contemporary pragmatics. 2.2.4 Searle and the conventionalist trend in speech acts theory

Austin died prematurely in 1960 and his William James Lectures had a posthumous publication in 1962. This was not the end of speech acts theory as an American philosopher, John Searle, carried on Austin's work and gave what became for the next fifteen to twenty years the foundation of pragmatics, i.e. a basic theory of speech acts [8]. Searle's main contribution was in articulating precisely much of what was left implicit or insufficiently developed in Austin's work. His first task was to make explicit the fact that speech act theory is based on two notions: intention and convention. In other words, a speech act implies an intention of the speaker which is recovered by the hearer through linguistic convention. In order to do this, Searle concentrated on only one of the three categories of speech acts distinguished by Austin, illocutionary acts. He then borrowed Grice's definition of meaning, though he gave it a twist. First, he redefined the recognition of the speaker's intention in such a way that it would depend exclusively on the linguistic conventions governing the sentence uttered, i.e. on its semantics. Second, given that illocutionary acts are supposed to be linguistically encoded, he replaced the notion of the effect that the speaker intended to produce on the hearer through his utterance - which, in Grice's definition, could be interpreted as either perlocutionary (i.e. non semantic) or illocutionary (i.e. semantic) - by the notion of the illocutionary effect which the speaker intended to produce in his hearer through his utterance. Hence, Searle's main goal in his book seems to be to make pragmatics - given that speech acts theory pertains to pragmatics - a part of semantics. Another contribution of Searle's which will be of interest here is that he tried to make explicit the conditions under which a given illocutionary act is felicitous. Predictably, felicity conditions, though they partly differ from one type of illocutionary act to the next, include conditions relative to absence of noise in the communication channel, community of linguistic code and a sincerity condition which I will now detail. The sincerity condition is to be found in felicity conditions regardless of the type of speech acts considered. Basically, what it says is that the illocutionary act in question can be felicitous iff the speaker is in the required state of mind: for instance, if the illocutionary act is an assertion, the speaker must believe in the truth of the proposition expressed, while if it is a promise, the speaker must have the intention to fulfill his promise, etc. The sincerity condition is the source of a variety of difficulties for speech acts theory as I pointed out in previous works ([9], [ 101, [ 1 11, [ 121, [ 131). I will have more to say about it below. Finally, Searle introduced a distinction between the marker of illocutionary force and the marker of propositional content. In a utterance such as (9), the marker of illocutionary force is Ipromise that and the marker of propositional content is I will come tomorrow: (9)

Ipromise that I will come tomorrow.

Thus, both illocutionary force and propositional content are linguistically marked and both are subject to the code model and are considered as semantically transparent. 2.2.5

Conclusion

What then of the code model in the first decades of pragmatics? As we have seen, though what pragmatics called the "descriptive fallacy" was discredited by Austin in his William

so

'4. Rehoul Semantic Trunsparencj,

James Lectures, nevertheless the code model was preserved in the recovery of the proposition expressed by the utterance, as well, in the later Searlian theory of speech acts, as the recovery of the illocutionary force. It is interesting to note that on Searle's view, interpreting a utterance is, just as it is for Grice, recovering the intention of the speaker. However, and this is where Gricean pragmatics and Searlian pragmatics part, the Searlian model is just the code model applied both to the recovery of propositions and to the recovery of illocutionary force, exhausting the intention of the speaker, while the Gricean model limits the code model to the recovery of what is said and defends an inferential model for the recovery of further implicatures. This inferential model heavily relies on the notion of speaker's intentions as well as on the cooperative principle and conversational maxims. By contrast, there is nothing of the kind in the Searlian model. Thus, though both models rely on a double-barreled intentional definition, where the speaker has first the intention to communicate a given content through his or her utterance and the further intention that the first intention be recognized as such, that further intention plays a major role in the interpretation process according to Grice and plays no role in the interpretation process according to Searle. Hence, Grice's pragmatics can be said to be authentically a model of double-intentionality whereas Searle's pragmatics cannot be described in such a way. And, as we will see, double-intentionality in this authentic form is exactly what is needed to go beyond the code model of linguistic communication.

2.3

Going beyond the code model: relevance theory

Before going beyond the code model, let us just go back to the semantic transparency hypothesis. According to Searle, utterance are semantically transparent - in the sense that they can be interpreted along lines suggested by the code model - both relative to their propositional content and relative to their illocutionary force. According to Grice, they are semantically transparent - in the same sense - relative to what is said. Nevertheless, the code model does not suffice to determine the implicatures of a given utterance and utterances are thus not semantically transparent relative to what is being communicated in excess of what is said. This, however, might be a simple matter of a terminological disagreement, where Searle and Grice would have two different uses (and understandings) of the phrase what is communicated. In other words, it might be that they agree on the definition of what is said as being the sum of illocutionary force andpropositional content, but disagree in as much as Searle would see what is communicated as equivalent to what is said while Grice would see what is communicated as the sum of what is said and the implicatures of the utterance. Thus, the question would be, not whether what is said is semantically transparent, but whether Grice is right to include implicatures in what is communicated, i.e. to make them a part of what the speaker intended to communicate. After all, it might be argued that the recovery of what is said is quite enough to recognize the speaker's intention and that the recovery of anything further is not necessary to it. Again, this would mean that all of what is necessary for the analysis of linguistic communication is given by the code model with its two corollaries: 0 The only possibility for miscommunication is misunderstanding due to noise in the communication channel; Communication is successful in as much as the message recovered is the same as the message sent. According to what is said above, a possible definition for miscommunication would be that it occurs whenever communication is not successhl. i.e. when there is a discrepancy

A. Reboul /Semantic Transparency

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between the message recovered and the message sent. This would certainly be true according to the code model. However, it would be interesting to have a more intuitive clue that miscommunication has happened. I propose that miscommunication can be said to occur when the participants in the interaction seem to be talking at cross-purposes, as, for instance, when each participant is saying the same thing over and over again. This, it should be clear, can happen when there is noise in the communication channel. People would repeat themselves in the hope of being heard or read by their audience. Whether it only happens in such a case is however a good test of the validity of both the code model and Searle's view. If, indeed, there is nothing more to what is communicated than what is said, given that what is said is supposed to be semantically transparent, then without noise in the communication channel, no miscommunication should occur. 2.3.I Misunderstandings without a noise in the communication channel

However, regrettably for the code model of linguistic communication, such miscommunication can occur, and in fact frequently does. Some time ago, the transcription of a radio conversation at sea between Americans and Canadians was widely circulated on the web because of its comic impact: (1 0)

AMERICANS: Please reroute your ship by I5 degrees North to avoid a collision. Over. CANADIANS: Please reroute YOUR own ship by 15 degrees South to avoid a collision. Over. AMERICANS: Here the captain of a US navy ship is speaking. I repeat: please reroute YOUR ship. Over. No, please reroute YOUR ship. CANADIANS: AMERICANS:THISIS THE uss AIRCRAFT CARRIER LINCOLN,THE SECOND SHIP IN

us

NAVY. W E ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS AND A GREAT NUMBER THE OF OTHER SHIPS. I ASK YOU TO REROUTE YOUR SHIP BY 15 DEGREES NORTHOR RESTRICTING MEASURES WILL BE TAKEN TO ENSURE THE SECURITY OF OUR SHIP .

OVER. CANADIANS: This is a lighthouse.

Though it is very far from certain that example (10) actually is the transcription of an authentic radio exchange between the American and Canadian navies, it is nevertheless interesting in as much as it is a good example of a misunderstanding - most of it represents Americans and Canadians as speaking at cross-purposes - and there does not seem to be anything like noise involved. In fact, what is happening in example (10) is something over and above the predictions of the code model. Every sentence seems to be perfectly well understood by its addressee but no common ground for communication is found. The conversation, indeed, consists mainly in each speaker in his or her turn repeating his or her previous utterance, adding, in the case of the last American intervention, a clear menace. The final Canadian intervention clears the misunderstanding and gives a clue as to its origin. In (10), the miscommunication arises through a discrepancy between the informations accessible to the Americans and those accessible to the Canadians. The Americans know the spatial position of the Canadians and the Canadians know the spatial position of the Americans. Both the Canadians and the Americans know that their respective addressee belongs to the opposite navy. However, the Canadians have an information that the Americans do not. The Canadians know that they are not on a ship (i.e. a mobile object)

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A. Rehod/ Semantic Transparent,,

but in a lighthouse (i.e. a non-mobile object). The American ignorance of this fact explains the insistence on their part that the Canadians reroute. The Canadian knowledge of this fact equally explains their own insistence on the Americans rerouting. It is only when the Canadians, in their last intervention, finally say that they are in a lighthouse that the misunderstanding is cleared. Thus in this specific case, there is a clear miscommunication without any noise in the channel of communication. What is more, it is not only the code model of communication that is weakened by such an example. It is also the Searlian position as outlined above, that is, the equivalence between what is said and what is communicated. Clearly, what is communicated, notably in the last Canadian intervention is more than what is said. What is said, on a Searlian analysis, is a propositional content This is a lighthouse with an illocutionary force of assertion. What is communicated is however much more than that. What is communicated is a refusal to obey the previous American order as well as an explanation of this refusal. The interpretation of the last Canadian intervention appeals not only to Gricean maxims of conversation but also to encyclopedic knowledge about what lighthouses are. This raises a few questions: though the Gricean interpretation mechanism is inferential and. hence, part of the interpretation process is inferential as well, it is not clear that conversational maxims are sufficient to account for these inferential interpretation processes. For instance, how does linguistic interpretation interact with encyclopedic knowledge in the above instance? What is more, it is very far from certain that Grice would have endorsed a contextualist pragmatics (see, e.g., Recanati [ 141) and it is hard to see how encyclopedic knowledge can interfere in the inferential interpretation process on an anti-contextualist view of pragmatic interpretation. This is where yet another pragmatic theory. which might be called post-Gvirean rather than neo-Gricean, comes into play. 2.3.2 Relevance Theon,

Relevance Theory [4] can be said to be postGricean, rather than merely neoGricean, in that, though it adopts some of the major tenets of the Gricean theory of communication. it does not adopt all of them. For instance, as Grice does, Sperber and Wilson see the communication process as a mixture of both encoding-decoding and inference. However, the frontier between what belongs to the code domain and what belongs to the inference domain does not run in the same place in Grice's theory an8 in Relevance Theory. This. relative to the question of semantic transparency. may be Relevance most important departure from Gricean theory. What, in fact, Sperber and Wilson say is that semantic underdetermination is more widespread than what was previously believed and that it infects not only what is communicated over and above what is said but also what is said. They point out that it is not so much that utterances are incomplete but that language does not semantically determinate the proposition expressed by a given utterance, even if a parametric approach (see 6 2.2.1) is adopted. They point out the existence of frequent lexical or syntactic ambiguities as well as the semantic underdetermination of referring expressions and the even more frequent use of loose talk. In other words, though encoding-decoding processes play a part in linguistic communication, they are far from the whole story even if the proposition expressed is concerned. What is more. and this is one point of agreement with Grice, there is much more to what is communicated than what is said. However, there is no need to postulate a cooperative principle between communicators, nor to deal with nine maxims. A single cognitive principle can do the whole job.

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Let me briefly outline the theory. The first thing to note is that it may well be the first pragmatic theory to explicitly claim a place for itself among cognitive sciences. What is more, it is clearly chomskyan in its view of both what goes on in linguistics and what goes on in pragmatics, placing pragmatics squarely out of the linguistic domain. In its first guise, that is, on the first publication of [4], in 1986, Relevance Theory adopted the modular view of mind advocated by Fodor [ 151. According to Fodor, the mind is organized in a hierarchical way, with vertical modules specialized in the interpretation of stimuli in a given modality and a horizontal, non specialized central system. Examples of the vertical modules would be, for instance, a visual module, an olfactory module, an auditory module, etc. Modules would output a first interpretation of a stimulus that would then serve as input to the central system. Incidentally, on this view, the binding problem - i.e. the problem of how different stimuli all produced by the same source can be bound together to yield a recognition of this source - would be solved by the central system where inputs from the relevant modules could be considered simultaneously. Translated in the domain of linguistic communication, which was the main interest of Sperber and Wilson, the modular view of mind amounts to the following: there is a linguistic module specialized in the interpretation of linguistic stimuli, i.e. utterances. This linguistic module deals with the problems traditionally considered as pertaining to phonology, syntax and semantics. In keeping with Sperber and Wilson's view about the underdetermination of language, the output of the linguistic system is not a full propositional form, which can be evaluated for truth-value, but a logical form in which some elements (reference assignation for instance) are not hlly determined. This logical form consists in a structured sequence of concepts. It is the input to the pragmatic processes which take place at the level of the central system. Pragmatic interpretation, as is the case in Grice's theory, is largely inferential and nondemonstrative. It operates not from the logical form of the utterance and from a set of Gricean maxims but on the logical form of the utterance and from a set of premises, i.e. a context. This, apart from the pragmatic intrusion in the determination of what is said, is the second major departure of Relevance Theory from Gricean pragmatics. Relevance Theory is and Gricean pragmatics is not contextualist. According to Relevance Theory, utterances are interpreted relative to a context, and the context is not given once and for all: it is rebuilt for each new utterance. As said above, the context is a set of premises, i.e. of propositions which the hearer entertains as true or probably true. These propositions come from different sources: the interpretation of previous utterances in the same conversation or discourse; the situation in which the communication occurs, i.e. fiom the physical environment; encyclopedic knowledge, accessed through the concepts in the logical form. However, it seems clear that these sources yield an enormous amount of potential premises and that a selection process has to apply in order to yield a manageable context. Similarly, applying deductive rules - which Sperber and Wilson describe as operating both on the premises in the context and on the logical form of the utterance - could be a non-finite process yielding ever more conclusions. Again some sort of restraining influence must be brought to bear on the interpretation processes if they are not to run away. Relevance solution to these problems goes through a single and general cognitive process: the Principle of Relevance, to which the whole theory owes its name. The name of the principle is borrowed from Grice, but it has two main differences from its Gricean counterpart: it relies on a definition of Relevance; it subsumes all other Gricean maxims, hence its singularity. Relevance is defined (roughly) as follows:

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Relevance: The more effects a given stimulus has, the more relevant it is. a) The less efforts a given stimulus demands for its processing, the more b) relevant it is. Hence, relevance is a matter of equilibrium, of balance, between processing efforts and effects. In the last version of Relevance Theory [4], Sperber and Wilson distinguish between two principles of Relevance, a general cognitive principle which applies throughout cognitive processes to the effect that human cognition is geared to achieve maximum relevance and a communicative principle of relevance, limited to stimuli produced in the course of a communicative exchange. It is the second principle that we will be interested in here. It states that "Every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance" (p. 260). Before I articulate more precisely how the communicative Principle of Relevance should be interpreted, let me just say that it operates both on the selection of the context fiom the different sources indicated above and on the limitation of the inference process of interpretation. I would like to begin the exegesis of the communicative Principle of Relevance by explaining what ostensive communication is. As indicated above, Relevance Theory, just as Gricean pragmatics, is an authentic doubleintentionality theory and this manifests itself in that acts of communication are described as implying both an informative intention and a communicative intention. The informative intention is defined as the intention of "[making] manifest or more manifest to the addressee a [given] set of assumptions" (p. 58). The communicative intention is defined as the intention "to make mutually manifest to the communicator and the addressee that the communicator has this informative intention" (p. 61). "A fact is man$est to an individual at a given time if he is capable at that time of representing it mentally and accepting its representation as true or probably true" (p. 39). The cognitive environment of an individual at a given time is the set of facts which are manifest to him at that time. Two individuals can share a mutual cognitive environment i.e. a cognitive environment in which it is manifest which people share it. In a mutual cognitive environment, every manifest assumption is mutuallv manifest. In other words, an act of communication is ostensive in as much as the communicator's informative intention is mutually manifest both to him and to his addressee. As ostensive acts, communicative acts have a special claim to relevance: given that the communicator is claiming a non-negligible share of her addressee's attention and cognitive efforts, her act of communication must yield enough effects to be worth the addressee's attention. What this means is that communicative acts are interpreted in such a way that the interpretation obtained is consistent with the communicative Principle of Relevance. i.e. in such a way that the contextual effects are enough to offset the processing efforts. Very briefly, contextual effects are cognitive effects, i.e. they exist in as much as they modify the representation which an individual entertains. at a given time, of the world. They can be of three sorts: 0 a new information is added to the existing representation of the world; 0 a pre-existing information becomes either more or less plausible, i.e. the degree of confidence with which it is entertained is modified either positively or negatively; 0 a pre-existing information is contradicted and either it or the new contradictory information drawn from the interpretation of the stimulus is erased, depending on the degree of confidence with which each is entertained.

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Thus, ceteris paribus, the (right) interpretation will be the most accessible and, more generally, both the full propositional form and the implicatures of a given utterance will be considered in the order of their accessibility. Finally, let us turn to speech acts, which were the basis of pragmatics at its birth. Sperber and Wilson very clearly part ways there with previous pragmatic accounts. According to them, two types of illocutionary acts should be clearly distinguished: those that are socially defined (baptism, most administrative declarations, legislative acts, etc.) and which rely on non-Iinguistic conventions; those that rely on linguistic conventions and that are not socially determined. Though the first class may have a sociological interest, it does not pertain to pragmatics. The second class does pertain to pragmatics but, concerning it, Sperber and Wilson question one of the main assumptions of Searlian speech acts theory, that is, the hypothesis that each utterance should be classified as performing one or another illocutionary act, such as menace or prediction. This, according to Sperber and Wilson, is not the case, and the same sentence (e.g. I will come tomorrow) can be interpreted, depending on the context, as a promise, a menace, a prevision, etc. in defiance of the Searlian conventionalist view. Thus, it is more realistic to distinguish three classes of non-social illocutionary acts: acts of saying that, acts of telling to and acts of asking whether. The main thing to say is that success of one of these acts does not depend on the satisfaction of a sincerity condition as was the case in Searlian pragmatics. The central speech act for the present paper is the act ofsaying that, that Sperber and Wilson define as follows: "Let us define saying that P , where P is the propositional form of the utterance, as communicating that the thought interpreted byP is entertained as a description of an actual state of affairs" (p. 237). As we shall see below, this definition does not meet with the difficulties that plague accounts with sincerity conditions.

2.3.3 An extension of Relevance Theory to discourse interpretation Relevance Theory is, properly speaking, a theory of utterance interpretation, given that utterances are considered as a special case of ostensive communication. It can, however, also deal with all manners of ostensive communication from non-verbal communication to verbal communication extended over the limits of an utterance. In other words, it can account not only for utterance interpretation, but also for discourse interpretation (for a detailed defense of this claim, see [16], [17], [18], [19], and [20]). The first thing any theory of discourse should presumably do is to offer a definition of it. My own would run as follows: A discourse is a non-arbitrary sequence of utterances. This much should not be controversial. Controversy begins, however, with the seemingly inoffensive expression non-arbitrary, which can be interpreted in two quite different ways: as implying that the non-arbitrariness of discourse is due to the fact that there are linguistic rules governing the production and interpretation of discourse; as implying that discourse is non-arbitrary in a pragmatic sense, i.e. there are pragmatic rules governing the production and interpretation of discourse. These two different interpretations have widely different implications: in the first case, discourse can be - and has often been - seen as another linguistic unit, to be added to phoneme, morpheme and sentence; in the second, discourse can be seen as the product of pragmatic rules which would be specific to it or as the product of the same rules that govern the production and interpretation of utterances and it should be noted that the choice between the two depends on which version of pragmatic theory one favors. If one adopts a conventionalist view of pragmatics, then one will probably choose the first interpretation; if one adopts, as I do, a postgricean theoretical framework, such as Relevance Theory, one will probably defend the second interpretation. The choice between those two interpretations is not trivial: choosing the first one would presumably lead to

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considering discourse as a pragmatic unit, whereas choosing the second would not (discourse would merely be considered as just another act of ostensive-inferential communication). The preceding distinction between a linguistic or conventional pragmatic approach and a radical pragmatic approach has a corollary: if there are rules - linguistic or conventionally pragmatic - specific to discourse, those rules would govern theform of the discourse, not its content, just as syntactic rules govern the form of the sentence. not its content. Non conventional pragmatic rules would not only not be specific to discourse; they would just relate to its content, not its form. This is the view briefly outlined below. In a linguistic theory of discourse, there are linguistic rules relative to discourse; in a conventionalist pragmatic theory of discourse, there are pragmatic rules relative to discourse. In both cases, the non-arbitrariness of discourse can be accounted through the existence of a set of rules which would be specific to it and whose application would guarantee its coherence, just as the application of syntactic rules guarantees the grammaticality of a sentence. In a pragmatic framework which does not hypothesize the existence of such a set of rules, how can one account for the non-arbitrariness of discourse, and - even more crucially according to some currents in discourse analysis - account for its coherence or incoherence? An answer to this question can be found when one considers that, indeed, discourse is a case of ostensive communication, and, as such, implies the same double intentionality as do utterances. What is more, just as the Principle of Relevance and non-demonstrative inference processes can account for the recovery of intentions behind utterance production. they can account for the recovery of the intentions behind discourse production. In effect, this means that the two types of intentions in utterance, i.e. informative intention and communicative intention, are also to be found in discourse. Thus, the speaker of a discourse has a global informative intention and a global communicative intention, concerning the whole of his discourse, just as she has a local informative intention and a local communicative intention for each utterance in her discourse. These global intentions are recovered through the interpretation of the utterances composing the discourse, though the process is not purely incremental (i.e. the product of the interpretation of a discourse is not a sequence - or a sum - of the products of the interpretation of the successive utterances in that discourse) and this is where non-arbitrariness creeps back in. Why do we need global intentions in addition to local intentions? Well, this of course hinges on the fact that local intentions in Relevance are taken to concern utterances, not sequences of utterances and though they are enough (together with the rest of Relevance) to account for the fact that utterances are interpreted relative to context (which includes much more than just the interpretation of previous utterances), they are not quite enough to explain why, in a discourse, a given utterance occurs when it does. This is, among other things, because speaker’s intentions regarding discourse are not always straightforward: for instance. in literature, an author may willfully mislead her audience, that is, some utterances may lead the reader in a direction which is not consistent with the whole of the text. before surprising him with the conclusion (e.g. A. Christie in The Murder qfRoger ,4ckroyd). In this specific case, the reader will eventually recover as the global informative intention the culpability of the doctor, whereas he might legitimately have recovered most local informative intentions as indicating the doctor’s innocence. By the way, this is also why the interpretation of the discourse is not equivalent to the sum of the interpretation of the successive utterances, though each of these local interpretations is done relative to a context. And, again, this is a matter of contents and relations between them and not of form. The non-arbitrariness of discourse is due to two main factors: the whole of the discourse falls under the global communicative intention (i.e. it i s an act of \t*illfiil communication)

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and the local informative intention for each utterance is determined at least in part by the global informative intention. This is also what accounts for coherence and here is how it does it. Coherence has been traditionally regarded in linguistic discourse analysis as the discourse equivalent of grammaticality in syntax: it was thought that just as grammaticality is defined in syntax as the property of sentences, coherence can be defined as the property of discourses. The threat of circularity is to be avoided in both cases through the fact that (syntactic or discursive) rules are made explicit and are exhaustively described. One can criticize syntax for not being exhaustive; however, and that is much worse, one can criticize linguistic discourse analysis for not being explicit at all, i.e. linguistic discourse analysis does not seem to have produced any set of rules. Given that, it seems that coherence is at best a pre-theoretical notion which cannot account for anything (and certainly not for the non-arbitrariness of discourse), but which itself is in need of an explanation. I think that the framework proposed above can do precisely that without in any way presupposing that coherence is a theoretical notion and without using it theoretically. In saying that coherence is a pre-theoretic notion, I mean that one should not try to give it a definition which gets beyond its vernacular use. There is no way to deny that people do have spontaneous judgment of coherence about discourses, just as they have spontaneous judgment of grammaticality about sentences. However, grammaticality can attain theoretical status through the production of an explicit set of rules aiming at exhaustivity (Generative Grammar comes to mind). As said above, it is doubtful that this is the case for coherence. Hence, coherence is still in need of an explanation. The explanation which can be offered in a relevance oriented pragmatics of discourse such as that proposed above is the following: a discourse will be judged as more or less coherent by its hearer depending on the ease with which the global informative intention can be recovered and depending on the richness and complexity of the information transmitted. That is, depending on the effort necessary for the interpretation of the discourse and on its effects, i.e depending on its overall relevance. Note that all discourses will not provoke the same expectations of coherence (i.e. of relevance): the coherence expected of a scientific text is presumably much higher than the coherence expected of a discussion between friends in a restaurant. But that does not detract for the ability of a relevance oriented pragmatics of discourse to both account for the non-arbitrariness of discourse and explain coherence judgements. Here is a short, authentic and unabridged example: (1 1) Dare I tell the story which was confided to me while taking the shade under the shadow of a graveyard wall in a delightfully green square of alfafa? Why not? I am already dishonored as saying truths which shock the fashion of 1838: The curate was not old; the maid was pretty; people were talking which did not discourage a young man from a near village to court the maid. One day, he hides the kitchen tongs in the maid’s bed. When he came back a week later, the maid said: “Tell me where you put the tongs which I have looked for everywhere since your departure. This is a very bad joke” The lover kissed her, with tears in his eyes, and went away. Stendhal, Voyage dans le midi, My translation. I will take it for granted that no one would find this text incoherent and that all judgments of coherence would be favorable. The question is why is it (judged to be) coherent? The first thing to note is that there are no connectives in this text and very few pronouns. In fact, almost the only expressions which could related to the judgment of

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coherence are temporal (e.g. a week later), though they are certainly not sufficient to account for it. I think that the best way to answer the question is in terms of the hypotheses which Stendhal sows in the reader's mind as to what he intends to tell (i.e. these hypotheses concern not so much the local informative intention of each successive utterance than the global informative intention of the whole text) and this begins with the first utterance of the text. He then exploits the reader's encyclopedic knowledge with the first utterances of the story itself, i.e. curates are male andmaids female and young people of both sexes can fall in love. The following utterances of the text mainly confirm these hypotheses. Why is the extension of Relevance Theory to discourse important for our present concern? As indicated in the introduction, I will be interested in what follows both in falsity masquerading as truth and in truth masquerading in falsity, i.e. in lies. It is a commonplace to say that the main difficulty involved in lying is not so much on the inventive side (i.e. in the content of the lie), but in keeping that content consistent with the rest of one's discourse, i.e. the main difficulty occurs not at the level of the utterance, but at the level of discourse. Before turning to lies of both kinds, I, however, want to outline the relations between pragmatics (specifically the interpretation of utterances) and metarepresentation. 2.3.4 Pragmatics and metarepresentation

Before turning to lies of all hues, I would like to outline the potentially complex relations between pragmatic interpretation and metarepresentation. First of all, let me say what I mean by metarepresentation,relying on the very sophisticated discussion given in Perner's book [21]. Perner squarely belongs to the representational tradition in cognitive sciences adopted here. He distinguishes three kinds of representations: 0 primary representations, representations of an object, i.e. a photograph of myself is a primary representation of myself; 0 secondary representations, voluntary misrepresentations of an object, i.e. representations in which a property is falsely attributed to an object. as. for instance, in hypothetical reasoning; 0 metarepresentations, "represent[ing] that something (another organism) is representing something" (p. 7), and how it is representing it. This may be clearer fiom figure 2.2.

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Figure 2.2 The different sorts of representation

Let us forget secondary representations and misrepresentations for the moment and concentrate just on representation and metarepresentation. On a representational view of cognition, mental states are, or at least involve, representations. This is the case, for instance, for intentions. Thus the intentions which are recovered in utterance interpretation are representations. However, given that what is recovered is an attributed intention, the form of utterance interpretation will be a representation (on the hearer's part) of the intention of the speaker, hence a metarepresentation. This much is the common ground behind all pragmatic accounts, whether conventionalist or not, and whether contextualist or not. Can we go farther than that? On the Searlian conventionalist account, as said above (see 5 2.2.5), it does not seem to be the case. What, however, can be said of the Gricean and post-Gricean accounts? On a Gricean account, it seems obvious that metarepresentation has a role to play in the interpretative process itself, notably when conversational maxims are flouted. Then, the hearer must go through a complex and rather cumbersome reasoning process as to what the intentions of the speaker could be, etc. On a post-Gricean account, however, things are more simple: no such reasoning process is necessary though metarepresentation is the reason why the communicative Principle of Relevance comes into play. However, it does not necessarily play a role in the communication process, as long as everything goes well. The story, however, may become different when communication is not straightforward, i.e. in case of miscommunication, or in case of the detection of lies.

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Lies

As said above, I will be concerned here with two kinds of lies which I will designate. rather ornately, asfalsity masquerading as truth and as truth masquerading asfalsity. Both have a common aim: leading the hearer to a false belief or, more precisely, leading the hearer to believe something which the speaker believes to be false. I will have more to say about lies below, but before I turn to them, I would like to borrow a few reflections on metarepresentation and utterance interpretation proposed by Dan Sperber [22 J. 2.4.I

Three interpretation strategies

Not surprisingly, Sperber bases his paper on the assumption that language is semantically underdetermined. The consequence of this is that utterances are semantically opaque, that is, no amount of decoding is going to yield the interpretation of a given utterance. Hence. the linguistic decoding interpretation process has to be supplemented by a pragmatic inferential interpretation process. This implies a modicum of metarepresentation. However how much metarepresentation is involved in the pragmatic interpretation process is going to depend on the degree of sophistication of the interpretation strategy adopted by the hearer. On lines reminiscent of the three little pigs of the children tale, Sperber describes three strategies ranging from the less sophisticated to the more sophisticated. Interestingly. the less sophisticated here means not only the less complex as far as processes go, but also the more likely to lead the hearer in the clutches of a less than benevolent speaker, i.e. to lead the hearer to believe any lie which the speaker might intend him to believe. By contrast, the more sophisticated the strategy. the less risks there is that the hearer will be led to false beliefs. As Sperber points out, given Relevance Theory, there are two ways in which the communication process can flounder, i.e. not recover the speaker's intentions: the speaker may be incompetent, thus leading the interpretation process astray by not producing an utterance which can be interpreted so as to yield an interpretation consistent both with the communicative Principle of Relevance and with the speaker's informative intention; 0 the speaker may be less than benevolent, i.e. she can want to deceive the hearer. Given those two ways of producing miscommunication, the three stratepes are distinguished by whether they take them into account or not. The first strategy is naive optimism. In naive optimism, the hearer (let us call him John, following Sperber [22]) considers the speaker (let us call her Carol, still following Sperber) as both competent and benevolent. The only thing he has to do to interpret Carol's utterance is to follow the communicative Principle of Relevance and accept the first interpretation available to him which is consistent with it. The second strategy is cautious optimism. In cautious optimism. Carol is presumed to be benevolent, but not necessarily competent. In this strategy, John will again follow the principle of least effort, but he will not adopt the first interpretation consistent with the communicative Principle of Relevance. Rather, he will adapt to what he believes true of Carol, and, notably, what he believes that Carol believes about him. In other words, he will adopt not the first interpretation consistent with the communicative Principle of Relevance but the first interpretation that Carol might have believed to be relevant to him, John. This entails a good amount ofmetarepresentation on John's part. The third strategy is sophisticated understanding. Under sophisticated understanding, the speaker is believed to be neither competent nor benevolent. She is assumed to semi competent and benevolent.

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The three strategies differ not only in the amount of metarepresentation involved, but also in the level of metarepresentation involved. Let us look at the following examples where different degrees of metarepresentation are involved: (1 2) ( 13) (14) ( 15)

(16)

Primary representation: It is raining. First-order metarepresentations: John says/believes/intends to communicate [that it is rainingJ. Second-order metarepresentation: John intends [me to believe [that it is rainind] . Third-order metarepresentation: John intends [me to believe [that he believedintends to communicate [that it is raining]]]. etc.

There are, in principle, no logical limits to the orders of metarepresentation, though cognitive limits do exist. The naive optimism strategy implies the capacity in the speaker and the hearer of forming first-order metarepresentations. The cautious optimism strategy implies a capacity to form second-order metarepresentations, while the sophisticated understanding strategy implies the capacity of forming at least third-order metarepresentations. It should also be noted that each strategy is more costly in terms of processing efforts than is the previous one. Thus, ceteris paribus, in most circumstances, we will tend to adopt the naive optimism strategy. It is only in specific cases, for instance when we know that the speaker is likely to be incompetent (if, for instance, it is a small child), or when the stakes are particularly important to us that we resort either to cautious optimism or to sophisticated understanding. This leaves a loophole in the communication process, which unscrupulous speakers can and frequently do exploit. 2.4.2 Lies and perlocutionary effects

Lies are one of the stumbling blocks of Searlian speech acts theory. The difficulties it raises for it mainly depend on the redefinition of meaning by Searle and on the place of the sincerity condition in the felicity rules for assertion. In order to see why this should be so, let me begin by a definition of a lie. It is generally thought that lying is saying something false. However, as was pointed out by Davidson [23], this is incorrect: "It is sometimes said that telling a lie entails what is false; but this is wrong. Telling a lie requires not that what you say be false but that you think it false" (p. 258). I will however not define lying through the nature of what is said: whether we take lies to entail saying what is false or saying what we believe to be false, this does not make lies different from most metaphors. Hence it is hardly a defining characteristic of lies. I will rather define a lie through a general characteristic of the speakerk intention. The speaker of a lie has the intention to produce a specific effect: that his hearer should believe something which he, the speaker, takes, rightly or wrongly, to be false. What is more, he intends to obtain this effect through his utterance(s). This, it should be clear, is not an illocutionary effect. It is aperlocutionary effect. As such, it does not tally with Searle's redefinition of meaning along (what Searle takes to be) Gricean lines. In that definition, Searle insist that the effect intended cannot be anything but illocutionary. I want to defend the idea that there are two ways of achieving the intended effect of a lie: you can say something which you believe to be false and get your hearer to think that you have said something which you believe to be true on good grounds; you can say something which you believe to be true and get your hearer to think that you have said

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something that you believe to be false on good grounds, leading him to adopt a contradictory belief (which you think false). There are thus two varieties of lies though the first one is the one generally considered. To avoid misunderstandings, I will reserve the word lie to the first variety, which I will characterize as falsity masquerading as truth. I will call the other variety, truth masquerading as falsity, truthfir1 deception. There is a third kind of deception, apart from lies and truthful deceptions: it occurs when you lead your hearer to derive a false conclusion. I will call it Machiavellian deception. Why, apart from the fact that deception in general aims at aperlocutionary rather than illocutionary effect, do lies make any difficulty for Searle's theory of speech acts? It seems impossible to describe lies in terms of speech acts and yet it seems rather weird to deny that lying is accomplishing a speech act. Let us suppose that lies are indeed a type of speech act. It seems clear, given that deception is involved, that lies cannot be illocutionary acts. This, however, does not mean that they cannot be another type of speech act and that they cannot have felicity conditions. Let us suppose that this is the case. Lies are perlocutionary acts and their felicity condition is that the intention of the Iiar should be satisfied, i.e. the hearer believes that the propositional content of the lie is true. Under speech acts theory, any utterance must correspond to the accomplishment of an illocutionary act. I will here adopt the simplifjmg assumption that all lies correspond to the performance of an illocutionary act of assertion. However, this cannot be the case, given that a defining condition of assertion is the sincerity condition, which is obviously not satisfied in lies. However, it does seem that if a lie is to be successful, the corresponding assertion also should be successful. But this cannot be the case if the sincerity condition is not satisfied. Thus, it does not seem to be the case that lies can be given a satisfying description in Searlian speech acts theory. It should be noted, however, that, on Sperber and Wilson's definition (see 4 2.3.3) of the act of sa,ving that, lies are just a variety of saying that. Indeed, saying that P is merely described "as communicating that the thought interpreted by P is entertained as a description of an actual state of affairs". which does not imply any kind of sincerity condition. 2.4.3 Deception on Iago 's mind

Iago is well known as the epitome example of a deceitful man. Othello will be my main illustration in the remaining part of this paper. Its scenario is well known, but I will briefly recapitulate it. Iago has been bypassed by Othello, a Moor employed by Venice in its fight against the Turks, who has chosen Cassio, of whom he is fond, as his officer, leaving to Iago the less prestigious role of ensign. Iago, to revenge himself, decides to make Othello believe that his wife, Desdemona, is Cassio's mistress. To this aim, he gives Othello a few hints and tops his work by a "proof", an handkerchief of Desdemona, given to her by Othello, which he steals and plants in Cassio's room. Othello, maddened by jealousy, kills Desdemona, understands his error and commits suicide on his wife's body. The turning point in the play occurs in the third scene of the third act. It begins whencassio has been disgraced through a plot of Iago and has asked Desdemona to intercede with Othello on his behalf. This is when Iago begins to lead Othello slowly but surely to the belief that his wife is unfaithfid. Scene 111, 3 begins with Othello secure in his marital bliss and ends with Othello sure of his cuckold status. The question is how does Iago manage to bring about this change? Iago's deceptions cover the three strategies outlined above: lies, truthful deception and Machiavellian deception. Let us, however, recognize that Otheilo is the ideal victim. only stirring out of naive optimism when Iago leads him to it.

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Let us try and describe the whole process through the categories defined above. What then is Iago's global informative intention? His global informative intention is to make it manifest to Othello that Desdemona is Cassio's lover. He begins by subtly drawing Othello's attention to the fact that Cassio, who was speaking with Desdemona and asking her help, is leaving subrepticely. To do this, Iago mutters: "Ha! I like not that". His aim is to be heard, but not understood by Othello and to induce in Othello the belief that his utterance was an involuntary exclamation. His local informative intention is to make Othello believe that he, Iago, uttered an exclamation of dismay. Questioned by Othello on what he says, he reinforces Othello's initial interpretation by saying: "Nothing my lord. Or if, I know not what". In this exchange, Iago adopts the Machiavellian deception strategy. It is not the content of his utterances which Othello should believe: it is the inference that Othello draws from his interpretation of Iago's attitude which leads him to a dim kind of disquiet. The next episode where Iago again is active consists in Iago asking Othello whether Cassio was involved in Othello's wooing of Desdemona. This leads Othello to question him on his opinion of Cassio's honesty. This is where Iago resorts to truthful deception. His answers affirm Cassio's honesty, and he does believe Cassio to be honest. The whole exchange between Othello and Iago at this point deserves to be quoted in full: (17)

For Michal Cassio, I dare be sworn I think that he is honest. OTHELLO I think so too. IAGO Men should be what they seem, Or those that be not, would they might seem none. OTHELLO Certain, men should be what they seem. hGO why then, I think Cassio's an honest man. Nay, yet there's more in this. OTHELLO Iprithee speak to me as to thy thinkings, As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst thoughts The worst of words. hG0

The situation in this exchange is the following. Iago knows Cassio to be honest. He says so. But he says it in such a way that Othello is led to the belief that Iago thinks Cassio to be dishonest. In terms of metarepresentation, this could be formulated as follows: ( 18)

Othello believes [that Iago thinks [that Cassio is dishonest]]

Iago's intention is the following: (19)

Iago intends [that Othello believes [that Iago thinks [that Cassio is dishonest]]]

His strategy can be articulated as: (20)

a. Iago intends [that Othello believes [that Iago says [that Cassio is honest]]] b. Iago intends [that Othello believes [that Iago does not believe [that Cassio is honestll] c. To achieve b., Iago intends that [Othello believes [that Iago lies [in saying that Cassio is honest]] ] d. To achieve c, Iago intend that [Othello believes [that Iago does not want [Othello to worry about Cassio's and Desdemona's relationship]]]

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This, in effect, is exactly what happens. Let us now turn to a lie. One occurs later in the scene, after Iago has adjured Othello not to fall into suspicion regarding Cassio and Desdemona. Othello assures him, falsely, that he has not. Iago then says: (21)

IAGo

Should you do so, my lord, My speech should fall into such vile success Which mt,thoughts aimed not.

Here, what Iago says is that Othello succumbing to jealousy was not his (lago's) intention. It is of course a blatant lie. What is Iago's intention? (22)

Iago intends [that Othello believes [that /ago did not intend [Othello to be jealous]]]

All of this should now be assessed relative to the notions of semantic transparency and semantic opacity. Linguistic underdetermination has a corollary: utterances are semantically transparent neither relative to their propositional content nor relative to the speaker's state of mind. This is why Machiavellian deception is possible: it relies on exactly the same inferential processes as utterances where no Machiavellian deception applies, as for instance, in the interpretation of example ( I 1). This is also why truthful deception is possible: utterances are not always taken to be sincere or truthful and they are not considered as semantically transparent relative to the speaker's state of mind. So far so good, but if this is the case, how are lies possible? Why does the sophisticated understanding strategy not apply across the board? To answer this question. I propose to quickly examine a well known philosophical puzzle, Moore's paradox. Moore's paradox

2.5

Moore's paradox was proposed by the Cambridge philosopher George Moore and can be enunciated in the following way:

(23)

It rains but I don't believe it rains.

The first thing to note is that, strictly speaking, Moore's paradox is not a contradiction does not contravene the law of excluded middle -. neither is it a paradox in the sense in which. for instance, the liar paradox is:

- it

(24)

I'm lving.

Thus the paradox in Moore's paradox resides in the fact that we consider such a utterance as (23) as weird in some mysterious sense, though it does not seem to have any of the anomalies listed in catalogues of semantic teratology. So why is Moore's paradox intuitively bizarre and what is its relationship with lies? The present section will be devoted to an answer to the first part of this question and this answer will allow us to deal with its second part.

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A logical solution to Moore's paradox?

A possible solution to Moore's paradox would be to show that, despite appearances, it in fact is a contradiction. This seems to be the position adopted, notably, byvanderveken [6] and Levinson [24]. In other words, the solution would consist in considering the utterance in (23) as semantically equivalent with either (25) or (26):

(25) (26)

I believe it is raining and I don't believe it is raining. It is raining and it is not raining.

The first thing to note is that there is no problem in replacing but in (23) by and in (25)(26), given that but is generally considered as logically equivalent to and. However for (25) to be equivalent to (23), it should be considered that sayingIt's raining is logically equivalent to saying I believe it's raining. Similarly, for (26) to be equivalent to (23), it should be considered that saying I don't believe it is raining is logically equivalent to saying It is not raining. How likely is that? Saying that two linguistic expressions are semantically or logically equivalent is saying that they make the same contribution to the truth-conditions of any sentence where they might occur. In other words, in a given sentence, replacing one of two semantically equivalent expressions by the other will not change the truth-value of the whole sentence. When the utterance being considered is a compound of two sentences, each of which expressing a proposition, saying that one of the sentence in the compound is semantically equivalent with another sentence is just saying that replacing the sentence in the compound with the semantically equivalent sentence will not change the truth value of the compound. It is on this reasoning that advocates of the logical solution toMoore's paradox base their argumentation. As, for instance, It is raining is semantically equivalent with I believe that it is raining, (25) is semantically equivalent with (23) and thus both are necessarily false because they are contradictions. This is good reasoning in itself apart from the fact that it begs the main question which is that of the logical equivalence of either it is raining and I believe it is raining or I don't believe it is raining and It is not raining. What ground is there for thinking that it is so? Logical equivalence between sentences means quite simply that the two sentences have the same truth-values. One way of ensuring that is to make sure that they have the same truthconditions, i.e. that the truth of either of them implies the truth of the other. In other words, for It is raining and I believe it is raining to be equivalent, both (27) and (28) -where the sign is the logical sign for material implication -would have to be true: (27) (28)

It is raining a I believe it is raining I believe it is raining a It is raining

For (27) to be true, semantic transparency relative to the speakerk state of mind would have to be true and, as we have seen before, this is just not plausible. For (28) to be true, an even less likely condition should be met, i.e. that the speaker is infallible. Let us now turn to the second possible equivalence. Again, for I don't believe that it is raining to be semantically equivalent to It is not raining, both (29) and (30) should be true: (29) (30)

I don't believe that it is raining =jit is not raining It is not raining 3 I don't believe it is raining

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(30) corresponds to an operation called Negation raising and is seen as legitimate. However, no such legitimacy is attached to (29), which would depend on two operations. The first one would be to consider that I don't believe that it is ruining is semantically equivalent to I believe that it is not raining. The second one would consist in an elimination of the preface I believe. None of these two operations are legitimate: I can not believe that it is raining without simultaneously believing that it is not raining. For instance, I may just not know whether it is or it is not raining. And, as pointed out before, unless I am infallible, my beliefs do not necessarily come true and, hence, it may well be the case both that I believe that P and not-P. This, incidentally, is why Moore's paradox is not a contradiction. Thus, it does not seem to be the case that there is a logical solution toMoore's paradox and neither can it be seen as contradiction. As a last argument against the logical solution, let me borrow (with modifications) two examples from Tsohatzidis [25]: (3 1) (32)

I don't believe that he feels sick but as he says he does and as his words would be accepted as the best evidence of his feeling sick, I assert that he feels sick. *I don't believe that he feels sick but as he says he does and as his words would be accepted as the best evidence o f his .feeling sick, I believe that he .feels sick.

Examples (3 1) and (32) are identical except for the replacement of1 assert in (3 1 ) by I believe in (32). (32) is definitely contradictory while (31) is perfectly acceptable. If semantic transparency relative to the speaker's state of mind was a sound hypothesis. assertion - as in (3 1) - and belief - as in (32) - would be equivalent. The comparison between (3 1) and (32) shows that this is not the case. 2.5.2 A pragmatic solution to Moore'sparadox

Thus, Moore's paradox is not a contradiction. What should be done, then, is explaining why (23) is, nonetheless, weird. The solution outlined below is a pragmatic solution, where pragmatic implies cognitive considerations. The first thing I would like to insist upon here is the indexicality of Moore's paradox. Let us compare (23) and (33) and (34): (23) (33) (34)

It is raining but I don't believe it is raining. Mary says it is raining, but I don't believe it is raining. It is raining in Caracas, hilt I don't believe it i s raining in Lvons.

The weirdness of (23) disappears in all of (33) and (34). In other words, it is essential to Moore's paradox that the person who says that it is raining should be the same as the person who says that he/she does not believe that it is raining, and it is just as essential that the location where it rains should be the same in the first and the second clauses of the sentence. This should. on the face of it. be mysterious: there is no location explicitly designated in (23). An answer to that problem has been suggested by American philosopher John Perry from example (35): (35 )

It is raining.

As Perry remarks, the truth-value of this utterance can only be evaluated relative to a precise place, though no place is mentioned in (35). He introduces the notion of

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unarticulated constituent (see Perry [26]). An unarticulated constituent is a constituent of truth-conditions which is solved directly on the situation in which the communication takes place, but which is not mentioned explicitly in the utterance. Thus unarticulated constituents share with indexicals their deictic aspect. What is more, Perry introduced another notion, the notion that some indexicals are essential. Presumably, the best way of explaining Perry’s ideas on the matter is to quote his example ([27], p. 33): (36)

“I once followed a trail of sugar on a supermarket jloor, pushing my cart down the aisle on one side of a tall counter and back the aisle on the other, seeking the shopper with the torn sack to tell him he was making a mess. With each trip around the counter, the trail became thicker. But I seemed unable to catch up. Finally it dawned on me. I was the shopper I was trying to catch. I believed at the outset that the shopper with a torn sack was making a mess. And I was right. But I did not believe that I was making a mess. That seems to be something I came to believe. And when I came to believe that, I stopped following the trail around the counter and rearranged the torn sack in my cart. My change in beliefs seems to explain my change in behavior. ”

The notion of essential indexical applies to those indexicals which are indispensable to explain the behavior or the changes in behavior. In the above example, replace the indexical by a co-referring expression (e.g. John Perry) and you will loose the explanatory weight of I am the shopper with a torn sack. In this case, indexicality is essential in that it is impossible to eliminate it. Not all indexicals are essential however. Only indexicals which both are interpreted relative to the situation in which the communication takes place and which refer to components of that situation are essential in the above sense. This means that essential indexicals are I, here, now and the unarticulated constituents. Unarticulated constituents intervene to fix the location where it is raining though the speaker does not believe it in (23). However, they are not indispensable to the weirdness of Moore’s paradox: identity of location, however it is ensured, is. Let us extend the notion of unarticulated constituent out of truth-conditions and include in it a non-vericonditional preface any utterance: in other words, let us suppose that each utterance is accompanied by the unarticulated constituent . Thus, (35) - which is identical with the first part of (23) - should be understood (non-vericonditionally)as:

(37)

it rains

This allows the following (not semantically equivalent to (35)) deduction:

(38)

( it rains)

I say that it rains

=j

Let us now resort to the intentional stance (see 52.2.3). According to it, the interpretation of behavior relies on the attribution to other people of states of mind, through the hypothesis that people are rational. Suppose that we combine the intentional stance with a naive optimism strategy regarding utterance interpretation. Then from the fact represented in (38), we will deduce that indeed the speaker of (35) believes that it is raining. However, when we apply the intentional stance and the naive optimism strategy to Moore’s paradox, we find ourselves faced by a contradiction between the state of mind we attribute to the speaker from the interpretation of the first sentence of the compound and the state of mind he describes himself as being in the second sentence of the compound. There is a contradiction, but that contradiction is not between the two sentences of the

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compound. It is between a deduction which the first sentence seems to allow and the propositional content of the second sentence. That, in itself would not be sufficient to explain the weirdness because, after all, we only have to change our strategy and abandon naive optimism in favor of sophisticated understanding. This would leave us with a difficulty, however, in that the intentional stance would still apply but its second requisite would not be complied with. Indeed, it seems that there is no way to attribute to the speaker of (23) one or several states of mind consistent with the rule that the speaker is considered as a rational individual. Let me explain shortly why this is so. Let us suppose that the speaker of (23) is sincere: thus, when he says It is raining he believes that it is raining; similarly when he says I don? believe it is raining he does not believe that it is raining; however, it is not possible to believe both that it is raining and that it is not raining of the same place; hence, the speaker of (23) cannot be rational. Let us now suppose that the speaker of (23) is not sincere, i.e. he is lying: when he says It is raining, he intends his hearer to believe that he (the speaker) believes that it is raining; similarly, when he says I don't believe that it is raining he wants to make his hearer believe that he (the speaker) does not believe that it is raining; it is impossible to have and to satisfy simultaneously two contradictory intentions: hence. the speaker of (23) is not rational. In other words, Moore's paradox draws its weirdness from the fact that it is impossible to attribute to its hypothetical speaker a state of mind consistent with the rationality requirement of the intentional stance. 2.5.3 Moore's paradox and lies We are free to adopt any interpretative strategy we want, as long as it yields results consistent with the intentional stance. As we saw before, though the most reliable strategy presumably is sophisticated understanding, it also is, unsurprisingly, the most costly strategy. This is why we generally adopt naive optimism unless we have good reasons to believe that the speaker is neither competent nor benevolent. This also is why we tend to believe the lies we are told, as long as the liar is competent enough not to get himself into obvious incoherence. This is also why we tend to believe that it is raining when in fact it is not and why there is a tendency to believe that Moore's paradox is a contradiction. However. it is not.

2.6

Conclusion

Semantic transparency is just a myth. The code model of linguistic communication is far from satisfying. However, there are models that can do justice to the intrinsic complexity of human communication. Relevance Theory is such a model as I hope to have shown above. What is more, a plausible model of communication should cover all the avatars of communication, from perfect functioning to gross imperfection. This, I think, is just what the code model and the hypothesis of semantic transparency cannot do. Relevance Theory can and, hence, it is. now, the most promising model for communication.

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References C E Shannon and W Weaver, The Mathematical Theon of Communication Urbana Unnersih of Illinois Press, 1949 i 4uqtin. HOMto do ~hings\+ i r h itordq Oxford Clarendon. 1%:

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P. Grice, Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. D. Sperber and D. Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996 (2ndedition). D. Dennett, The intentional stance. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987. D. Vanderveken, Les actes de discours [Discourse acts]. Bruxelles: Mardaga, 1988. P. Grice, Meaning, Philosophical Review 66 (1957) 377-388. J.R. Searle, Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. A. Reboul,: The logical status of fictional discourse: what Searle's speaker can't say to his hearer, in: Speech Acts, Meaning and Intentions: critical Approaches to the philosophy of John R. Searle, A. Burkhardt, Ed. Ber1in:de Gruyter, 1990, pp. 336-363. A.Rebou1, The description of lies in speech acts theory, inpretending to communicate, H. Parret, Ed. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993, pp.292-298. A. Reboul, La fiction et le mensonge: les "parasites " dans la theorie des actes de langage [Pretence and lie: The "parasites" within the speech act theory], in L'assertion en dkbat. La description du monde dans la conversation [Assertion in discourse: World description in conversation], Ch. Brassac, Ed. Psychologie de 1'Interaction 5-6, (1997) 87-125. A. Reboul, Le paradoxe du mensonge dans la theorie des actes de langage [The paradox of lie in the speech act theory], Cahiers de linguistique franqaise 13 (1992) 125-147. A.Rebou1, Represented speech and thought and auctorial irony: ambiguity andmetarepresentation in literature, in: Hommages h Ronald Landheer, J. Rooryck, P. Smith and P. Bogaarts, Eds. Amsterdam: Rodopi, to appear. F. Recanati, Contextualism and anticontextualism in the philosophy of language, in Foundations of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical and Linguistic Perspectives, S. Tsohatzidis, Ed. London: Routledge, 1994, pp. 156-166. J. Fodor, The modularity of mind. An essay onfacultypsychology. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983. A. Reboul and J. Moeschler, Le dialogue n'est pas une categorie naturelle scientifiquement pertinente [Dialogue is not a natural category scientifically relevant], Cahiers de linguistiquefranqaise 17 (1995) 229-248. A. Reboul and J. Moeschler, Faut-il continuer a faire de l'analyse de discours?[Do we still need discourse analysis?], Hermes, Journal of Linguistics 16 (1996) 61-92. A. Reboul and J. Moeschler, Reduction and contextualization in pragmatics and discourse analysis, in Pragmatik, B. Eckard Ed. Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 8 (1 997) 283-295. A. Reboul and J. Moeschler, La pragmatique aujourd 'hui. Une nouvelle science de la communication [Pragmatics nowadays: A new communication approach].Paris: Le Seuil, 1998. A. Reboul and J. Moeschler, Pragmatique du discours. De I 'interprktation de I 'enonck a 1 'interprktation du discours [Discourse pragmatic: utterance interpretation and discourse interpretation]. Paris: Armand Colin, 1998. J. Perner, Understanding the representational mind. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991. D. Sperber, Understanding verbal understanding, in What is intelligence?, J. Khalfa, Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 179-198. D. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. S. C . Levinson, Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of' Generalized Conversational Implicatures. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000. S. L. Tsohatzidis, Speaker meaning, sentence meaning and metaphor, in Foundations of speech act theory. Philosophical and linguistic perspectives, S. L. Tsohatzidis, Ed. London: Routledge, 1994, pp. 365-373, [261 J. Perry, Indexicals, Contexts and Unarticulated Constituents, in Proceedings of the 1995 CSLZAmsterdam Logic, Language and Computation Conference. Stanford: CSLI Publications, 1998. z271 J. Perry, The problem of the essential indexical, in The problem of the essential indexical and other essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 32-52. [31 [41

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SECTION I1 PRETENDING TO COMMUNICATE: DECEPTION, SEDUCTION AND EQUIVOCATION The ability to deceive involves hiding information known to oneself from another person. Successful deception requires taking into account the knowledge available to another person and thus indicates appreciation of mental states and the ability to predict the behaviors of others on the basis of their mental states.

Yirmiya, Solomonica-Levi and Shulrnan, I996

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Say Not to Say L. Anolli et al. (Eds.) IOS Press, 2002

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Deceptive Miscommunication Theory (DeMiT): A New Model for the Analysis of Deceptive Communication Luigi ANOLLI, Michela BALCONI, Rita CICERI

Abstract: Deceptive communication has been recently studied by many scholars, both in naturalistic studies in the field and in experimental research programs carried out in the laboratory, but this scientific domain remains devoid of a viable theory. These theoretical perspectives risk creating a sort of “mythology” about deception as a separate communicative domain, characterized by distinct and specific verbal and nonverbal features. The present chapter intends to overcome this deception mythology and offer a viable model which can explicate the main characteristics of deceptive communication and the local management of the deceptive message in its different expressions. The framework in which we move is the miscommunication as a chance theory (MaCHT) proposed by Anolli. According to the theory herein followed, deception is a kind of miscommunication and a chance in communication terms, since deceptive miscommunication greatly enhances the degrees of freedom available to the communicator. Within this perspective we mean to propose a new model, called the Deceptive Miscommunication Theory (DeMiT). The main theoretical points of this model will be sketched out in the present chapter.

Contents

3.8 3.9

Introduction............................................................ The “family” of deceptive acts.. ................................... Intentional framework in deceptive miscommunication. ....... The cognitive design of deceptive miscommunication.......... Deception as communicative interact. ............................. Modes of deceptive saying.. ........................................ Machiavellian attitude and self-deception as devices for a skilled deceptive miscommunication.............................. Conclusions. ........................................................... Acknowledgements...................................................

92 95 96

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3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7

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L . Anolli et al. /Deceptive Miscommunication Theon. (DeMiT)

Introduction

Deceptive communication has been the object of much study and research in these last 30 years, but, as McCornack [ l ] clearly points out, this scientific domain remains devoid of viable theory. Two main lines of research have been developed: naturalistic studies in the field to analyze spontaneous lying behavior and experimental research program carried out in the laboratory. In this second line, among the various theoretical models formulated by scholars, we can mention the Information Manipulation Theory (IMT)proposed by Lapinski [2], McCornack [3], McCornack, Levine, Solowczuk, Torres, and Campbell [4]; the Interpersonal Deception Theory (IDT)advanced by Buller and Burgoon [S], and Burgoon, Buller, Guerrero, Afifi, and Feldman [6]; the social model of lying presented by Bradac, Friedman, and Giles [7]; studies about the nonverbal aspects of deceptive speech act suggested by Buller, Burgoon, White, and Ebesu [8], and Ekman [9]. Differing and often conflicting between each other, these models have highlighted some distinct aspects of deceptive communication. According to IMT, which reverses Grice’s maxims (Quality, Quantity, Relevance, Manner) regulating conversational exchanges, the deceptive message derives from speakers “transforming” relevant information, but it fails to explicate this purported transformation process and, as Jacobs, Dawson, and Brashers [ 101 pointed out, it confuses three distinct issues: a) deceptive message production, b) deceptive message features. c) interlocutor interpretation of such a message. In its turn, IDT is grounded on a large set of formal statements concerning deception variables, such as suspicion, behavioral leakage, communicative strateges, relational intimacy and the like. Deceivers strategically control the information in their deceptive messages with the purpose of presenting themselves behaviorally as expressing truthfblness and veracity, since they are engaged “in greater strategic activity to manage information, behavior, and image [than truth-tellers]” [5, Proposition 31. However, non strategic unconscious leakage cues (like arousal and nervousness, negative affect and incompetent communication performance) can reveal deception [8, 61. According to DePaulo, Ansfield, and Bell [ 1 11, despite extensive research and numerous theoretical assumptions, IDT also fails to explain the production mechanisms responsible for deceptive message encoding, and the cognitive processes implicated in deceptive message interpretation. Firstly, we have to question the ecological validity of these current theories and ask ourselves how much their findings resemble naturalistic processes in everyday deceptive communication. Secondly, both IMT and IDT risk building a sort of “mythology” about deception as a separate communicative domain, characterized by distinct and specific verbal and non verbal features. According to McCornack [ 11, these “hopeful myths” are: the encoding of deceptive messages entails active, strategic, and detailed cognitive processing, the encoding of deceptive messages requires greater cognitive load than the encoding of truthful messages, the encoding of deceptive messages is more ph.vsiologicallr7 arousing than that the encoding of truthful messages, there is an identifiable and consistent set of deception-arousal-basedbehavioral cues that deceivers “leak” when encoding deceptive messages, human beings are innate!i* capable of deception detection. and deceptive messages halye specifiable characteristics that render them distinct from t n t thfii 1 messages.

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The aim of the present chapter is to overcome this deception mythology and to offer a viable model which can explicate the main characteristics of deceptive communication and the local management of the deceptive message in its different expressions. The theoretical domain in which we move is the miscommunication as a chance theory (MaCHT), as sketched out by Anolli (Chapter 1, this volume). According to the perspective herein followed, deception is a kind of miscommunication and a chance in communication terms, since deceptive miscommunication greatly enhances the degrees of freedom at the communicator’s disposal. It represents another route to express the speaker’s sensations, thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and desires; likewise, at communication level, it may be really advantageous to have the chance of hiding, omitting, concealing or, simply, blurring information. After all, truth is not a matter of black or white, and deceptive communication may be an opportunity both in a Machiavellian, opportunistic sense and in an everyday relational situation. Within this perspective we mean to propose a new model, called the Deceptive Miscommunication Theory (DeMiT). The main theoretical points are the following: a) a deceptive miscommunication theory should be included in a general framework capable of explaining the default communication; therefore, deceptive miscommunication is neither an alternative to truthful communication, nor an exception nor yet a violation regarding a standard paradigm of default communication; b) deceptive miscommunication is not a homogeneous but a heterogeneous communication field, with different kinds of deception and deceptive message features; c) deceptive miscommunication is managed by an intentional stance characterized by an internal gradation; these degrees of intention serve to arrange and monitor a deceptive message design suitable in a given situation and a contingent relational web; d) the deceptive message follows the same mechanisms and processes of mental planning and execution as the default communication message; e) deceptive miscommunication is context-bound, then requests a “local management” of conversational exchanges, because every context is constructed in situ; here a distinction may emerge between naive (“bad”) deceivers and skilled (“good”) ones; f) deceptive miscommunication, like default communication, uses different kinds of linguistic and nonverbal expressions, although they may be qualified by distinctive communication patterns in certain circumstances; g) a useful explicative key to understand deception mechanisms is given by the link between deception and self-deception. The aim of the present chapter is to sketch the DeMiT, starting with the deception “family” and the “resemblance of family” in deceptive phenomena, and following with the intentional framework of deceptive miscommunication in order to point out the intentional gradation involved in it. In this section we will also see some motives implicated in deception and how children manage to understand deceptive actions. In the next session we will take into consideration the cognitive design of deceptive miscommunication, examining the “cognitive load hypothesis”, making the distinction between the cognitive processes implied in low-content and high-content deceptive acts, and searching a contextual management conception of the deceptive act. After looking at deceptive miscommunication as a relational game and communicative inter-act (section 5 ) , we will take into consideration the different modes of expressing deception, examining both IMT and IDT, as well as examining closely the linguistic styles of deceptive miscommunication. The Machiavellian attitude and self-deception seen as devices for skilled deceptive miscommunication are the topics of the last section. In this chapter we will only allude to the emotional aspects of deception.

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The “family” of deceptive acts

Deception as an articulated and complex miscommunication act is an emblematic pattern of adaptive behavior in interpersonal relational management, with the aim of influencing others’ beliefs, as it is outlined by Bond, Omar, Pitre, Lashley, Skaggs, and Kirk [ 121, and by Buller and Burgoon [13]. In this way the deceptive act, as it occurs within everyday conversations, is both universal and casual. In the often quoted naturalistic study by Turner, Edgley, and Olmstead [ 141 61.5% of utterances reported by the 130 participants were, somehow, deceptive, even if less than one sixth were outright lies. Also DePaulo, Kashy, Kirkendol, Wyer, and Epstein [ 151 found in a naturalistic study that college students during a week’s observation told lies “in approximately one out of every three of their social interactions, and people from the community lied in one out of every five social interactions” (p. 16). These lies were not very serious and did not imply a large cognitive effort in planning and telling; subjects also reported that they expected to be believed and did not worry too much if they would be caught out by the deceived. In the everyday context the majority of deceptive messages involve subtle and complex combinations of truthful and deceptive information [3] and are told in an unplanned and simple manner ~51. In contrast to naturalistic studies, laboratory assessments tackled the prepared deception. Especially in the lie domain, strategic moves and countermoves by deceivers and deceived were discovered in experimental studies, and a self-conscious deliberative process has needed to lie [5]. The lie is considered as an intentional and conscious act to deceive another person who is unaware and unwilling. To this end, the need to arrange and execute a complex communicative plan is linked to the complexity of an intentional plan: that is, the speaker’s intention to make the interlocutor deliberately believe what heishe knows not to be true. Instead of considering the contraposition between field and laboratory research as exclusively a theoretical one, in the DeMiT, in line with MaCHT perspective (Anolli, Chapter 1, this volume), we prefer to deal with deception as a ‘:fami/r*”of miscommunication phenomena and processes. In this “family” we can consider selfdeception and pathological frequent deceptiveness; prepared lies (mainly managed to avoid sanctions) and unprepared lies (to face up to an embarrassing situation), pedagogic lies (for example, told to a child for reassurance) and white lies (aimed at managing a threateningface situation). For this reason truth and falsehood are not always separated by a dichotomous line and in many situations they are mixed together. In particular, crossing the broad distinction of “having the interlocutor believe the false“ and “not having the interlocutor believe the true”, we obtain four deceptive “subfamilies”: a) omission (the speaker omits to give the addressee some information that he/she thinks or knows is relevant to the addressee’s goals); b) concealment (the speaker withholds and hides some information by giving the addressee some other divergent/diversionary information that is true but not relevant. in order to perpetuate false assumptions in him/her); c) .ful.sification (the speaker deliberately conveys to the addressee some information that he/she believes false); d) masking (the speaker withholds some information by giving the addressee some other false information). We can continue this analysis of the deception ”family” and see we can lie telling the tnrth. as in the case of half-truth (the speaker only refers part of the truth or the truth is minimized) and exaggeration (the speaker provides more information than the truth called for). Moreover, truthful messages can be used to deceive by causing deceptive implicatures on the grounds of false presuppositions. as i t is outlined by Jacobs. Dawson. and Brashers [lo]. and by Castelfranchi and Vincent [I61 I n general. the different kinds of deceptke

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forms here mentioned are covered by the main distinction proposed by Chisholm and Feehan [171: deception by commission and deception by omission. It is worth pointing out that deceptive “subfamilies” and other related phenomena do not constitute “deception types” in the DeMiT. Speaking of “deception type” means accepting a priori taxonomy, in which the deception categories would be discrete and characterized by clear, definite and inflexible boundaries. Instead, according to DeMiT, there is a continuum among the different kinds of deceptive “subfamilies”: as Wittgenstein [ 181 says, there is “a resemblance of family”, in which the boundaries are fuzzy and vague, even though this “resemblance” does not deny the presence of great differences in the deception system. Now we must ask which, if any, could be common denominators in this range of deceptive forms. We think that DeMiT could be useful in this task.

3.3

Intentional framework in deceptive miscommunication

According to the prototypical perspective proposed by Coleman and Kay [19], the lie is defined by three basic features: a) the falsehood of the content of the utterance; b) the awareness of such falsehood; and c) the intention to deceive the addressee. But we realized that falsehood is not always necessary to produce a deceptive message, as you can tell a lie telling the true. Moreover, you can tell a falsehood by lying, or by making a mistake. He/she who mistakenly makes a false statement does so unknowingly (thinking of he/she is saying the truth) and successively learns the truth; instead, he/she deliberately tells a lie, first knows the truth and then tells the lie. As a consequence, the intention to lie is the essential feature of deceptive communication, as it is shown by Sweetser [20], and Anolli, Balconi, and Ciceri [21]. Anolli and Balconi [22] suggested that, whether or not a deceptive act is successful (the addressee is actually deceived) does not alter the fact that a deceptive act taken place; in the same way, the fact that the addressee does not believe what the deceiver has said, does not modify the fact that the speaker has deceived. According to Grice’s [23] speech acts theory, the performative effect does not alter the illocutory force of the deceptive speech act. Speaking of intention is a delicate subject. As Anolli (Chapter 1, this volume) pointed out, we have to consider different kinds of intention: referential, informative, and communicative, as well as the intentional gradation. Intentional stance is a matter of degree in the communicative process, since intentions are directly proportional in their strength to the informative content of the message, as it is outlined by Jaczczolt [24, p. 681. In deceptive miscommunication, according to the DeMiT, we theoretically have different layers of intention: a) covert (hidden) intention (the speaker intends to deceive the addressee by manipulating the information, but this intention must not be revealed); b) overt (ostensive) intention (the speaker intends to convey the manipulation of information to the addressee). This second intentional layer is, in its turn, twofold: bl) informative intention (the speaker wants to give the addressee the manipulated information as if it were true); b2) “sincerity intention (the speaker wants the addressee to believe that what he has said is true, in order to respect the Sincerity Rule of Searle [25]: “I want you believe that I believe what I am saying to YOU”). Therefore, deceptive communication appears to require at least a second-order intentional system and in certain cases (especially in prepared lies) a third-order intentional system. In this second-order intentional layer we have to further distinguish between the deception famiZy and the joke family (such as teasing, irony, pretence, parody, sarcasm, banter, etc.). In the former the speaker intends to deceive the addressee, whereas in the ”

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latter the speaker has the intention not to deceive but to be disbelieved. The speaker’s intention to deceive is therefore defined in terms of what the speaker wants the addressee to think. The deceitful speaker wants the listener to think that the statement is true, while the joking speaker wants the listener to know that the statement is false (see figure 3.1 ). Declarative statement

Truth value is not relevant

Politeness, greetings, etc.

Truth value is relevant

I Jokes, teasing. Pretence. wit, etc. parody, etc.

True

Knowledge is not relevant

Knowledge is relevant

(the communicator

(the communicator has

lacks knowledge)

good knowledyet

False

True Telliny the truth

False Telling a Ire

not justified

justified

genuine mistake

careless mistake unprepared lie

prepared lie

Figure 3.1. Route of miscommunicativeacts of deception

But the second-order intentional layer is a common and ubiquitous feature in human communication, grounded on what Dennett [26] defines as the intentional stance and theory of mind. In everyday conversations people normally attribute beliefs, motives, desires, and intentions to the mind of others, whatever they are saying or doing. They have a mental representation of the others’ mental representations. that is, they have metarepresentation. This mindreading implies intersubjectivity (like the sharing of subjective states and common reference), perception of intentionality (the idea of others as animate, self-directed, and goal-oriented), and attribution of mental states to others. As Whiten [27, p. 631 pointed out, also mindreading is graded, and this gradation corresponds ta the depth of penetration that the mindreader makes into the mind of the other. starting from epistemic seeing to arriving at false belief ascription. According to Perner [28]. in

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this last condition children achieve a truly “representational theory of mind” around four years of age. Intentional stance and metarepresentation are inherently recursive processes, tied to belief-embedding: a representation (or intention) can refer to another representation (or intention) that, in turn,refers to another, and so forth ad infinitum. According to the DeMiT, deceptive miscommunication is not the psychological counterpart of truthful communication, and is not a separate communicative type needing a distinct message-production mechanism. Intentional gradation, requested by any communicative act, can also manage different kinds of deceptive message, from white lies to prepared and bold-faced ones. The framework of deception as a miscommunicative act implies an increase of the degree of freedom on the part of the speaker to choose a definite path of message design according to context expectancies and cultural standards. Moreover, intentional system and gradation operating in deceptive miscommunication produce a sort of intentional opacity in the speaker: except in bold-faced lies, he can hide hisher deceptive act as a result of lack of information, a mistake, poor judgement, a moment of bewilderment, etc. In this way he/she can “save hisher face”. Likewise, intentional stance can also be useful in understanding both deception motives and deception comprehension in children. Concerning the former, the deceptive message, like any communicative or miscommunicative act, has the intent to influence another person in line with the adaptive perspective of human behavior. Here we are not interested in building a taxonomy of motives for deception, as recently proposed by O’Hair and Cody [29]; what we are interested in is to point out the combination of intentional gradation and motivational range. The deceptive act is not gratuitous, suggested by the Evil One or caused by madness; it is the outcome of an evaluation of the contingent situation in order to optimize the possibilities and reach a convenient and preferable solution in terms of costs and benefits. In any case, the deceptive message is generated by rational people, affected, however, not by an Olympian but by a bounded rationality, as it is called by Simon [30]. As the study of heuristics and judgement under uncertainty proposed by Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky [31] has extensively shown, they can only reach the so-called “local best”, that is, the solution that maximizes opportunities and minimizes risks at a certain time. In this perspective one can resort to a deceptive message in order to acquire or protect one’s own resources (money, time, possessions, privacy, etc.), or to manage the relationship with a partner (initiate, continue, or avoid interaction; avoid conflict and embarrassment, avoid punishment, leave take, avoid self-disclosure, etc.), or else to maintain or enhance self-esteem (save one’s face, improve one’s social position, increase one’s social desirability, etc.). These motives are included in the benign fabrication of deceptive acts, so called by Goffman [32]. On the contrary, there are other motives defined by Goffman as exploitative fabrication. Among them, we can mention the deceptive message with the purpose of gaining at the expense of other people, and manipulating or harming them. Revenge, vindictiveness, retaliation, sabotage, and hatred can serve as examples of exploitation and malevolent deception. These and other indefinite numbers of motives underlying deception confirm the flexibility and variability of deceptive communication as context-bound and dependent on the contingent relational web. In a naturalistic study DePaulo and Kashy [33] found that individuals would tell fewer lies per social interaction to the people to whom they felt close, and they would feel more uncomfortable when they lied to those people. Because altruistic lies can communicate caring, DePaulo and Kashy [33] found also that relatively more of the lies told to friends would be altruistic rather than self-serving, whereas the reverse would be true of lies told to acquaintances and strangers.

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Moreover, intentional stance and belief representation appear useful in explaining the development of the comprehension of deceptive acts in children. Most scholars agree with Sodian’s [341 perspective, that four-year-old children are capable of distinguishing lies from jokes, since at this age they already possess the concept of belief and can understand deception as manipulation of others’ behavior by influencing their beliefs a b u t reality. Early on they can distinguish deception from teasing in terms of the speaker’s intention to influence the addressee’s behavior. However, important precursors of a theory of mind are found earlier than four years of age. As Cadinu and Kiesner [35] pointed out, three-year-old children, engaged in pretence and deception situations, demonstrated a significant understanding of other people’s mental states. Likewise, Chandler and Hala [36], and Hala and Chandler [37] found that actively involving three-year-old children in planning deception facilitated performance on false-belief questions. In fact, when children simply watched the execution of deceptive planning (where to relocate an object), they did not differentiate whether the object was moved for deceptive or practical reasons. In contrast, children who had strategically planned a deception were markedly better at answering questions about another’s false beliefs than those who simply witnessed the object transfer. Moreover, it is worth noting that, according to Leekam [38], children of four years understand desires and intentions before they understand beliefs. With regard to ability in active deception, in a recent naturalistic study it was observed that three-year-old children (and perhaps even younger ones) resorted to everyday deceptions in a varied, flexible, and context appropriate manner, too complex to be “blind” learned strategies. Children’s deceptive skills are more likely to develop fkom pragmatic need and situational exigencies than from conceptual development; as Newton, Reddy, and Bull [39] pointed out, they may learn to lie in the same way as they learn to speak. This learning continues till adolescence. To sum up, intentional gradation and metarepresentation (theory of mind) are basic features which explain not only standard communication, but also deceptive miscommunication both in everyday conversations (unprepared lies) and in significant situations (prepared lies). Higher order intention, belief state, and message forms are strictly intertwined between them to form the center of deceptive miscommunication.

3.4

The cognitive design of deceptive miscommunication

3.4.I

The “cognitiveload h-vpothesis

I’

Buller, Burgoon, White, and Ebesu [8], DePaulo, Ansfield, and Bell [ 1 I], and Vrij, Semin, and Bull [40] have pointed out that the deceptive message is more cognitively difficult and demanding than the truthhl message, since the fabrication of a plausible and convincing lie that is consistent with the contingent situation and everything the addressee knows is a laborious cognitive task. Referring to this topic, McCornack [I ] advances the cognitive load hypothesis, of which he criticizes two basic assumptions: a) according to Zuckerman and Driver [41], deceivers “must construct a message from scratch, and the content of the message must be both internally consistent and compatible with what the listeners already know”; b) deceptive communication is cognitively more difficult because of the number of constraints placed upon the formulation of the lie, as Greene, O’Hair, Cody, and Yen [42] sketched out. In his criticisms McCornack [ 11 is absolutely right, showing the theoretical fragility of this dichotomous distinction between deceptive and t r u t h h l communication. Saying that

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deceptive messages are constructed “from scratch” means that truthful messages are not built from scratch and so they are the result of a preformed message design; but this statement is untenable from the point of view of any contemporary model of message production, as it is shown by O’Keefe & Lambert [43]. In the same way, assuming that deceptive messages are internally consistent presupposes that truthful messages could lack internal consistency. This statement is also untenable. Likewise, stressing the high number of constraints in deceptive communication means a failure to recognize the mental convenience and opportunity to resort to deception in certain complicated situations, in which truth appears much more cognitively laborious than a lie. However, on a more advanced level, the problem of the cognitive demand of deceptive miscommunication remains in its entirety. According to DeMiT, we can assume that: a) the cognitive load of the deceiver arises as a function of the entity and gravity of the deceptive contents; b) the cognitive load of the deceiver depends on the context significance. To develop these assumptions, first of all we have to distinguish between prepared and unprepared deception. The former is cognitively planned in advance and examined by the deceiver at least in its main aspects; the latter is spontaneously said, often as the answer to an unexpected question by the interlocutor, without any mental planning. This distinction is not dichotomous; rather, there are different degrees of planning and preparation in telling a lie. Secondly, we have to introduce a further distinction between high- and low-content deception. The former concerns a serious topic, is said in an important context, and is characterized by the presence of notable consequences and effects for the deceiver or for the addressee or even for other people. The latter regards a minor topic, can be said in any kind of context, and does not have consequences or, if any, they are of scarce importance. As for the previous distinction, high- and low-content deception is a continuum, and not a dichotomous matter. We have to investigate this subject further. 3.4.2 High- and low-content deceptive acts

In the DeMiT we hypothesize that low-content deceptive acts can be said almost automatically, without any anticipatory planning or careful, conscious thought, especially in everyday conversation and between intimates. In this domain white and pedagogic lies are included, as well as different kinds of concealment, omission, and evasive message. Oflen they are unprepared and are justified by the deceiver in the name of cultural standards and the addressee’s (or others’) interests (altruistic lies). In these situations the deceptive intents are not really to be deceitful, but they are benign and benevolent in order to promote or maintain the relational web. Concerning this aspect, Lindskold and Walters [44] carried out a research on college students’ perception of the ethical evaluation of deception and found a hierarchy of “acceptability” for deceptive acts in a balancing of the costshenefits of the deceiver with the costshenefits for the deceived target. Moreover, low-content deceptive messages are likely to take place in contexts characterized by nonface-threatening (or low face-threatening) condition. The deceiver can feel at hisher ease in these contexts and does not need particular cognitive demands in generating this kind of deceptive message. It is something taken for granted. Instead, another type of deception consists of high-content deceptive acts, since they have serious effects and consequences for both the deceiver and the deceived. The deceiver runs the risk of “losing face” and being treated as dishonest and untrustworthy, if hidher deceptive act is uncovered or detected. The detection of a lie intrinsically implies a threat to the deceiver’s image and an attack to hidher self-esteem, generating in himher negative self-conscious emotions such as guilt, shame, and embarrassment. He can be openly

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accused by the addressee, who can have feelings of aggression and retaliation, bewilderment, and lingering suspicion. The deceived, in hisiher turn, runs the risk of being harmed or hurt in hisher interests to deceiver's advantage. Because high-content deceptive acts bear high costs both for deceiver and deceived. there must be good reasons for producing them. Generally, they are likely to happen in complicated relational situations and in conflicting or face-threatening contexts, in which a problem of disclosure arises, with a dilemma like this: is it better tell the truth and the salient information, recognize the risks connected with sincere and honest disclosure and choose a way in which the truth can be presented in a acceptable manner. or tell a deceptive message, recognize the penalties associated with insincere and dishonest disclosure and prepare information suited for contextual constraints? Or choose a middle course'? In any case. the speaker has to face up to high cognitive demands in both alternatives, since, telling the truth or telling a lie, he has to fabricate a message with the lowest risk and penalty. For this basic reason, most people resort to a kind of "in-between" message, which involves subtle and complex packaging of both false and tmthfbl elements [3]. True and false are meshed each other, so that it becomes impossible to tell them apart. Focusing our attention on cognitive demands for high-content deceptive acts. we can see that telling a high-content lie requires considerable cognitive complexity, since manipulating information necessitates careful mental planning. This cognitive complexity lies in the discrepancy between private knowledge and public statement: according to Anolli and Ciceri [4S] the deceiver k n o w the truth (which heishe does not tell). but publicly tells a lie (which he/she does not believe. but has to make the hearer think that helshe does believe it). How can this cognitive demand for a high-content deceptive message appear'? As we have already seen in section 3.2, there are no fixed and universal signals of deceptive communication. It would be so easy to detect all the liars in the world. with no need to resort to the lie-detector! Each speaker has learned hislher own communicative style in telling lies, as helshe has learned other communicative styles of persuading people. defending himiherself. bargaining, seducing, etc. If one looks for these signals as compelling evidence of the cognitive load in deceptive miscommunication. one is on the wrong track. Instead, there are different and flexible communicative modes for deception; they can also be the opposite. Take, for instance, hand movements: some people show a decrease in hand movement during deception due to the cognitive demand. while others show an increase, as it is shown by Ekman, O'Sullivan, and Matsumoto [46], and by Vrij. Akehurst. and Morris [47]. It is not a matter of a universal and reflexive-like signal. but it depends on various factors. Among others, individuals with high public self-consciousness (i.e. the ability to become aware of another's perspective and to act from that perspective) and high self-control make fewer hand movements during deception compared to truth-telling [47]. Likewise, in high-content deception there is a rise in the number of shorter and more recurrent pauses than in low-content deception or truth [4S]. This phenomenon has been already observed in purely linguistic tasks in which frequent interruptions in the utterance by filled or unfilled pauses are the sign of a complex linguistic task, as it is outlined by Goldman-Eisler [48], and Rochester [49]. In the same way, studies by Berger and Jordan [50] on the association between planning difficulties and verbal fluency highlight a significant correlation between the number of pauses and the level of difficulty in generating a speech that will fulfill one's aim. The packaging of personal cognitive processes and the systems of signaling combined with hi_gh-contentdeceptive acts are learned during one's ou.n learning contexts and arc.

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the result of one’s own experience. It is a matter of micro-culture (or idioculture), given by the primary (i.e. family) and secondary (i.e. school, peer group) social systems of socialization. One can learn to stare at the addressee while deceiving; another can learn to avoid the mutual gaze. One is prompt in answering an unexpected question; another has to prepare hisher speech taking care over details. It is likely that within a high-content deceptive miscommunication the tense relationship with the partner could generate an emotional arousal, produced by the fear of being detected and of “losing face”. According to Tagney and Fischer [Sl], this arousal especially concerns negative self-conscious emotions, like guilt, shame and embarrassment. Shame and embarrassment are “toxic” emotions, aroused by the risk of being disapproved or condemned by the addressee, as well as by being inadequate by cultural standards, whereas guilt, due to consciousness of the transgression of moral and conventional norms, can lead, in some cases, to the spontaneous confession of one’s own deception and the wish to make amends. All in all, the segmentation of the deception “family” in subgroups has enabled us to shed some light on cognitive demand. According to DeMiT, as for truthful speech, deception requires an extensive range of cognitive effort and the speaker has to choose the more suited communicative path as the occasion demands. 3.4.3 Deceptive message design

For the analysis of deceptive message design as a communicative act we can start from the Q Principle and the R Principle which stress the dialectic opposition between “speaker’s economy” (use as few words for concepts as necessary) and “auditor’s economy” (use as many expressions as messages to make the communication clear). Horn [52] defines them in the following manner: The Q Principle: Make your contribution sufficient. Say as much as you can (given R). The R Principle: Make your contribution necessary. Say no more than you must (given Q). Between these two principles, which replace Grice’s maxims, the communicator has to plan hisher message, which could be truthful or deceptive. This communicative space is not to be intended as the transmission of a message from a sender to a receiver governed by discrete state communication systems (that is, sender, receiver, message), but it is to be intended as a co-regulated communication in which each partner may be influenced by the other, as Fogel [53] sketched out. Along this theoretical line communication is a continuous process not ritualized or over-controlled by either one or the other partner but created by the dynamics of mutual action, so that the results are the emergent qualities of the relationship. They are neither foreseeable nor deducible from the previous moves of each partner. Therefore, the information is not ‘in’ the situation nor ‘in’ the communicator, but it is created when he/she engages in an active discourse with the partner. From this point of view we do not see message generation (including the deceptive one) as the result of a planning system in a holistic and functional way. In classical planning systems we have three alternatives: a) a top-down (or “prescriptive”) planning system which invests most of the resources in plan construction and involves selection from functionally indexed high-level forms; b) a bottom-up (or “reactive”) planning system which pays more attention to execution and selects the concrete linguistic utterance from fimctionally indexed low-level forms; c) an interleaved (or “limited-commitment”)

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planning system which passes control back and forth between the plan construction and the plan execution. But, as O’Keefe and Lambert [43] pointed out. each of these systems: “depends on there being a decontextualized relationship between .form and &function. But, to put it bluntly, deconte-xtualized linguistic.forms have no .functionalsignificance. It is a truism to sa-v that the meaning of a .form depends on the context of its use. At the level qf’

discourse acts or message-features,the evidence shows that the formTfunction relationship is mediated b?. reasoning from context-specificbeliefs“ (p. 57). As a consequence, messages as communicative acts are not planned and executed according to an abstract and universal rule set, but according to the contextual conditions. In fact, “message structure and function are not holistic, but rather reflect the grounding of messages in an ongoing stream of thought and action” [43, p. 591. This theoretical line has brought a new perspective on message generation, governed by a local management [431. According to DeMit, considering communication situations as organized fields of thoughts and intentions, and messages as the outcome of thought and intention selective expression, message structure arises as the focus moves through the field of thoughts. Focus is an active process of concentrating attention. shared with the partner, on a certain element of reality (event, object, etc.); it involves not only attention to cognitive aspects. but also a perspective on those aspects. Focus is driven by intentions and guided by the route that the communicator formulates to move through the field of thoughts. The resulting message, rather than being a functionally packaged and unified act, is a collation of thought, each of which can have distinctive effects. The diversity of messages in communication situations depends on the fact that the communicators can have different intentions and different routes combined with those intentions, as it is suggested by Anolli (Chapter 1, this volume). This diversity in focusing leads to a diversity in the thoughts selected for expression and differences in the message forms. This model of situated and context-bound message planning and production can help us in the understanding of deceptive message design. Most low-content deceptive acts may be produced in the flow of communicative exchanges with the partner by the activation of relevant thoughts. They are unforeseen and unprepared, and are the result of the selection of a route suitable to bring the speaker to a “local best” in that situation, or. at least, to an acceptable end state. They may also be parsimonious in communicative terms (enabling the speaker to choose the most convenient and unproblematic message in that situation). and they may be advantageous in relational terms (allowing the speaker to avoid painful or harmful disclosure and to maintain the relationship). On the contrary, high-content deceptive acts may request previous planning. since they are generally foreseen and prepared. In this case the deceiver has to elaborate hisher best communicative way to convince the partner. First of all. heishe has to be careful in the deceptive message planning, paying attention to its internal consistency and compatibility with the partner’s knowledge, as if it might be true, or, at least, likely. Secondly. helshe has to be as spontaneous as possible in the deceptive message execution in order to be believable. Therefore, in the high-content deceptive message execution the speaker has to manage as well as possible the interaction with the addressee, monitoring hisher speech and non verbal systems of signaling, but in this task heishe may fail. In fact, in the local management of deceptive utterance production the speaker can either exceed in hisher self-control or show a lack of control. In the first case. in the over-control condition deceivers produce, for instance. an average deeper tone of voice. without variations. whereas in the lack of control condition they have a higher tone associated \vith man?

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vocal variations. Compared to these naive (“bad”) deceivers, the skilled (“good”) ones show the same vocal intonation and profile both in truthful and deceptive message production [45]. According to Riggio, Tucker, and Throckmorton [54]. It could be that naive deceivers are people who are characterized by a high self-monitoring level, and are then able to adapt themselves to the interaction process with the partner. Summing up, in the DeMiT we have to underline three aspects of the cognitive processes implied in deceptive miscommunication. First, deceptive and truthful communication have the same cognitive mechanisms both for planning, production and execution of the messages, consistently with what has been said concerning communication and miscommunication, as Anolli sketched out (Chapter 1, this volume). Second, the cognitive demand for deceptive communication is not a homogeneous and constant factor, but there is an increasing of cognitive request in function of the deception subgroup. For low-content deceptive acts the default cognitive processes seem to be sufficient, since they can be planned, produced and managed in a straightforward manner, almost automatically. In fact, their risk and possible penalty are rather low. Instead, for high-content deceptive acts a notable cognitive effort is needed to package a consistent message and to be credible, possibly in a spontaneous manner. Third, the cognitive demand of deceptive message production is associated with the necessary activity of monitoring and controlling one’s own performance. In this activity naive deceivers may exhibit either an excess or a lack of self-control, producing leakage cues (even if minimal), whereas skilled deceivers show an efficient and effective performance maintaining a flexible self-control.

3.5

Deception as communicative interact

Some studies on deception have followed a unidirectional approach to deceptive communication, considering that deceivers convey signals which receivers absorb passively: as Berger and Bradac [55], and Surra and Ridley [56] outlined, deceiver and deceived seem to have little agency when they come to communicate. But, as we have seen in the previous section, deceptive miscommunication, like default (truthful) communication, is not a unidirectional transmission of message from the deceiver to the deceived, but an interactive and interpersonal act by nature. It is a dynamic and coregulated activity, since the interaction between deceiver and deceived, on the one hand, is a complex system, which is continuously modified by the actions of both the partners as they occur in a given situation. According to Anolli (Chapter 1, this volume). Such an interaction is governed by the communicative synchrony principles. On the other hand, it is a social process by which individuals locally alter their actions according to the ongoing and anticipated actions of the partner. In deceptive miscommunication, if one hides, it naturally means there is someone to hide from. Hence, the deceptive act, like all communicative acts, is a relational game between two individuals: on one side one finds the speaker playing the role of the more or less able deceiver; on the other side the other individual in the role of the victim or detector [45].In this psychological game there is not one active participant (i.e. the deceiver) and another passive one (i.e. the deceived), given that deceptive miscommunication, like default communication, is not like dancing where one partner leads and the other follows. Deceptive (and truthful) assumptions are not simply created and recovered but rather created between the two in a dynamic manner [24, p. 821. As a consequence, in deceptive interaction the success of the lie depends on the balance between the communicative ability of the deceiver and the acquiescent or shallow attitude

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of the deceived; alternatively, its.failur-e is determined by the reverse (the inability of the deceiver to deceive and the ability of the deceived to detect himher). In the relational game of deception a significant position is taken by the addressee. He can assume an acquiescent attitude toward what is said (truthfiil or deceptive) by the speaker. In this situation the deceptive message is successful: but it is likely to be a matter of low-content deceptive acts. On the contrary, facing high-content deceptive messages the addressee may have a suspicious and unmasking attitude. inquiring and questioning. In this perspective Stiff, Corman, Knzek and Snider [57] have verified that deceivers modified their response latencies in function of the type of questions asked by the interviewer: when the questions were direct and pointed, the deceivers lengthened their response latency more than when the questions were simple, especially in the middle segment of the conversation. This process has been interpreted as an “impulse decay”, that is, deceivers take more time to reflect, arrange and monitor their messages in a suitable manner. compatible with the conditions of the contingent contextual interaction. Likewise, many studies on the probing efect have pointed out the significance of the addressee’s attitude towards the deceiver’s behavior. Probing consists of the direct questioning of a message source regarding the veracity of the information presented, and requesting additional information to be given. According to Buller, Comstock, Aune, and Strzyzewski [58]. Buller, Strzyzewski, and Comstock [59], and Stiff and Miller [60]. In general, probing produces an increase of honesty and credibility attribution to the message source (i.e. the potential deceiver), as probed sources are rated more “honest” than non probed sources. The Behavioral Adaptation Explanation (BAE) has been considered as a plausible account of the probing effect. According to BAE. the perception of suspicion by the message source (the deceiver) makes himher more careful, so that hekhe can modify hidher behavior to appear more believable: as a consequence, the addressee becomes more convinced of the source’s honesty. In other words. probing causes the addressee to attribute truthfulness to the speaker. In fact. the perception of suspicion appears to be correlated with four main cues in the probe deceiver’s behavior: more speech errors, more speech hesitations. longer response latencies. and more eye contact. But. as Levine and McComack [61] point out. these behavioral changes in probed deceivers, instead of being evidence for BAE validity, show that they display cues indicative of deceptiveness when the sources are probed. The subsequent dispute between Buller, Stiff and Burgoon [62] and Levine and McCornack [63] has pointed out that behavioral adaptation is certainly required in deceptive interaction, but that it does not account for the probing effect. Moreover, when the addressee is suspicious and inquiring, the naive deceiver is likely to increase hidher inadequate emotional responses and to become either ”over-emotional“ or “over-controlled”. In the former case he/she can get nervous, with more blinking, more self- object manipulation, frequent postural shifts and general body activity. In the latter case he/she shows an overall exaggerated control over his/her behavior. with postural rigidity. lack of spontaneity and overdone performance. The effects of the “deception-detection game’’ (as a sequence of interactions distributed along a certain time period) can arrive at a fie-bias or a truth-bias, as it is shown by Levine and McCornack [64], and by McCornack and Parks [65]. In the former the tendency to view one’s relational partner as deceptive becomes prevailing in many instances. since he/she is willing to distort the truth without much hesitation. In a few cases, this relational pattern could become aberrant, with frequent explicit actions of deceptiveness. In the latter the partners develop a truthful relationship since in most instances they are telling the truth. in this honest relationship relational involvement. confidence, truth-bias. and accuracy form a causal chain. Obviouslv. a relationship can change from tnith bias. to suspicion. to

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lie bias rather quickly when a partner has been detected telling lies. Vice versa, the opposite path - from lie-bias to truth-bias - is much more complicated and difficult, because, once an individual has been labeled as a “liar”, he/she must prove hisher honesty and believability over and over again before that he/she can be believed, and in certain circumstances he/she is in no state to prove the truth of what he/she says. In this way he/she falls into the liar paradox: a liar is not believed, even when he/she tells the truth. Summing up, according to DeMiT, high-content deceptive miscommunication involves an interactive process in which deceiver and deceived have an apparent co-operative position but, beneath the surface, they have opposite and competing agendas. In this communicative field each partner may use various degrees of freedom to simulate or detect a certain state of affairs. In any case, deceptive interaction, like default communication, is a matter of negotiation between the partners in a recursive manner, because utterances can be interpreted in many ways, and are not always planned in advance, as Anolli sketched out (Chapter 1, this volume). In communicating, the speaker (for instance, the deceiver) does not convey to the addressee what is objective for himher: it becomes objective only through communication, by changing the state of the speaker’s knowledge. In this way he/she can not presume what interpretation the receiver will assign to his/her utterance. Interpretation is product between the partners, and it is not a plain assumption recovery, since in the communicative act interpretation is incremental and context is constructed in a contingent and local manner.

3.6

Modes of deceptive saying

3.6.I

Basicjhdings

In more than 30 years of study about deception and lyng most of the research and the theoretical effort of scholars has been devoted to analyzing communicative processes and performances underlying deceptive messages, even if there is not a global and viable theory on deceptive communication at the present, as we already said in section 1 of this chapter. However, it is worth noting that great advances in the right direction have been made in this field, in the attempt to understand the distinctiveness of deceptive communication processes and also, more recently, the commonalties with default communication. McCornack [3], taking his distance from the idea of deceptive communication types as something already preformed, has suggested that individuals manipulate information simultaneously along different dimensions when they deceive others, the result being a potentially indefinite range of specific deceptive message forms. Information Manipulation Theory (MT) is a framework for describing the different ways that information can be manipulated to accomplish deceit [4]. According to this model, the observable variations in deceptive message design reflect a continuum of covert to overt misrepresentation of information, in which relevant information serves as one anchor and explicit falsification of truthful information as the other, as it is shown by Metts [66]. A significant conceptual problem concerns the assumption of the continuum between covert/overt misrepresentation. Verbal deception, by its nature, is covert; linguistic acts that openly misrepresent information are processed and perceived as intentional “flouts” of conversational principles (like sarcasm, parody, pretence and the like) rather than deception [23]. IMT, following Grice’s Co-operation principle and the four maxims (Quality, Quantity, Relevance, and Manner), views deception as arising from covert violations of one or more

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of these maxims governing conversational exchanges. According to IMT, individuals, in everyday conversations. monitor the information that they disclose along four different primary dimensions: amount, veracin,, relevance, and clarity. These dimensions form the platform for inferential processing underlying conversational sense-making. Deceptive messages are “deceptive” in that, although they deviate from the principles of conversational understanding, these departures remain veiled. In particular, research proposed by Ekman [67] and Metts [66] has showed that deception can be fabricated by manipulating the amount of information conveyed, the veracity, the relevance. as well as. according to Bavelas, Black, Chovil, and Mullet [68], McCornack, Levine. Solowczuk. Torres, and Campbell [4], and Yeung, Levine. and Nishiyama 1691. the clarity of information. Jacobs, Dawson and Brashers [ 10, p. 73) claim that IMT conceptualization “does not center on the contribution of the deceiver’s message to the hearer’s substantive beliefs. Rather, it centers simply on failures to detect [gricean] maxim violations”. Moreover, IMT is inconsistent with Grice’s theory of conversational maxims. and the idea that messages are deceptive only when they violate the Quality maxim. On the other side, scholars like Buller and Burgoon [ 131, Burgoon and Buller [70]. Burgoon, Buller, Guerrero, Afifi, and Feldman [6], Burgoon, Buller, Dillman, and Walther [71], Burgoon, Buller, and Guerrero [72], Burgoon, Buller. Floyd, and Grandpre [73]. and Burgoon, Buller, White, Afifi. and Aileen-Buslig [741 have developed the Interpersonal Deception Theov (IDT), in which a great deal of study has been devoted to the analysis of the communicative patterns of deception. IDT follows a strategic approach to deception comprehension. Buller, Strtyzewski. and Hunsaker [75] say: “The [deceptive] conversation is characterized b?* a series of’ moves and countermoves. the skill of.both communicators and deception ’s ultimate success or failure is afiected to see through the multiple laJ?ersof meaning and react in way.c.Mqhich fiwther their goals” (p. 28).

Within this perspective Buller and Burgoon [ 131 distinguished between straregic and non-strategiccommunication in deception. Strategc (or intentional) patterns to deceive are those manipulated by deceivers with the goal of presenting themselves in a truthful and believable manner. Since deceivers know that deception can produce detection cues. they will attempt a strategy to give an honest impression through communicative signals thought to be indicative of veracity. According to IDT, the main strategic communicative patterns in deception are the following: a) uncertainoy (or vagueness) giving rise to ambiguity by sending intentionally mixed messages through irrelevant information, fewer references to self-experiences, more frequent hand gestures, fewer absolute verbs. etc.: b) reticence and withdrawal (or non immediacy) signals used in creating a distance from the partner, or withdrawing oneself from direct interaction by means of shorter responses. verbal non immediacy. longer response latencies, less mutual gaze. less forward lean. greater proxemic distance, etc.; c) disassociation signals used to divert responsibility for a previous message or an attempt to remove oneself from the deceptive act by means of fewer self-references, fewer self-interest statements. more other references. verbal non immediacy, etc.; d) image and relationship protection signals designed to present oneself in a favorable light by nodding. smiling. refraining from interruption. etc. and thus hoping to avoid deception scrutiny The non-strategic communication in deception is formed by unintentional leakage cues. and deceivers are unaware that they are revealing deception. or are unable to control them in preventing deception detection. According IDT. there are three categories of

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unintentional non-strategic leakage cues: a) revealing arousal and nervousness with more blinking, a higher pitch of voice, vocal nervousness, more speech errors, longer response latencies, less gesturing, more leg and foot movements; b) revealing negative affect by means of less pleasant facial expressions, more frequent negative feedback, reduced eye contact, less pleasant vocal profile, and more negative statements; c) incompetent communication performance with more speech errors, hesitation, word repetitions, rigidity, brief utterances, channel discrepancies, dissynchrony, exaggerated performance, and lack of spontaneous behavior. Therefore, IDT sees the deceiver’s communication as a balance between intentional and unintentional (involuntary) signals: if the former prevails, the deception succeeds, whereas, if the latter takes priority, failure is likely. As a consequence, IDT seems to conceive the deceptive exchange as a battle field, in which the deceiver aims to make strategic communicative signals in an intentional and consistent way to convince the addressee, who, however, aims to detect the deceiver by scrutinizing hidher behavior and communicative style. 3.6.2 Linguistic styles of deceptive miscommunication According to van Dijk [76], we can define linguistic style as an articulated dynamic pattern of micro- and macro-components of language, intentionally adopted by the speaker to produce specific context effects on hidher addressee, as it is proposed by Sperber and Wilson [771. In deceptive conversation, like in default conversation, the connection between text and context encourages the production of specific linguistic styles during the flow of exchanges. These styles are to be thought of as a kaleidoscopic processes, calibrated in relation to the necessities of the speaker-addressee system, as Sandig and Selting [78] sketched out. By combining different linguistic elements, it is possible to represent a consistent and systematic textual production, diachronically organized with regard to the dynamics of communicative exchanges. The diachronic character of stylistic profiles is caused by the need to introduce opportune changes in the linguistic plan during interaction, adapting one’s own message to the context variations, moving the narrative focus as the occasion demands. The diachronic model of the verbal style, proposed by Sinclair [791, foresees continuous narrative changes, called “postural changes”, which include the ongoing definition of the conversational positions and the relational boundaries between the partners in order to adapt the local intent to a contingent communicative exchange. In this stream of conversational sequences the dynamic of postural changes involves the selection of verbal styles, defined both by textual and trans-textual (contextual) properties. Within this perspective, DeMiT assumes that in deceptive miscommunication deceivers may resort to a considerable variety of linguistic styles, which may be very different one from another and, in certain circumstances, also contrastive. In particular, according to Anolli and Balconi [80], three main linguistic styles can be recognized in deceptive conversation, as shown in figure 3.2. First, deceivers can have a linguistic style characterized by ambiguousness and prolixity, especially when facing an acquiescent and silent addressee. Within this linguistic profile they use many modifiers in the semantic value of words (with a prevalence of dubitative forms), a high number of “levelers” terms (like “all”, “nobody”, etc.), complex and long utterances, a scant number of factual utterances, high variation in the choice of voice, a wide use of irrelevant information. In particular, in telling lies, deceivers refer less contextual and sensory information in favor of subjective experience, as well as accounts of imagined memories (equivalent to the deception condition) which differ from accounts based on perceived memories (equivalent

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to the truth condition), as it is suggested by Alonso-Quecuty [8l]. Aspects of this vague. noncommittal and unverifiable linguistic style have also been found in many previous studies, as in Buller and Burgoon [ S ] , Carpenter [82], Dulaney [83], Knapp, Hart, and Dennis [84], Kuiken [85], Miller & Stiff [86], and Todd-Mancillas and Kibler [87]. By means of this speech style deceivers try to “dilute” the falsehood and make it less identifiable. They use semantically rich and syntactically well-constructed utterances. which, at the same time, are neither clear nor relevant. In this way they appear to “neutralize” and “narcotize” the falsehood, without disconcerting the addressee. It is a matter of “gray shades”, as Baumeister [88] says. In everyday life, no event can be described simply as being true or false, black or white; rather, it has to be represented by different gradations of gray, nearer or farther from one of these two extremes. With ambiguousness and vagueness deceivers are able to lie without running the risk of exposing themselves excessively and of being openly believed wrong if they should be detected, as Buller and Burgoon [5], and McCornack. Levine, Morrison. and Lapinski [89] sketched out. This line of representing reality, however, is very common, because ubiquitous cultural artifacts take on a regular mediation function between the subject and the environment. In particular, secondary (or symbolic) artifacts provide people with cognitive devices by means of which they can adapt and arrange a sequence of events, as it is outlined by Cole [90]. According to Geertz 191, p. 51, in this perspective the human being may be thought of as “an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun”. Second, deceivers may resort to a linguistic style that is characterized by concise nssertiveness and elliptic avoidment, especially when the addressee appears suspicious and inquiring. Within this linguistic style they adopt a reticent attitude, prefemng to say the bare minimum; the messages are frequently short, without a subject and with an implicit predicate; the utterances are brief, with a reduced number of words, many long pauses. as well as long response latencies. Elements of this concise, reticent and elusive speech style have also been found in previous studies, as in b a p p and Comadena [92], Kuiken [85]. Stiff. Corman, Krizek. and Snider [57]. Stiff and Miller [60], Todd-Mancillas and Kibler [87], and Vrij [93]. By means of the reduction of information and the great simplification of speech. deceivers choose to shirk saying, since they can decide not to tell their own lie and to define its boundaries as little as possible. In this way their assertiveness can appear as a linguistic device intended to a guarantee the truthfblness of the contents and corroborate the reliability of their speech. Third. deceivers can resort to a linguistic style that is characterized by depersonalization. Their speech includes a small number of self-references, frequent recourse to third parties, frequent factual utterances. great use of impersonal conditions (the impersonal “one” and the plural “we”). This linguistic phenomenon was also found in previous research [ 13, 67, 661. By using the depersonalization style deceivers aim to avoid taking responsibility for their own statements and to dissociate themselves fiom their messages. shifting the focus to aspects of the external context. The variety of speech styles suitable for deceptive miscommunication allows the speaker to adopt and to follow the most effective linguistic route in view of the addressee‘s attitude. likewise the speech styles in default communication. It worth noting that deceivers use words to “transform” reality, so as to make the falsehood appear reliable and believable. Deception asks for a continuous and iocal check of the esectiveness of message design: one who deceives has to be sensitive to the interlocutor‘s changes of attitude. It is a question of tuning not only to avoid loss of reliability. but also to appear honeqt and trust).


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5.3.2 Attribution of emotion The FEP claims that observers in different societies attribute the same specific emotions to

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expressions of basic emotion. Figure 3 summarizes a large number of cross-cultural studies on the attribution of basic emotion to prototypical expressions. The standard method of these studies, usually called “recognition studies”, consists in showing subjects a set of pictures of prototypical expressions (such as those in Figure 5.1) and asking them to assign a category of basic emotion (e.g., happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust or surprise). Russell [25] has raised some methodological questions concerning such recognition studies. In Figure 5.3 the bars show the percentage of subjects that chose the expected category (e.g., happiness for a smiling face). The set of bars on the left comes from Western literate societies, the second set from non-Western literate societies, and the third set from non-Western illiterate societies. Even though the ratings of recognition are significantly high across samples, they are proportional to the subjects’ exposure to Western influence. Furthermore, they may be inflated due to the method of these experiments (e.g., the experimenters did not usually speak the subjects’ language in crosscultural studies; most of the studies used forced-choice response format; etc.) [25].

Figure 5.3 Recognition rates for six facial expressions of emotion [25]

The recognition of basic emotion in facial expressions can also be criticized from other theoretical points of view [26]. “Recognition” of emotion in the FEP experiments is not necessarily a Neo-Platonic re-representation of universal entities already known by the individual, but rather a mere process of attribution, in which people link some emotions to some facial patterns using lay explanations that lack any necessary or sufficient relationship to the actual experience of emotion and its behavioral consequences. According to this attributional hypothesis, people do not recognize emotions; they simply make a kind of illusory correlation: salient facial patterns and emotions, not

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necessarily produced simultaneously but observed within the same situation, are lumped together into an ideal and unrealistically consistent representation of “‘emotional expression”. For example, people may frown when they threaten someone, and most people are angry bejore they threaten someone. A realistic description of the situation would say that a person is angry and, afterwards, s h e frowns when s h e threatens another (not necessarily the person that elicited hidher anger). An ideal description would say that people fiown when they are angry. Researchers have carried out experiments in which they modified the usual procedures of recognition studies, finding dramatic changes in the universal pattern of attribution of emotions. For example, Fernandez-Dols and Russell [27] explored this hypothesis by giving their judges a chance to perceive the relationship between emotion and expression as embedded in an event in which prototypical expressions and emotional experiences could happen either sequential(i7 or simultaneousli>. Stimuli were eleven pairs of faces (a neutral and a prototypical expression of basic emotion in each pair) and eleven pairs of sentences. Each pair of faces was displayed by the same model and included a prototypical expression of emotion. The two corresponding sentences represented the model’s experience and interaction at two different times of the event in which the expressions were displayed: a first point in time. at which the model was having an emotional experience (e.g.. “So, he harmed my son!”), and a second point at which the model was talking to someone as a consequence of the emotional experience (e.g., “You harmed my son!”). Using the graphic conventions of comics, the sentences were shown inside balloons, the first one represented as a thought and the second one as speech (see Figure 5.4).

Figure 5.4 The first balloon represents thnrrght and the second one represents YpeecIi

Judges were asked to assign the sentences to the neutral and the prototypical expression in the “most plausible” or “most natural” way. The prototypical facial expression was not associated with the point in time at which the models were having the emotional experience, but with the time in which the models were talking to someone afterwards (8 1Yo). In another experiment, Fernandez-Dols and Carrera [28] camed out a more direct test of the hypothesis about people generating an illusory correlation of expression and emotional experience within an ideal expression of emotion. In two studies, adults and children were asked to judge videos and slides of children undergoing a frightening experience (having a vaccination). Even thouzh none of the children shown in the videos and slides displayed

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prototypical expressions of fear, adults were particularly prone to “recognize” prototypical expressions in these stimuli. For example, in the first study, 80% of the adults claimed they saw prototypical expressions of fear, whereas only 40% of the 6 and 7-year-old children reported seeing prototypical expressions of fear. These studies show that “recognition of emotion’’ may be explained as the result of an over-generalization based on schemas which, like those of other intuitive theories (e.g., stereotypes about gender), do not necessarily provide an accurate description of a person’s behavior (in this case behavior when feeling an intense emotion). These differences between adults and young children are reminiscent of the above-mentioned differences in recognition between literate and illiterate cultures shown in Figure 5.3. Attribution with regard to facial expressions is not, according to these and other data [29], a mere recognition of emotions, but rather a much more complex process in which lack of facial expression can, in particular contexts, be as informative as intense facial displays. In the study with paintings referred to above, more than one third of the Prado paintings with an intense emotional subject displayed neutral faces. Carrera and Fernandez-Dols [30] carried out an experimental test of the emotional meaning of neutral faces in the context of recognition tasks. They found that neutral faces can be strong sources of information when they interact with particular kinds of emotional contextual information: for example, neutral faces were more influential than prototypical expressions of emotion on judgments about the message of a facial display combined with an unusual, but clear, emotional situation. In other words, faces are intrinsically influential, irrespective of their emotional content, and interact in complex and as yet unknown ways with the context in which they are displayed [29]. 5.3.3 Actual expressions of emotion

The FEP claims that prototypical expressions are manifestations of the same emotions in all human beings. Fernandez-Dols and Ruiz-Belda [3 11 reviewed the evidence supporting this claim, in addition to that provided by the already-discussed studies on recognition. The first conclusion of this review was that studies on the actual spontaneous expression of adults during intense emotional episodes is surprisingly scarce. The most cited study in support of the FEP assumption was carried out by Ekman [ 131 and Friesen [32] at the beginning of the 1970s. They asked American and Japanese students to watch one neutral and three stressful films. Samples were taken of the facial behavior of each subject during the neutral and the final stressful film. Researchers discussed their findings in terms of a global correspondence between the American and Japanese students [32]-, but they provided no data of the precise correspondence between the specific emotion experienced by the students and their facial expression at the time. The experimental studies that have tried to code facial behavior while obtaining reports of subjects’ moment-by-moment emotional feelings have not provided evidence of a clear correspondence between emotional experience and facial expression. Rosenberg and Ekman [33] found a correspondence only between facial expressions of disgust and reports of intense disgust, and only at those moments at which the most intense expressions and the most intense reports coincided; no data were provided on which other faces coincided with intense reports of disgust, or on how many expressions of disgust coincided with no report of disgust. Fernandez-Dols, Sanchez, Carrera, and Ruiz-Belda [34] did not find even a partial correspondence between facial expressions and reports of negative emotion from people watching a clip from a horror film (see also Reisenzein) [35]. Field studies on the actual behavior of people in natural encounters in which researchers can infer their emotional state have not obtained better results for the hypothesis of a

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correspondence between facial behavior and emotional experience. For example, Kraut and Johnston [36] and Fernandez-Dols and Ruiz-Belda [37] found that happy people (e.g.. hockey fans after an event favorable for their team, gold medal winners at the Olympic Games) did not necessarily smile at happy times, but rather when they were interacting with others. The above-mentioned sample of Prado paintings produced only six prototypical expressions of emotion (five of surprise and one of enjoyment) as described by the FEP, from 60 paintings. Even these few prototypical expressions did not necessarily represent -in the painter’s mind- the basic emotion predicted by the FEP. Contemporary judges judged only three paintings as portraying a situation congruent with the basic emotion attributed by the FEP to their prototypical expressions (“Vulcan’s Forge” as surprise and “Triumph of Bacchus” as enjoyment); the other paintings were judged as representing situations in which fear (“Saturn devouring one of his sons”; “The Temptations of St. Anthony”: “The Fall of the Giants”), or happiness (“The Jolly Soldier”) were felt. Of course, judgments by contemporary observers would not be expected to coincide with the intentions and conventions of the artists and their original public (is martyrdom a happy, frightening or sad event for the martyr him/herself?), but the lack of any prototypical expression over several centuries cannot be explained as simply a consequence of lack of technical skill on the part of all the painters included in this sample. Movement and perspective may involve difficult technical problems, but the static representation of at least some of the facial expressions (e.g., open smiling) cannot be considered as too great a challenge for most of the artists whose work is included in the sample. In sum, there is a surprising lack of definitive data on the actual correspondence between the experience of some particular emotions (e.g.. happiness. sadness. etc.) and their corresponding facial behavior as predicted by the FEP.

5.4

An alternative to the Facial Expression Program

The above-mentioned review suggests that the FEP has been only partially successful in the Idealistic task of establishing a link between intangble, universal entities -the basic emotions- and some patterns of facial behavior. A careful description of the patterns of facial movement and attributions about these movements suggests that the relationship between facial behavior and emotion is still an unsolved mystery; nevertheless, we believe that history, and particularly the history of art. could again provide the key to understanding. Artists, over many centuries, have not resorted to the prototypical expressions claimed by FEP because painting emotion consists not in painting a particular, specific expression, but rather a pattern of movement in which no isolated gesture has a particular meaning outside of its context and sequence. In this vein, neutral faces may be much more readable as emotion than any expression. Expressions can become grotesque, unnatural p m a c e s rather than balanced representations of facial behavior linked to an intense emotion; on the other hand, neutral expressions can serve as representations of particular sequences of facial behavior. For example, the painter chooses the neutral face as the departure point for all the future actions entrained by a particular context. Interestingly enough. most of the smiles found in the works from the Prado are displayed by vulgar, drunk or crazy models. or by children. Smiling was not linked, as it is today, with beauty: a fixed. open smile was a sign, not of happiness. but of simpleness. The lesson we learn from these paintings is that expression is an interactive action ”entrained” by the context. As Ginsbur2 and Hamngton 1381 have pointed out. emotion is

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action in context. The context “feeds forward” the sequence of facial action, establishing the path for the future expressive action. The link between expression and emotion is only indirect, and mediated by the motives and strategies linked to a particular sequence of actions. Thus, the emotional expression takes place within the context of a broader system of events and social relationships that are necessary for giving emotional meaning to any facial behavior. In fact, authors are beginning to discuss their findings, as painters did for centuries. Some authors [39] conclude that expressions of emotion are mediated by social or interactive factors, while others [40, 411 have suggested that facial expressions are produced not by emotion but for social reasons, or as a result of other psychological processes not necessarily linked to emotion. In any case, the future of the study of facial expression should take into account that facial expressions are not objects or concepts but events. Research on facial expression of emotion, like research on many other psychological processes, should pay more attention to the difference between objects and events [42]. Objects persist across time, whereas events last for a specific period of time. In our view, any facial expression is a unique event. People can categorize events but they cannot recognize a particular instance of an event because a given event can only be experienced once. Therefore, people process events guided by concepts. Facial expressions, then, are episodes that are experienced only once; concepts help to process these episodes in terms of emotions, motives or other sources of information. Nevertheless, the concepts that people use for making these categorizations do not necessarily provide an objective explanation of the causes and dynamics of facial expressions. In other words, people may attribute some emotions to some facial expressions because, for centuries, a particular culture has linked certain facial expressions to certain emotions, or because people like to explain behavior as a consequence of emotion, or for other reasons. Nevertheless, this consensus on the attribution of expressions to emotions does not necessarily mean that facial expressions are expressions of emotion. Again, an example from art can help us to understand this point: the failure of the neo-Platonic program -in which Renaissance painters tried to represent the actual expression of particular virtues or passions- gave rise to an alternative approach to the representation of abstract or invisible objects in art. This alternative view, of Aristotelian inspiration, approached expression in terms of “allegory”, using a complex language in which expressions might be considered not as indices but as icons of emotions. Following Peirce’s classic typology [43] of signs, there are codes made of symbols, indices and icons. A symbol bears an arbitrary relationship to its object (e.g., the word “gato” is the Spanish symbol for a small domestic feline we might see sleeping in our backyard), an icon has a relationship of similarity to its object (e.g., a painting of a woman, as an icon of woman), and an index is physically connected to its object (e.g., smoke as an index of fire). The FEP claims that a facial expression is an index of emotion, i.e., a substantive aspect of the emotion itself. Our hypothesis is that facial expressions are icons of emotion. As iconic allegories of emotion, facial expressions are neither causally nor hnctionally linked to the experience of intense emotion, but they can convey the experience of emotion with greater or lesser success, depending on their “readability” for observers. An expression can “allude” to some emotions for different reasons, even though it is not produced by the sender’s emotional state. Furthermore, an iconic view of facial expressions interprets facial behavior as a movement that cannot be frozen into a particular prototypical expression: “expression” cannot be summarized as a particular facial configuration. Static expressions are just

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conventional devices to suggest movement or, in psychological terms, interaction. This view allows us to understand the above-mentioned results of Camera and Fernandez-Dols, in which neutral faces were as communicative as static prototypical expressions, as well as the lack of expression described for most of the paintings analyzed in the Prado catalogue. The representation of expression is a representation of a sequence of movements. and m y part of the sequence can be as representative (or not) as the others. depending on the context. Representing movement is a complex task that requires more than just a short. invariable list of icons.

5.5 Conclusion: Expression and lack of expression To summarize, facial expression is (a) an icon and (b) an event. As an icon. facial expressions bear a relationship of similarity to emotions but they are not necessarily emotions. Goya's Mujus are icons of a woman but they are in no way a woman or part of a woman. The similarity of an icon to its object does not depend on the similarity between icon and object; in fact. in many cases a convincing icon has nothing to do with its object. The canvas, the colors, the drawn lines, etc. have practically nothing to do with the flesh. shape and features of a human being; the similarity between icon and woman comes from a conceptual process in the observer who is capable of reading, in a particular culture. a particular kind of bi-dimensional representation know as "a painting". The similarity of an expression to an emotion is also conceptual, and involves a complex process in which an event is processed as a static grimace that is not even necessarily present at the time at which the actor is feeling a particular emotion. Fridlund [41]. for example, claims that facial expressions usually attributed to emotions are probably linked to social motives associated with episodes in which people feel particular emotions. For example. smiling is an expression of affiliation but not of happiness: the link between smiling and happiness may be due to the fact that happy people are usually more sociable: crying is a sign of helplessness. but helpless people are usually (but not necessarily) sad, and so on. As events, facial expressions are flows of behavior. Expression is movement, and no particular pattern of muscular movements can be described as the "true" expression of emotion. The recognition of emotion through static expressions might be an experimental artifact which. as we described above. could easily be deconstructed by giving subjects the conceptual tools for approaching facial behavior as a sequence of movements in context. In this sense, plain faces are as informative as grimaces when someone -e.g.. a skilful painter- has to translate the sequence of movements into a single, static frame. Our research program is accumulating data that suggest that "expressions" of emotion. as far as their current mainstream definition in psychology textbooks is concerned. are mostly cultural products. The sixteenth-century endeavor of Le Brun and others established a shared code for reading facial expression. followed first by the intellectual elite (e.g., Darwin), and subsequently by most of Western culture (e.g.. smiles did not begin to appear in portrait pictures. as a necessary rule of self-expression. until u.ell into the twentieth century). On the other hand, actual facial behavior linked to the experience of intense emotion. and carefully analyzed frame-by-frame, appears as a disorganized, complex and fascinating event. in which large numbers of facial actions -usually not including the prototypical expressions claimed by FEP- are displayed. This facial behavior is the true expression of emotion. but it cannot he summari7td w.ithin a single facial contipration. a s the

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proponents of FEP would argue. “Facial expression of emotion” is usually understood as a single, static, and precise facial configuration, but we would suggest that the real, true “facial expression of emotion” is neither single, nor static, nor precise. Indeed, actual facial expressions of emotion should be defined as lack of the expression. 5.6 Acknowledgements

This chapter was partially supported by a grant (PB98-071) from the Spanish DGICyT. Correspondence should be addressed to J. M. Fernandez-Dols, Facultad de Psicologia, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain or, via Internet, to [email protected]. We thank David Weston for his help in the preparation of this manuscript.

References W. James, Reprint of The Physical Basis of Emotion, Psychological Review, 101 (1994) 205-210. P.C. Ellsworth, William James and Emotion: Is a Century of Fame Worth a Century of Misunderstanding?, Psychological Review, 101 (1994) 222-229. J.M. Fernandez-Dols and J.A. Russell, The Universal and the Cultural in Emotion and Affect, in Comprehensive Handbook of Psychology, vol. 9: Personality and Social, T. Millon and M.J. Lerner Eds., manuscript in preparation. L. Ross and R.E. Nisbett, The person and the situation. Perspectives of Social Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill, 1991. S.S. Tomkins, The Phantasy Behind the Face, Journal of Personality Assessment, 39 (1975) 551-562. C.E. Izard, Innate and universal facial expressions: Evidence from developmental and cross-cultural research, Psychological Bulletin, 115 (1994) 288-299. P. Ekman, Facial expressions of emotion: New findings, new questions, Psychological Science, 3 (1992) 34-38. P. Ekman, Biological and cultural contributions to body and facial movement, in Anthropo1oc.y qfthe body, J. Blacking, Ed. London: Academic Press, 1977. J. Montagu, The expression of the passions, Yale University, 1994. C. Bell, Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression, 1844. C . Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Chicago: Chicago Press, 1965. C.E. Izard, Theface of emotion, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971. P. Ekman, Universal and cultural differences in facial expressions of emotions, in Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972. P. Ekman, An argument for basic emotions, Cognition and Emotion, 6 (1992)169-200. J.A. Russell and J.M. Fernandez-Dols, What does a facial expression mean? in The psychology ?f jacial expression. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 3-30. E.H. Grombrich, Symbolic Images. Studies in the Art of the Renaissance II, London: Phaidon Press, 1972. I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Human Ethology, New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1989 J.A. Garcia-Higuera, Conductas faciales en situaciones de dominancia, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, 1996. E.C. Grant, Human facial expression, Man. 4 (1969) 525-536. N.G. Blurton-Jones, Criteria for use in describing facial expressions of children, Human Bioloxv, 43 (1971) 365-413. L. Camras, Facial expressions used by children in a conflict situation, Child development, 48 (1977) 1431-1 435. Fundacion amigos del Museo del Prado y Fonds Mercator Paribas, Catalogo, 1996 P. Ekman and W.V. Friesen, Facial Action Coding System (FACS): A technique.for the measurement offacial action, Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1978. P. Ekman. ExDression and the nature of emotion. in Amroaches to emotion. K.R. Scherer and P.

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Ekman, Ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 1984. J.A. Russell, Facial Expressions of Emotion: What Lies Beyond Minimal Universaliq. P.yvchologica1 Bulletin, 118 (1995) 379-39 1. J.M. Femandez-hls, Facial expression and emotion: A situational view. in The social context of' nonverbal behavior, P. Philippot. R.S. Feldman and E.J. Coats, Eds. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. J.M. Fernandez-Dols and J.A. Russell. Are facial displays social or emotional'?. unpublished manuscript. J.M. Fernandez-Dois and P. Carrera, The recognition of emotion "error", poster presented Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 200 1 . J.M. Femandez-Dols and J.M. Carroll, Context and meaning, in The psvchologv of.facia1e.rpressiort. J.A. Russell and J.M. Fernandez-Dols. Eds. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. 1997. pp. 2 75-294. P. Carrera and J.M. Fernandez-Dols, Neutral faces in context: Their emotional meaning and their function, Journal ofhronverbal Behavior. 18 ( 1994) 281 -299. J.M. Femandez-Dols and M.A. Ruiz-Belda. Spontaneous facial behavior during intense emotional episodes: artistic truth and optical truth, in The psycholog.l*qfjucial espression. J.A. Russell and J.M. Fernandez-Dols, Eds. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. 1997. pp. 255-274. ~ 3 2 1 W.V. Friesen, Cultural differences in facial expression in a social situation: An experimental test of the concept of display rules. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California. 1972. 1331 E.L. Rosenberg and P. Ekman, Coherence between expressive and experiential systems in emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 8 ( 1994) 20 1-229. ~ 3 4 1 J.M. Fernandez-Dols. F. Sanchez. P. Carrera and M.A. Ruiz-Belda, Are spontaneous expressions and emotions linked?. An experimental test of coherence. Journal of.Vonrwha1 Behai.ior, 21 ( 1997) 163177. R. Reisenzein. Exploring the strength of association between the components of emotion syndromes: The case of surprise. Cognition and Emotion, 14 (2000) 1-38. R.E. Kraut and R.E. Johnston, Social and emotional messages of smiling: An ethological approach. Joiimal qfPersonalih and Social P . y h o l o a . 37 ( 1979) 1539- 1553. J M . Femandez-Dols and M.A. Ruiz-Belda, Are smiles a sign of happiness:' Gold medal winners at the Olympic Games. Journal qfPersonali0, and Social Psychologv. 69 ( 1995) 1 1 13- I 1 19. G.P. Ginsburg and M.E. Harrington, Bodily States and Context in situated lines of action. in The emotions. Sociul. Ciiltirral and Biological Dinten.sion.s, R. Harre and W.G. Parrot. Eds. London: Sase. 1 996. H. Wagner and V. Lee, Facial Behavior Alone and in the Presence of Others in The social conre.rt rtomw-bal hehavior. P. Philippot. R.S. Feldman and E.J. Coats. Eds. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. 1999. N. Chovil, Facing others: A social communicative perspective on facial displays in The ps?u.holog\.qf' facial e.rpression. J.A. Russell and J.M. Fernandez-Dols. Eds. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. pp. 32 1-333. A. Fridlund, The new ethology of human facial expressions in The psychologs q1,facial expression. J . A . Russell and J.M. Femandez-Dols. Eds. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. 1997. pp. 103-132. "421 J.M. Zacks and B. Tversky. Event structure in perception and conception. P.y*r.hologicalBulletin. 127 (2001) 3-21. [331 C . S. Peirce, Ohrn 1igic.o .retnicitic~n.Madrid: Taurus Comunicacibn. 1987.

SECTION I11 COMMUNICATE TO PRETEND: IRONY AND HUMOR Humor is a fundamental ingredient of social communication. It is a rare conversation in which at least one participant does not try to elicit laughter at some point or does not respond with amusement to something another has said or done. Jokes, witticisms, and other humorous verbal and nonverbal behaviors are commonplace in social interaction situations and can have a major impact on the quality of the interactions. For example, one's interpretation of a stranger's remarks as humorous can influence the impression one forms of that person. In addition, humor is often used strategically to decrease tension in a heated discussion or to enliven a boring one. Clearly the transmission and comprehension of humor are central features of social interaction. Wyer and Collins, I992

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‘‘You’re a Real Genius!”: Irony as a Miscommunication Design Luigi ANOLLI, Maria Giaele INFANTINO, Rita CICERI

Abstract: In a standard (rhetoric) perspective ironic communication is considered a semantic inversion between the literal (primary) meaning and the nonliteral (implicated) one. Nevertheless, in common use irony is not necessarily bound to the rhetoric concept of semantic inversion. Rather, it can be defined as an alteration of a reference aiming at stressing the reality of a fact by means of the apparent dissimulation of its true nature. In a communicative perspective, irony aims to get an effective protection of interpersonal relationships, so as to leave wide ranges of fieedom for managing both meanings and interaction. The point of view herein followed concerns irony as a paradigmatic expression of miscommunication, since it is a chance in widening the psychological space available to the communicators. Irony as miscommunication fits rather well the MaCHT framework proposed by Anolli. In fact, by means of an ironic remark, the speaker can lay the responsibility of the ironic value of the utterance on the intention ascription of the interlocutor. In particular, the present chapter intends to sketch out a new theoretical perspective of ironic communication as miscommunication, by proposing the .fencing game (or irony situation) model. Here irony is not considered only as a comment or remark at a linguistic level but also as a complex communicative interaction between interlocutors, depending on contextual constraints and opportunities.

Contents 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7

Introduction.. ........................................................ The irony family.. ................................................... Theoretical perspectives.. .......................................... What purpose does irony serve?. .................................. The “fencing game“ model of irony.. ............................. Conclusions.. ......................................................... Acknowledgements.. ................................................

136 137 137 141 145 152 154

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References.. ..........................................................

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6.1

Introduction

According to the standard (rhetoric) perspective, proposed, among others, by Booth [ I], Lausberg [2], Olbrechts-Tyteca [3], and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca [4], irony is an antiphrasis, that is, an utterance expressing the opposite of its literal meaning. In fact. ironic communication consists in a semantic inversion between the literal (primary) meaning and the nonliteral (implicated) one. It is the classic witticism toward someone who has failed an exam: “You’re a real genius!”. Usually. the witticism is uttered in a particular intonation, as we will see below. The Greek etymology of the word “irony”. Etpwvtxa. means pretence. and it comes from ctpwv (the one who makes a question pretending to be naive or less knowing than meaning “true”, “overt”. The Semitic root of he/she is). which is opposite to CIAT~OEUT~KOS, the Greek word is derived from the Accadic term erewwm, “covering”, by means of which irony appears as a device to avoid the direct impact of an explicit word. In this sense. in common use irony is not necessarily bound to the rhetoric concept of semantic inversion. Rather, it can be defined as an alteration of a reference aiming at stressing the reality of a fact by means of the apparent dissimulation of its true nature. Anyway, to reduce irony to a mere rhetoric figure or a linguistic ruse involves not seizing its communicative significance due to the psychological web of its implicit meanings. In fact, in a communicative perspective, irony springs out as a strategic “QS if’. both by escaping the alternative of truth vs. falsehood, and by suspending the subsequent parameters of judgement. It aims to get an effective protection of interpersonal relationships, so as to leave wide ranges of freedom for managing both meanings and interaction. The point of view herein followed concerns irony as a paradigmatic expression of miscommunication, since it is a chance in widening the psychological space available to the communicators. Irony as miscommunication fits rather well the MaCHT framework advanced by Anolli (Chapter I , this volume). In fact, by means of an ironic remark. the speaker may say and not say; he/she may shield him-herself behind the opaque meaning of the ironic utterance: he/she can always withdraw the ironic meaning by taking refuge in the linguistic expression. In any case, heishe can lay the responsibility of the ironic value of the utterance on the intention ascription of the interlocutor. Along this line of thought, the present chapter intends to sketch out a new theoretical perspective of ironic communication as miscommunication, by proposing the .fencinggame (or iron!. situation) model. Here irony is not considered only as a comment or remark at a linguistic level but also as a complex communicative interaction between interlocutors. depending on contextual constraints and opportunities. In the ironic script the two opponents will be considered as using not a massive sword but a sharp foil. In order to make plain our assumptions. in the first section of the chapter we will propose some considerations about the irony family and most recent opinions of the present theoretical perspectives about irony: in the second section we will examine the main psychological functions of speakers resorting to irony communication; in the last one. we will tackle the “fencing game” model according to the miscommunication framework. underlining some possible advantages of this proposal.

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The irony family

First of all, it is useful to consider that irony is not a fixed and narrow phenomenon, but a family of communicative processes. On one side, there is sarcastic irony, through which the speaker blames his/her interlocutor by means of literally praising words (blame by praise). In this way, he/she does not usually intend to soften a heavy expression of criticism, but to condemn the interlocutor without emoting him-/herself, by humiliating h i d e r through sarcasm and coldness. On the other side, there is kind irony, which consists in praising the other one by means of literally critical and offensive utterance (praise by blame). In such a way the speaker may mitigate the excess and euphoria of direct and explicit praise that may sometimes produce embarrassment in the interlocutor. The more frequent use of sarcastic rather than kind irony in Western culture can be explained resorting to the asymmetry of the afect hypothesis, advanced by Kreuz and Roberts [ 5 ] , according to which the essential nature of irony would consist in the intention to attack. Kind irony, as an affiliation strategy, should not have the same relevance as sarcastic irony. Other forms of irony should be explained. The so-called “Socratic irony”, as an elegant, ingenious, polite, urban way of communication, is convenient for discussing, and debating fashions and dogmas without unbalancing nor compromising. “Bantering irony”, instead, is like wit and serves to reduce the drama of a potentially tense or conflicting situation. Among these forms there exists a certain “air of family”, as Wittgenstein [6] should say: in fact, they are based in a similar way on common communicative ground. As Muecke [7, 81 has pointed out trenchantly, irony is the art of being clear without being evident. The clearness of the ironic utterance does not in any way involve communicative transparency. In this case “clearness” means that an ironic comment can be linguistically decoded by resorting to standard linguistic operations such as phonological, lexical, and syntactic operations. However, its communicative meaning remains opaque because of its semantic indeterminacy and obliqueness. In this sense irony is neither “evident” nor transparent. It is an obvious instance of miscommunication according to the MaCHT model proposed by Anolli (Chapter 1 , this volume). Ironic miscommunication consists in a mask that conceals what one thinks or feels, but it is a mask that, in some regards, reveals what it hides, and, in other regards, hides what it reveals. Therefore, an ironic speaker is not a deceitful one. Unlike the lie, where words and utterances are “deceptive”, irony is found underneath a disguise of pretence. In fact, while in deceptive communication a speaker deliberately omits or fabricates some significant conditions of truth and reality by concealing hidher intention, as, among others, Anolli, Balconi and Ciceri have pointed out (Chapter 4, this volume), pretence communication instead clearly cohabits with reality, and exhibits its “not being true”, by winking at what is hidden behind the mask of untruth, as it is shown by Mizzau [9].

6.3

Theoretical perspectives

Since ancient times irony has been a classical subject of study because of its intriguing communicative value and its theoretical challenge. In fact, irony is a paradigmatic instance of figurative language, since in a standard ironic exchange a speaker conveys (and the addressee interprets) a communicative meaning which is the opposite to what is said. In modern times several theoretical perspectives have aimed at explaining this complex communicative phenomenon.

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Iron\*us a Miscommunication De.sr Eds. New York: Tavistock. 1985. K . J . Gergen. Toiturd tran.~fimnutiottin social knoichd,qe. New York: Springer. 1987. J. Bruner. , 4 r t s of',neaning.Jerusalem:: Harvard University Press. 1993. H. Markus and P. Nurius. Possible selves. .4mericun P.stdiologi.qr 41 ( 1986) 954-969. J . Meyrowitz. .Vo stvise c?f'plucr:Tlie irnpm'r of' t~ltv-tt*onictnetliri o n .voc.iirl hc4iui.ior. Set\. Yorli: Oxford University Press. 1985. R. Kraut. M. Patterson. V. Lundmark. S. Kiesler. T. Mukopadhyay. and W . Scherlis. Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social in\ ol\ einent and psYcholo_eical \\ell-heing'.'. . I m t ~ r i ( y i ~P7~ \ ~ ~ / i o / o q23 i s r( l W 8 ) 1 0 1 '-1031

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S. Doheny-Farina, The wired neighborhood. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. P. Wallace, The psychology ofthe Internet. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. G. Riva, The mind in the Web: Psychology in the Internet age, CyberPsychology and Behavior 4 (2001) 1-6. P.-A. Federico, Hypermedia environments and adaptive instructions, Computers in Human Behavior 15 (1999) 653-692. Encarta, World English Dictionary. Seattle, WA: Microsoft Press, 1999. G. Riva, Shared Hypermedia: Communication and interaction in Web-based learning environments, Journal of Educational Computing Research 25 (2001) 205-226. 1861 G. Riva, From real to virtual communities: Cognition, knowledge and intention in the World Wide Web, in Learning and teaching on the World Wide Web, C . R. Wolfe, Ed. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2001, pp, 131-151. 1871 J. Lave and E. Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 199 1. H. McLellan, Situated Learning Perspectives. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications, 1995. Blogger.com, What is a webloghlog?, vol. 2001: Pyra Labs., 2001. E. F. Churchill and D. Snowdon, Collaborative virtual environments: an introductory review of issues and systems, Virtual Reality 3 ( 1998) 3- 15. 1911 J. A. Oravec, Virtual individuals, virtual groups: Human dimension of Groupware and Computer Networking. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. J. Coate, Innkeeping in Cyberspace. Proceedings of Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing. Palo Alto, CA: Computer Professional for Social Responsibility, 1992. G. Riva and G. Mantovani, The need for a socio-cultural perspective in the implementation of virtual environments, Virtual Reality (2000) 32-38. B. Murray, A mirror on the self, Monitor on Psychology 31 (2000) 16-19. S. Kiesler, Culture of the Internet. Mahwah, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers, 1997, pp. xvi, 463. S. Turkle, Parallel lives: Working on identity in virtual space, in Constructing the selfin a mediated world. Inquiries in social construction, T. R. L. Debra Grodin, Ed.: Sage Publications, Inc, Thousand Oaks, CA, US, 1996, pp. 156-175.

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10

Cyber-Attraction: The Emergence of Computer-Mediated Communication in the Development of Interpersonal Relationships Fabrizia MANTOVANI

Abstract: The main goal of this chapter is the analysis of cyber-attraction: the emergence of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) in the development of interpersonal attraction. According to recent theories and studies, it would seem that not only does CMC support emotional and intensely involving communication between people, but also that it would be characterized by and offer a specific allure, a special element that makes it so fascinating. In particular, different forms of miscommunication - implicit, say not to say, and obliquity - play an important role in this process. Starting from this background, the chapter addresses the effects of CMC on interpersonal communication, and especially on the development of interpersonal attraction, aiming at identifying the specific features that this process has in cyberspace. At the same time, the chapter underlines the fact that online and oMine are not two separate dimensions to be dealt with separately and almost dichotomously. A broader approach to the study of interpersonal communication in CMC is needed: flexible and complex enough to account for the use of communication strategies in interaction contexts characterized by different levels of virtuality and by the presence of interfaces.

Contents

10.5 10.6

Introduction.. ........................................................ 230 Supporting “relationa1”communication in CMC ............... 23 1 From cyber-attraction to cyber-seduction.. ..................... 233 Towards a new perspective in cyber-seduction: communicating 237 and miscommunicating in cyberspace. .......................... Conclusions.. ....................................................... 24 1 Acknowledgements ................................................ 243

10.7

References.. .........................................................

10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4

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230

10.1 Introduction

The social nature of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) is more and more evident. As Rheingold [ 11 asserts, “It is all about people communicating with other people. in any way they can and for many purposes: exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support. make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games. flirt.. .”. (p.3). The activities today carried out over the Internet are many and complex. in a way that could not be imagined at the beginning. Certainly one of the emerging features of the Web is its relational and communicative nature: the initial centrality of the information exchange is moving to the building of on-line relationships, from friendship up to romantic (and even sexual) relationships. As pointed out before, this evolution was literally unthinkable only ten years ago. when the first studies on Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) in collaborative tasks [241 had found CMC to be an inadequate way for people to share emotional content, let alone develop meaningful, long-lasting relationships. According to the authors. the main reasons of this inadequacy had to be found in the lack of nonverbal cues and in the diminished sense of social presence. Despite that preliminary vision, which conveyed the idea of CMC as cold and poor communication medium, the Internet is emerging as “a community of chronic communicators’’ [ 5 ] , and we see that interpersonal relationships can and do develop online

PI. Parks and Floyd [7] pointed out that personal relationships conducted via CMC are “common,” with just over 60 % of people in their sample reporting that they have formed a “personal relationship” with someone they had initially contacted through a Usenet newsgroup. The result of research, as well as the now many accounts of personal experiences show that personal relationships are being established online, from friendship to romantic and even sexual relationships. As Chenault [8] affirms, “CMC becomes a new way to “find” each other, a way for personal relationships to build”. The development of interpersonal (sentimenWfriendship) relationships on the Internet. is a very important and complex issue, seen also the growing of this phenomenon in these very last years. In order to investigate it effectively, a broad perspective is needed. Many elements are involved in this process: among these, surely interpersonal attraction is recognized as a key issue and a major push to interpersonal relationships. As Levine [9] points out, “Relationships can begin in many different environments - from the grocery store to the workplace to an online chat-room”. But, according to Brehm, “the first big step toward a relationship is always the same: interpersonal attraction, the desire to approach someone” [ 101 In other words, without attraction. there are no relationships. online or off. We know that in usual face-to-face interactions interpersonal attraction strongly relies on physical factors (especially in the first phases). Since online these features are not present, communication features become the crucial element to influence whether we are attracted by someone or not. Similarly, when showing interest to someone. other means than smiles and glances have to be used. Object of this chapter is thus cJther-atfraction: the emergence of CMC in the development of interpersonal attraction. According to more recent theories and studies. it would seem that not only CMC does support emotional and possibly rich and intensely involving communication between people. but also that it would be characterized by and offer opportunity for a specific c-tllirr-P. a special element that makes it so charming. There seems to be a specific room for implicit. w. r i o t to 5 m . . and obliquity. ,411 thow

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communication forms which can be defined as miscommunication do play a central role in cyber-attraction. Since you don’t see the other person, there is much room for imagination and idealization, as well as the possibility of daring more “behind a wall”; there is an interface, which can act as a protecting barrier between the partners. So, the chapter has the main goal to get a better understanding of this phenomenon: on the one hand, it addresses the effects of CMC in interpersonal communication, and especially in the development of interpersonal attraction, aiming at identifylng the specific features that this process undertake in cyberspace. At the same time, the chapter underlines the fact that online and offline are not two separate dimensions, to be dealt with separately and almost dichotomously; instead, a broader approach to interpersonal communication is needed, flexible and complex enough to account for the use of communication strategies in different interaction contexts, characterized by different levels of virtuality and by the presence of interfaces. Literature that can help shedding light on these processes consists of the early work of CMC [ 11- 131, theories on interpersonal attraction [ 10, 14-171, psychosocial theories such as SAT [ 18, 191 and interpersonal communication psychology theories (Anolli, Chapter 1 in this volume) [20-231. On the one hand we will focus on the specific devices and tools CMC offers to interpersonal communication (in terms of possibly richer communication options): the communication options which can be used to convey socio-emotional meaning and to foster the reduction of interpersonal distance will be analysed. On the other hand we will investigate how online and offline dimensions merge in a number of psychological processes which are recognized as important for attraction and further steps; we will try to understand, how they develop in cyberspace and how traditional theories of interpersonal attraction apply online.

10.2 Supporting LLrelational”communication in CMC

A first step in order to understand the possibility of “online relationships” is investigating the consequences of CMC for interpersonal communication, with special focus on social and emotional aspects of communication, and on communication strategies involved in the reduction of interpersonal distance and the achievement of growing intimacy. This has mainly to do with being emotionally intense, open, express feelings and convey emotions, states of mind, etc. Much CMC research [24] is concerned with how the technical features of different communication media might influence what it is possible to convey via each medium. Among these characteristics are the richness of cues that a medium conveys (e.g., whether it conveys texts or whether it includes visual and auditory cues), the visibility or anonymity of the participants and the timing of exchanges (e.g., synchronous or asynchronous communication). Results from early research in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), examining the effect of different media on groups working remotely on collaborative tasks [2], on consensus building in business contexts [3], on cooperation in education [4] were not very encouraging and led to an early assumption that textual CMC systems support communication poorly, particularly socio-emotional communication. As pointed out by Preece [25], two closely related theories that help to explain these observations are socialpresence theory [26] and media richness t h e o v [ 121. Social presence theory is concerned with how successfully media convey a sense of the participants being physically present; face-to-face communication is used as the standard

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for the assessment. The dimension of social presence depends not only on the verbal features of the exchange but also on vocal and nonverbal cues, body language, and context [ 13, 271. Reduced social cues (i.e. gestures, body language, facial expressions, appearance and so on) in CMC are caused by low bandwidth, which affects communication [28]. Media richness theory is similar to social presence but takes a media perspective [ 121. It addresses the media’s capacity for immediate feedback-how well it conveys cues. and how many and in which ways senses are involved. Social presence hndamentally affects how participants feel emotion. intimacy. and immediacy [ 131. Early studies in CMC reported fewer personal messages with lower socioemotional content (e.g. [29]) and lacking cues about social context. The “cuesfiltered-out theo? [30] was used to explain these observations [ 1 I]. Bandwidth was insufficient to carry all the communication signals needed for conveying social, emotional. and contextual content. In text-only systems, for example, both task information and social information are carried in the same single verbal/linguistic channel, which, though adequate for most task information, cannot transmit nonverbal information such as body language, voice tone, and so on. [3 1. p.4761. It is clear that this filtering out social, emotional and contextual information can have important consequences on the interaction, especially where the development of an interpersonal relationship is the main focus. According to Preece [25], there are three main ways that this affects communication: first, signals needed to understand conversation may be missing; second, the management of speaking turns may be modified; third. the impossibility of seeing and hearing the speaker can make it more difficult to infer information regarding the context of the conversation and the speaker’s feelings. In face-to-face communication. the subject can use multiple communication channels. through which he can convey emotional content. On the phone. speakers rely mainly on linguistic and non-verbal vocal cues and make use of a synchronous style of interaction. Differently, as broadly discussed in the previous chapter, communicative environments characterized by higher virtuality levels are more rarefied than the kind of interaction that happens in normal conversation. Furthermore, while face-to-face (and, partially. telephonic) conversation occurs in a cooperative environment constantly regulated by mutual adjustment and correction, where feedback and tuning are constant [32]. CMC occurs in a much less cooperative environment because of the special conditions imposed by the medium itself [33]. What is especially critical in this context is the lack of direct and immediate feedback: it can thus be more difficult to infer the intentions of the partners. Nevertheless the absence of physical and nonverbal cues should not be taken to mean that the computer medium is (completely) impersonal or devoid of social cues. or that the cues it transmits lack the subtlety of those communicated face-to-face [34. p.2 161. In fact. there is a high degree of socio-emotional content observed in CMC (e.g.[ 1 , 35-37] ). even in organizational and task-oriented settings [34, p.2 171. A number of textual and graphical devices were created. for example. to reproduce the meta-communicative features of face-to-face conversation and to convey an emotional dimension with the literal meaning of messages (for an extended analysis see Chapter 9). Emoficons (or ‘smileys’) are graphical signs combining punctuation marks and symbols into miniature sideways faces are extensively used in chat, e-mails and newsgroups to show sender’s mood. Ending a sentence with ;-) for example, “lets other know that you‘re joking or feeling cheerful“ [38]. Adding a frowning face. such as :-( does the opposite effect. As noted by Riva in Chapter 9, in Multi-User Dungeons (MUDS).text-based multi-user environments, people can use narrative descriptions of conversational nonverbal behakiors ( ’emoting’).They consist in typed messages that appear surrounded by quotation marks ”

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and preceded by dialogue tags, such as “emote” or ‘pose’ [8]. Emoting, in MUDs, is a way to use commands to bring action and emotion to language. For instance, for a user whose nick-name is Mary78, typing “emote laughs loud” would result for the other users as “Mary78 laughs loud”; the character can thus be given action and movement- and even emotion. The use of poses as well as words to convey meaning gives MUDs an “odd but definitely usefbl kind of disembodied language”. More sophisticated CMC environments are represented by multi-user two- and threedimensional worlds: within 2- and 3 - 0 chats such as “The Palace” or “Active Worlds” the users are represented by avatars (graphical representations of the user), and they’re immersed in a virtual environment, where they can move around like in a videogame and act with a predefined set of choices (usually 6 or 7, including actions such as “Wave”, “Happy”, “Angry”,etc.). This can enhance the feeling of immersion and co-presence and re-introduces spatial elements as well as others nonverbal cues usually filtered out by traditional CMC. For example, as Krikorian [39] points out, the management of interpersonal distance in a virtual world can be a powerful element for the development of interpersonal relationships.

10.3 From cyber-attractionto cyber-seduction We can define seduction as the passage from a preliminary state of attraction and curiosity, to the search for contact and intimacy [14, 171. More in detail, it can be considered as an intentional and strategic behaviour induced by the attraction (usually sexual) for a subject. Main goal of this behaviour is to establish “an intriguing bond with the partner” (Ciceri, Chapter 4 of this volume), in order to reach an intimate relationship, through a progressive reduction of interpersonal distance [40]. According to the Steps Theory of Givens [41] and the bio-social model of Kendrick and Trost [42], it is possible to describe seduction as a timed sequence of interactions characterized by different “steps” or phases: after the phase of choice of an attractive partner and the phase of attracting hidher attention and interest, the third phase consists in trying to reduce the interpersonal distance in order to obtain a higher level of intimacy (and possibly establishing a relationship). The first step is thus attraction: almost all theorists agree that interpersonal attraction is a “positive or negative attitude toward another person” [ 151, p.2. “Attitude” can be defined as a “person’s readiness to respond toward an object, or a class of objects, in a favourable or unfavourable manner”. Interpersonal attraction is defined as “an individual’s tendency or predisposition to evaluate another person or symbol of that person in a positive way” ~ 1p.2., This attitude usually leads to the desire of being noticed, “to change status from being anyone to being someone” [43, 441 through a careful management of self-presentation (exhibition) and of the show of interest into the other person. This with the aim of facilitating self-disclosure (which circularly leads to an increase in liking) and reducing interpersonal distance, in order to an intimate relationship. As Ciceri points out in the fourth chapter of this volume, seductive interaction con be considered and analysed “as a flexible plurality of behavioural patterns, corresponding to the variety of communicative intentions: exhibition, approaching the partner, deepening reciprocal knowledge and reaching of a level of intimacy.” The strategies behind seduction processes are usually focused on self-disclosure through a reciprocal filtering of the level of intimacy of the information provided. This communicative approach, described and discussed by the Uncertainty Reduction Theory,

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allows for the reduction of the uncertainty level without the risk of being excessively vulnerable to the decisions of the partner [38]. Given the impossibility of knowing the intentions of the partner, the seductive goal is manifested gradually, through the use of an “oblique language [45]. Main characteristic of this language is ambiguity: the subject discloses himherself without an excessive exposure. In this way it is possible to reduce the risk of being rejected, avoiding a possible reduction in the self-esteem. According to Ciceri (Chapter 4 in this volume), “the act of seducing is a subtle and enticing game, which requires using the right amounts of exhibition or disguise, flaunting or revealing slightly, saying something but not saying too much“. In face-to-face communication, a significant role is played by nonverbal communication: the subject has both to be convincing and attractive; this is obtained by a subtle negotiation process in which nonverbal cues are of central importance [ 14: Anolli. Chapter 1 of this volume; Ciceri, Chapter 4 of this volume]. But what happens to this complex process within cyber-space, where a number of new opportunities ( e g more careful management of self-presentation) and constraints (miss nonverbal channels) are present? It is now time to investigate the implications CMC has on important relational processes deeply involved in the development of interpersonal attraction. such as first impression formation, showing interest into someone, self disclosing etc. We will discuss which form they take online and whether and how traditional theories apply in this context: the general aim is however to highlighten the globalit?.,of the communication e-rperience and to try to explain the continuity of the communication processes. from online to offline contexts of seductive interaction. As a general hypothesis, in fact, the mechanisms involved in offline communication are not different from the ones implied in the online communication. In particular, we assumed that a unitary and coherent theoretical framework and some general principles should be used to analyse seduction and interpersonal attraction in these different communication contexts. ”

10.3.1 First impression formation: choosing an attractille partnerWhen first getting to know a new person, a central role is played by the development of impression formation. In everyday face-to-face interaction the partners rely on different types of cues, such as beauty, voice, way of moving, way of talking, clothing, etc to build the first impression of the other. But how do these impressions develop in different environments and especially on-line? As we have seen in Chapter 9, according to the “cues filtered out” theon. [30], also called “reduced cues” theory, the computer filters out aspects of communication that are of central importance in face-to-face communication (eye-contact. self-contact gestures. posture. voice pitch, intensity, stress, rhythm and volume). Absence of non-verbal cues makes the process of first impression formation take on partially new forms. Using alternative media, such as CMC. the actors rely on different cues, such as language, style. timing and speed of writing, use of punctuation, use of emoticons. etc. According to Lea and Spears [34, p.2171, “even first-time users form impressions of other communicant’s dispositions and personalities based on their “communication style”. Furthermore. although it is true that the cues conveyed in face-to-face interaction are generally more than in CMC, in “real life settings”. they are overwhelmed by the so-called “phJ*ukn/attractiseness stereoype” 1461: physical attractiveness was found to be one of the essential factor influencing first impression formation and development of

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interpersonal attraction. The influence of physical attractiveness leads to a spiral by which more attractive people are addressed more favourably and thus induced to show the best of them and leading to a hrther increased liking. Online, the lack of visual cues about physical appearance can give the partners an opportunity to interact without the weight of physical attractiveness stereotype. Finally, though we can generally affirm that the richness of cues conveyed in face-toface interaction is hardly present in CMC, the impression of our partner built in mediated communication is not for that less complete and articulated. According to Lea’s and Spears’ “SIDE theory” [34], it is possible to predict that the smaller amount of cues that appear in CMC can take on great value, possibly leading to an “over-attribution” process, building stereotypical impressions of partners based on language content of CMC messages. As far as rhythm and differences are concerned [8], Walther [28] also found evidence, within a “social information processing perspective ”, that computer-mediated groups gradually increased in impression development to a level “approaching that of face-to-face groups (p. 381). Social information processing suggests different rates and patterns of impression development using alternative media, such as CMC. Thus, it takes longer to find enough information to be able to form impressions via CMC, but that it does happen, according to Walther, and that process by which we form impression is not actually “altered” via CMC, only slowed down. 10.3.2 The management of seductive interaction: attracting attention and showing interest After getting in touch with someone for the first time, how can we think these relationships develop online? And how can the game of courtship develop? What are the means to expresshhow interest into someone into such a “rarefied” communication medium? These are some of the questions we’re going to address in this section. Usually, as pointed out by Altman, [47, p.271, as people go on in their interaction and start establishing a relationship, they “gradually move toward deeper areas of their mutual personalities through the use of words, bodily behavior, and environmental behaviors”. In the management of seductive interaction, there are some important measures of attraction that do not come into play in CMC, nor can they be measured, including: eyecontact (duration and type), proxemic indexes such as “inclination” to one another (leaning towards and other body language), the distance between the partners, etc. According to Ciceri (Chapter 4 in this volume), “the form of seductive message is multimodal, depending on the relation between signals belonging to different systems of expression (vocal, verbal, visual, kinetic), which involves the whole person. During the course of seductive interactive game, communication is influenced by verbal and nonverbal components .” In CMC, bodily and environmental aspects are reduced or removed, giving worddtext all the importance”. Nevertheless, there are specific communication tools that have been identified in the literature [8] as able to compensate for the lack of nonverbal cues and to convey emotion. Furthermore, “the seducer should be able to act in an implicit and intriguing manner because enticing the other person needs an attentive and sensitive process of negotiation”. In the following brief description there are some elements that are recognized playing a crucial role in the development of attraction, online as well as offline. Proximity and frequency of contact: as noticed by Wallace [46], one obvious explanation for the proximity effect is that it provides the opportunity to meet and know

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significant others. This makes the other person become familiar, predictable and develops a positive effect of exposure [lo]. Moreover, one reason the real-life proximity promotes attraction is that the person’s nearness makes people expect -and anticipate- fbture interaction. In the online world, proximity is not defined by physical location, but instead by the shared use of a particular tool (chat room, newsgroup, etc.). This particular proximity is also called intersection frequency. In the design of new CMC environments this feature is supported through the insertion of “buddy lists”, allowing people to know whether hisher friend are online, making it thus much easier to stay in touch. Similariv: according to Brehm 1101, people are more attracted to someone they believe has attitudes similar to their own than to someone whose attitudes differ: the greater the proportion of shared attitudes, the greater the attraction to that person. On the Internet. where it is more difficult and time consuming to learn how people think about multiple issues, the law of attraction may cause many “false starts” in friendship and love. In a virtual medium, in fact, as Schnarch points out 1481, there is no way to really know whether someone’s attitudes are similar to one another’s, because it is not possible to compare a partner’s self-presentation with what one can see for himself. This limitation. on the one hand produces a large amount of idealisations and expectations, and on the other hand allows a strategic management of the similarity perception. Express liking: as Wallace [46] points out “when someone likes us. we tend to like this person back“. Partly because we’re flattered and the other person’s attraction to us raises our self-esteem, just as physical attractiveness creates a spiral of positive treatment and positive response. In real life, there are many cues that people can rely on to detect that someone likes them: smiles, attention, glances, etc. On the Internet people must rely on other methods to show that they like someone else. The most important is probably attention: flatteries, compliments and signs of interest, which can be expressed in various forms (a nice compliment/positive comment on a message posted by someone in a forum) and multimedia devices (e.g. virtual flowers).

Humour: the role humour plays in making people more attractive is well recognized [49]. Especially as far as self- or object directed humour are concerned, also on the Internet, humour can be a powefil force in interpersonal attraction, particularly because it

isn’t overshadowed by the physical appearance factor. Humour can be expressed very easily on the Net in just typed text [50]. and those who excel at it are probably increasing their score on the interpersonal attraction scale. 10.3.3 The paradox of self-disclosingin cvher-space As noted above. self-disclosure is a central process in the development of attraction and crucial to the establishment of relationships [ 161. In fact. developing a close relationship with another person calls for a certain level of intimacy, or self-disclosure. Over time, the exchange deepens and the two people disclose more and more information to one another. The management of self-disclosure. with the filtering of personal information is extremely delicate. As Ciceri (Chapter 1 in this volume) underlines, “it is necessary to be able to get the right balance between allowing oneself yet denying oneself. putting oneself forward yet restraining oneself’; it is all a matter of “saying a little but not saying too much” [45]. People can manage the timing. the breadth and depth of self-disclosure. which is rewarding to the listener because it makes the other person feel worthy of receiving

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intimate information, thus raising self-esteem. Jourard and Lasakov [5 11 hypothesized that “liking” another person is mainly a result of having “disclosed” to the person, almost “independent of that person’s reaction to the disclosure” (cited in Altman and Taylor, 50). Altman and Taylor posit an interactional theory: “Revealing leads to liking and liking leads to revealing, “as a cyclical and continuous set of events (50). As Chenault [8] points out, “because often in CMC people are interacting with relative “strangers” (people they have never met “in real life”), the dynamics of when to disclose, and what to disclose come into play. Within cyber-space, self-disclosure seems to be influenced in a quite complex and partially controversial way: on the one hand, selfdisclosure is strictly tied to the development of trust and according to Mehrabian [52], “people are discouraged from expressing personal feelings to strangers and so it becomes necessary to rely on implicit behavior to infer how another person feels and how to pursue a relationship further” (p.156). On the other hand, it would seem that anonymity and the reduced sense of presence given by the interface between communicators allows a more dishinibited behavior, fostering the possibility to open oneself (there would be less or no fear of “losing face” [53]).

10.4 Towards a new perspective in cyber-seduction: communicating and miscommunicatingin cyberspace 10.4.1 Seduction and miscommunication

As we have seen, establishing a sentimentahtimate relationship over the Internet is not an easy task. As pointed out before, whether on- or off-line, seduction is a very complex communication act: it can be defined as a strategic and intentional sequence of moves, primarily pushed by attraction (usually sexual) towards another person (usually of the opposite gender), having the main goal to attract himher in order to reduce interpersonal distance and establish an intimate relationship. As we have seen, the strategies behind seduction processes are usually focused on the management of self-presentation and on self-disclosure through a careful reciprocal filtering of the level of intimacy of the information provided. Given the impossibility of knowing the intentions of the partner, the seductive goal is manifested gradually, through the use of an “oblique” language [45]. Main feature of this linguistic style is its ambiguity and enigmaticity: the subject discloses hidherself without an excessive exposure. In this way it is possible to reduce the risk of being rejected, avoiding a possible reduction in the self-esteem. It is a very subtle task, where in order to achieve his goals, the subject has to run along a border area between implicitness and explicitness, ambiguous and direct style, communication and miscommunication. As Anolli points out in Chapter 1 of this volume, communication is a complex game of intentions, including both simple communication acts characterized by the pursue of a single intention (either instrumental or self-revealing) and complex acts (multi-intentional). In this second case, two separate intentions are present and coordinated within a hierarchical structure, which allows the pursue of an intention (self-revealing) through the achievement of the other (the instrumental intention). Seductive communication is made of complex acts (multi-intentional), where usually all first-level level communication acts (making questions, compliments, offering flowers, etc.) are super-ordinated by the higherlevel intention (being noticed, bringing to self-disclosure in order to reduce interpersonal

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distance. etc.). For example, manifesting an (instrumental) intention (for example asking for a glass of water) is used not only for the simple achievement of this intention by the means of its communication (to have a glass of water), but as an instrument to communicate a different intention at another level (I ask for some water to signal my presence, etc.). At the same time, manifesting a self-revealing intention (presenting oneself as rich. or powerful. etc. ) is aimed at appearing more interesting to the partner’s eyes, in order “to be chosen”. In this case. the management of self-presentation carried out during courtship, where people tend to present themselves at their best, enhancing their qualities and minimizing defects, has many point so f contact with deceptive communication. The “courtship dance” is a context where people tend to resort to “say not to say, where the attitudes of the speakers seem to be intentionally ambiguous. confused. misdirected and pretended. As pointed out by Anolli, in Chapetr 1 of this volume, this is a typical miscommunication situation, where discursive interactions have their opaque border areas where communication still succeeds without being openly and explicitly strived for. It seems to be a normal phenomenon in our everyday communications. where communication can be successful without being perfect. We are in a situation where the success and the value of a communication outcome are not in the transfer of a “package of information” (Shannon & Weaver’s perspective [54]). but rely in the play of negotiation of the interactants’ intentions. Understanding the meaning of an utterance does not imply the understanding of a transparent semantic content determined solely by its autonomous truth conditions. Understanding it is more similar to an interactive play in which the players have to negotiate reciprocal intentions. (Anolli. Chapter 1 of this volume). On the one hand, this makes “communication a “risky” task” in which the borderline between communicative and noncommunicative intentionality in speakers” are very feeble. On the other hand this game of intentions, and the continuous process of reciprocal re-interpretation of the partners’ intentions increases the possibilities in human communication. As suggested by the MaCHT (Miscommunication as CHance Theory) by Anolli (Chapter I in this volume). ”miscommunication is not plainly a defect or a mismatch; actually, it is also a chance. because it enhances the degrees of freedom available to the communicators in their interaction”. 10.4.2 Seductive (mis)communication in cYt6erspace and Situated Action Theor?.

From the analysis carried out in the previous paragraphs, we can see that people engaged in a seductive interaction online as well as offline are faced to specific opportunities and constraints, which can enhance both the risks and the opportunities of miscommunication. In CMC, communicating to attract and seduce implies being able to manage the interaction and the relationship in the context of a different and new communication environment. It means adapting to and interacting with other people through an interface. in a complex way and adopting new channels. new codes. in a context which offers new opportunities as well as many limitations and constraints. as compared to the environments Lve’re used to (e.g. face-to-face). etc. There are in fact, in cyberspace, some specific elements that can influence miscommunication, enhancing opportunities and risks for the management of this complex communication act offered by it. For example. we could think that the presence of an interface would lower the fear of ”losing the face” [53]; at the same time. it makes e\.en more difficult than usual to detect the other person‘\ feedback.

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Baym [ 5 5 ] writes about the “egalitarianism”, in that many see CMC allowing peoplemaking aspects like appearance mute points and giving everyone who can type an equal chance. However, the very equalizing aspects of CMC that are seen as positive can also, as the reduced-cues [30] perspective points out, cause problems and a number of possible misunderstandings. The lack of context leaves a lot of room to misunderstanding, illusions, projections and also deception and lying. It is enough to remark that, for example, in faceto-face interactions we (usually, at least) know for sure the gender of the person we are talking to. It is a fundamental element for the choice. This is not the case in CMC, where gender swapping (presenting oneself as a person of the opposite gender) is not so rare a practice. Although the described effect of CMC features on the definition of opportunities and limits for the interaction are generally accepted and considered true, the situation is somewhat more complicated. Each communication environment (face-to-face, chat, 3D chat, etc.) is different: it offers different signalling channels, possesses different features. But also each interactant is different: he/she has different personality characteristics, different technological competence, culture, etc.; furthermore, each interaction is different, according to context and interactants. The specific characteristics of the interactants and the unique features of their interaction come into play in determining the meaning of these features (in terms of opportunities and constraints) and in exploiting them in order to reach their goal. Do different people univocally interpret these features as opportunities and limits? And how do people interact with these opportunities and limits in order to reach their goals? A theory that helps understanding and investigating interactions typical of CMC is Situated Action Theory [19], as implemented in the model by Mantovani [56], which analyses this process (of interaction with artefacts) in a complex, multi-level way. According to the SAT, the action is an adaptation of the subject to the context he’s placed in, a context which offer him a number of specific affordances/opportunities and limits/constraints. The focus of the SAT approach is to “investigate how people use the affordances to develop an intelligent course of action”. According to the author, the way people use and interact with the artefact (computer/characteristics of CMC), the so-called “local interaction with the artefact ”, is always situated in a certain context. Interaction depends on the interpretation of the situation by the actor. According to this interpretation, the subject gives a personal meaning to the characteristics of the environments and identifiedperceives affordances and limits. This happens according to a number of elements, such as: personality characteristics, socio-cultural contexts, objectives and goals of the actors. 10.4.2.I Perceiving opportunities and limits The same CMC feature (e.g. presence of the interfacebarrier) can be interpreted differently and represent something different, either an opportunity or a limit according to a number of subject’s characteristics (the most salient are: extroversionhtroversion, level of competence, physical appearance, previous experience with the media involved). For example, someone who is very pretty (or handsome) can feel more comfortable in face-to-face interaction, because of the importance physical appearance has. He/she can see the fact of not being seen in chat as a limit, where as an ugly or not very attractive girlboy could find it a resource. This, also because some of the elements that are overshadowed in face-to-face, such as the weight of words for words, do have a great importance and permanence in CMC. As another example, this perception can also change also according to the personality

characteristics of the people. For instance, we could expect an extroverted person could have no problems either in face-to-face or in other media, or probably miss the "human touch" when chatting; on the other hand, an introverted people could find himself more at ease in the context of a lower-emotional involvement situation, such as the one in chat. where you don't either see or hear the person you are communicating with. Obviously, a very important element is also the level qf competence (typing and writing) and chat experience. A person familiar with emoticons can find them as an opportunity. a useful device to convey emotions; otherwise they could just be meaningless signs. 10.4.2.2 Exploiting affordances and managing constraints Furthermore, the next step is to see whether the actors are able to exploit these affordances. depending on a complex inter-relationship of factors. Once perceived and identified opportunities and constraints. they decide how to exploit them and how to structure the interaction. We could assume that the subjects are not always able to communicate most effectively in different communication environments, either because of a general lack of knowledge and technical competence or because of contextual elements that make the situation uncomfortable to them (their perception/interpretation of the situation), or also because they can't tune to the other person. We can hypothesize that the different interpretation of the features of varied communication environments can influence and modify (broadenhestraidmodulate) the repertoire of communication strategies that one person has. It is possible that this perception of opportunities and limits can bring people to communicate in different ways. Changing the communication environment and thus changing the context can be a powerful experience of discovering of new communication opportunities that are usually made difficult by the emotional involvement or other factors, such as personality characteristics. For example, being ironic to seduce (in face-to-face conversation) is an incredibly complex act: irony in itself is a multi-level, meta-intentional act [57]. In the case of "being ironic to seduce". this act is even more complex and demanding: the ironic intention by itself becomes a sub-ordinated intention as compared to the higher-level seductive intention. This requires a very high level of attention to manage facial expression, gestures and voice in the interaction, attentional resources that are not always present in face-to-face seductive interaction, where usually the emotional involvement is high. In CMC, being ironic could mean carefblly underlining certain words with punctuation. an attentive use of capital letters or making use of emoticons, in much more controlled situation. The same person who. for many reasons, can be embarrassed in face-to-face interaction can experience in CMC a reduction in the relational stress and find a way to be ironic. The same person who cannot make an effective use of her voice and facial expressions, but is very effective with writing can become perfectly patron of the situation and of the managing of the codes in chat, and be so a very ironic and brilliant person. He/she can thus use this powerful weapon to seduce, a weapon she could never use in faceto-face where she would possibly prefer a different style. As pointed out by Anolli in the first chapter of this volume, it is very important to consider the range of signalling systems. and the plurality of expressive means available to the communicators in order to express their communicative intention. The focus is "on the semantic synchronv process, intended as the speaker's competence to organise. coordinate, and make the different communicative systems converge on each other in order to make explicit the meaning of one's own communicative intention in a unitary and coherent 14 ay.

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It would thus emerge, as Mantovani [58] suggests, that seductive communication in cyberspace usually requires two tasks: the analysis of the characteristics of the communicative environment in which the play of interpersonal attraction develops, the exploitation of the affordances offered by communicative environment according to opportunities and constraints. Furthermore, the communication style used by the subject, in order to be effective, must be tuned and flexibly adapted according both to the partner’s personality and competence. The key effort of the subjects involved in a computer-mediated interaction is always the negotiation of the meaning of the situation they are involved in. Within a communicative interaction, people are constantly involved into a process of negotiation: negotiation of the meaning and negotiation of the intention Situations are always conjointly defined by both partners, and the meaning for the interaction always emerges as a result of the process of negotiation [ 18,591 in order to reach a shared meaning This is coherent with the dialogic principle of human communication. As Anolli and Ciceri [20] have pointed out, communication is not simply an act but it is an inter-act, where both partners constantly co-determine the construction of the communicative reality and operate on it. Miscommunication as a founding feature of indeterminacy in human communication is the key element: it offers the basis for both misunderstanding and enrichment of the human communication at the same time. In the very moment that communication leaves space for indeterminacy, on the one hand this implies the risk of misunderstanding; on the other hand it allows a creative interpretation and construction of the interaction, through the process of negotiation. This allows the partners to constantly re-define the context they’re people are placed in. The relationship between context and communication is a bi-directional one: on the one hand, the context defines and influence certain elements of the interaction, on the other hand, communicators during their interaction constantly re-define and re-build the context.

10.5 Conclusions

As we have seen in this chapter, cyber-attraction is a very complex issue, in which a rich network of elements is at stake. In order to analyse this process effectively, we assumed that it was not possible to analyse it separately from “offline attraction”: there should be a unitary framework to investigate this phenomenon online and off. Along this path, we thus tried to investigate this phenomenon within a general and comprehensive perspective, in order to forward a unitary vision for on-line and off-line communication and behavior. This meant considering the existing differences but investigating them in a global and coherent framework, where insights and theories developed or concerning one level can enhance reflection and understanding of the other levels. CMC is becoming more and more part of our life: thus “on-line” and “off-line” dimensions will mergehtegrate more and more in our everyday experience and use; we thus need to look for comprehensive models to investigate and understand them. In order to understand the specific features of online seduction and especially to explain the paradoxical co-existence of charm and risks, it was necessary to look up at a concept/perspective that could unify the analysis of seductive communication in different communication environments. From the analysis carried out, it emerged that miscommunication (understood as the characteristic of indeterminacy and rarefaction of communication) can represent a powerful perspective for the comprehension of this process.

On the one hand, it explains how in cyberspace it is possible to overcome many of the constraints of face-to-face communication: first of all, the importance that physical appearance has in the choice/selection of the partner and in being noticed (which is a disadvantage for the non-beautifid); secondly, the time which is usually needed to reach intimacy. Because of the reduced cues, it is possible to be attracted byiattract more many people than in face-to-face, independently from physical appearance and it is possible to dare more with less fear of “losing face”. At the same time, it is possible, as literature on online support groups [60, 613 shows very clearly, to reach very high levels of empathy and intimacy in shorter time as compared to face-to-face. On the other hand, the concept of miscommunication accounts for the existence of specific risks/limits in online attraction: the first one is represented by the risk of making illusions grow to far; although the cues which are given are only few. and anyway less that in face-to-face, this leads to make great use of fantasy and idealization to draw a complete picture of the virtual partner [34]. Theorists generally agree that “romantic love is inexorably tied up with fantasy” [ 15, p.153.J. As Waller and Hill [62] put it “Zdealizafionis an essential element in romantic love” (p.120). How better to idealize than through CMC. where one is left to paint his or her own mental picture of someone? Obviously, this can be risky when deciding to be faced to reality. This remark explains also some results from literature [6], reporting that many people do prefer to “stay online” and never “go back to earth”. Meeting offline means reducing the space for idealization and illusion. and can sometimes be disappointing, when expectancies don’t meet reality. This leads us to a second limit of cyber-seduction. which consists of the impossibility. online, to compare what the partner says with what we see or with information got from other people/elsewhere: the only source is what the partner says. There is thus much room * self-presentation; this brings to for deception. or at least distortion and sa! not to s u ~ in specific problems for the development of trust. It would seem that. coherently with the vision forwarded in this book. miscommunication, in its dark and bright side. is part of our everyday communication experience, online or off. It is simply a matter of managing opportunities and risks of this intrinsic feature of human communication. In trylng to understand the interpretation and perception of the affordances and limits for such a particular communication as CMC, we also looked up at Situated Action Theory. According to this reflection, these opportunities and limits are not strictly and deterministically given, but are the result of a process of perception and interpretation by the people engaged in the interaction (who must possess new and specific skills). They finally are also the result of the process of negotiation of a shared meaning for the context and the interaction, and of reciprocal, continuous interpretation of the partners’ intentions. Also. it emerges how there is an interdependent. circular relationship between interaction and context (and thus the interpretation of the situation: there is always space for a redefinition of the situation and of the framework of opportunities and limits of the media). For example. this should adapt to different people and different steps in the relationship. Probably, the factors of competence and previous experience are likely to impact heavily on our CMC interactions and relationships. Since the use of CMC (to meet people. discuss topics of interest, etc.) will become more and more familiar in the future. a medium among the others, it is likely that this will allow people to balance more objectively its opportunities and limits. Through growing use and experience, they also could acquire new specific skills and become able to perceive and manage more effectively the communication resources available within that communication environment. Laurel N. Hellerstein [63 J found that

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heavy users of e-mail and electronic conferencing, in a university setting, were more likely to use the computer to “initiate new friendships, make new friends, and communicate with others,” whereas light users tended to do build relationships in other ways. She also saw that many of these relationships formed and started online then grew off online (friends or romance). This seems to be an interesting finding indeed, because it could support the idea (still to be tested) that, apart from pathological use, increased use in CMC leads to acquisition of specific skills in the management of online relationships and in their integration into their everyday life. Although current research focused on the use of CMC to meet new people (and possible development offline), a very interesting field of study is represented by the uses of CMC in different contexts than getting in touch with “strangers”. In fact, e-mail, chats, etc., are more and more used also to support the development of relationships born offline (occasional acquaintances), or to stay in touch with people with whom there already exists an intimate relationship. As we can see from these remarks, there are no strict and fixed boundaries between online and offline communication. Future research should be aimed at trying to understand and detect how interaction develops according to the repertoires and possibilities allowed by different media and communication environments, as well as at identifylng critical dimensions of the interactants which can account for a different perception and exploitation of these affordances. Also, we should define measures of communicative effectiveness in relationship with the achievement of relational goals in online relationships. Further studies should be carried out, that investigate these processes in different environments, from face-to-face to different forms of CMC, in order to explore more into depth the role and the complex interaction of the variables pointed out in this chapter. This approach would allow for the continuity of study of communication in different interfaces, in order on the one hand to see how insights and categories from traditional literature can be applied to online behavior, and on the other hand to use the findings from studies of cybercommunication to refine our theoretical models.

10.6 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Fondazione “Piero, Pietro e Giovanni Ferrero” (Alba, Italy) for the support given to the present study. It was also supported by the Commission of the European Communities (CEC), in particular by the IST programme (Project VEPSY UPDATED, IST-2000-25323 http://www.psicologia.net; http://www.vepsy.com ). I thank Professor Luigi Anolli for his contribution and support, as well as for his useful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. I also thank Giuseppe Riva for discussions on issues related to this chapter and Valentino Zurloni for his help in formatting and editing it.

10.7 References [ 11

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[3]

[4]

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M. Strangelove, The Internet, electric gaia and the rise of the uncensored self, Computer-Mediared Communication Mugurine 1 ( 1994) online: http://sunsite.unc.edu/cmc/mag/1994/sep/self.html. A. Baker, Two by two in cyberspace: Getting together and connecing online. Cvherpsychology. & Behavior 3 (2000) 237-242. [71 M. R. Parks and K. Floyd. Making friends in cyberspace., Journal of’ Compurer-Mediated Communication 1 ( 1996) online: http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/voI 1/issue4/voll no4.html. B. G. Chenault, Developing personal and emotional relationships via computer-mediated communication, CMC Magazine 5 ( 1998) on-line: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/ 1998/may/chenault.htmI. & Behavior 3 (2000) 565[91 D. Levine, Virtual Attraction: What Rocks Your Boat. C\*herps?rholo~~ 573. S. S. Brehm, Intimate relationships. New york: McGraw-Hill Press. 1992. M. J. Culnan and M. L. Markus. Information technologies. in Handbook qf’ organizational communication: A n interdisciplinary perspective. F. M. Jablin. L. L. Pumam. K. H. Roberts. and L. W. Porter, Eds. Newbury Park. CA: Sage, 1987. R. L. Daft and R. H. Lengel, Organizational information requirements. media richness and structural design, Management Science 32 ( 1986) 554-57 1 . R. E. Rice, Media appropriateness. Using social presence theory to compare traditional and new organizational media. Human Communicarion Research 19 ( 1993) 45 1484. 1141 K. Grammer, The Courtship Dance: Patterns of Nonverbal Synchronization in Opposite-sex Encounters, Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 14 (1999) 253-267. E. Berscheid and E. Hatfield, Interpersonal attraction. 2nd ed. New York: Random House. 1978. K. Dindia. The Intrapersonal-InterpersonalDialectical Process of Self-Disclosure. in Lhwamic. of Relationships, S. Duck, Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 1994. S. Duck. Steady as (s)he goes: Relational maintenance as a shares meaning system. in Communication and relational maintenance, D. J. Canary and L. Stafford, Eds. New York: Academic Press. 1994. G. Mantovani, Yew* communication environments: from e\.er?da?s to \ir[uul. London: Taylor & Francis, 1996. ~ 9 1L. Suchman, Plans and situated action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1987. [20] L. Anolli and R. Ciceri, I1 gioco delle intenzioni nell’atto molare. in Elemertti di psicologia della comunicazione. L. Anolli and R. Ciceri, Eds. Milan: LED. 1995. J. L. Austin, How to do things with word.s.Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. H. P. Grice. Meaning, in Semantics: A n interdi.wiplinar3. wuder. D. D. Steinberg and L. A . Jakobovits, Eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 197 1 . pp. 53-59, D. Sperber and D. Wilson. Mutual knowledge and relevance in theories of comprehension. in Miitira/ knowledge. N. Smith. Ed. London: Academic Press. 1982. pp. 6 1-87. L. Garton. C . Haythornthwaite. and B. Wellman. Studying On-Line Social Networks. in Doing Internet Research: Critical I.ssiies and .Wethod.y for E.ramining the .Vet. S . Jones. Ed. Thousand Oaks. CA: Sage, 1999. J. Preece, Online Communities. Designing Lhnhiliti.. Supportitig Sociahilit\*. Chirchester: John IViIey & Sons. Ltd., 2000. J. Short, E. Williams. and B. Christie. The social ps?.cholofl. o/‘ telecommioticatioiis. London: John Wiley & Sons. 1976. R. E. Rice, Computer-mediated communication and organizational innovations. ./ournu/ of Communica~ion37 ( 1987) 85- 108. J. B. Walther, Impression development in computer-mediated interaction. ISe.rtern ./ournu/ of Commimieations 57 i1993) 38 1-398. S. R. Hiltz, K. Johnson, and M. Turoff. Experiments in group decision making: Communication processes and otucome in face-to-face versus computerized conferencing. Hriman C~~nrmunictrriott Research 13 (1986) 2 2 5 - 2 5 2 . L. Sproull and S. Kiesler, Reducing social context cues: Electronic mail in organizational communication, Management Science 32 i1986) 1492-1 5 12. J. B. Walther, Anticipated ongoing interaction versus channel effects on relational communication in computer-mediated interaction. Human Communication Research 20 ( 1994) 473-501 . C . Goodwin and J. Heritage. Conversation analvsis. .4nniral Rei.ie\c. o/’..liit/irr.,pol~~~~, 19 ( 1990) 283307. S. E. Brennan. Conversation with and through computers, C ‘ser .Wodelling crnd C .rer-.Jdapted Interaction 1 ( 199 1 ) 67-86, M. Lea and R. Spears, Love at first byte? Building personal relationships oser computer neworks. in I -nthv.ytirrficw’ rt~hriorvhips.Off tho hcarrvr t m c k. 1. T \I’ood and S Duck. Eds. Xcwbur! Park. (‘:I:

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Ambiguous Self-Identification and Sincere Communication in CMC Edward A. MABRY

Abstract. While sincerity is a necessary taken-for-granted element of face-toface communication, its status in CMC is more likely to be a ponderable (or arguable). In fact, the anonymity of CMC, facilitating and facilitated by concealment in self-presentation, allows distortions to be made through omission of information as well as through selective presentation. To understand the characteristics of this process, we analyzed the message contents of men and women participating in asynchronous online discussion. Recent research indicated men and women differed in their fidelity of message concealment. Level of concealment did not significantly predict expected relationships between identity and attributes of online message style. Findings regarding concealment and message style led to a consideration of communicator status and gender identity needs. A new message style variable, openness, was also examined. Research findings indicated that gender identity and communicator status were strongly related to message openness.

Contents 11.1

11.5 11.6

Self-presentation, gender identity and concealment in CMC ................................................................. Gender identity and concealment: new research. .............. Gender, status, and concealment in CMC.. ..................... Gender identity and status implications for communicator openness ............................................................. Conclusions.. ....................................................... Acknowledgments. .................................................

11.7

References.. .........................................................

11.2 11.3 11.4

248 252 259 262 262 263 263

11.1

Self-presentation, gender identity and concealment in CMC

Sincerity is an inextricable part of social interaction. According to GotTman [ I , 23. sincerity frames the assumption of trust underlying self-presentation. The assumption that we are as we appear provides a rationale for not questioning the motives of another person's social behavior. Only when someone's behavior appears to violate social norms or is erratic do we question its sincerity. There are times when individuals feel compelled to be less than forthcoming in their self-presentations. These instances comprise situationally induced episodes of miscommunication. Breaches of sincerity are less problematic in faceto-face (F2F) communication. Interactants have the advantage of observing a wide range of kinesic and vocalic cues in order to assess the congruency and consistency of communication. Sincerity can be seen as having two potentially contradictory ends: sincerity of selfexpression and sincerity of self-presentation. When a person strictly attends to their own identity imperatives, they ostensibly function honestly in their constructive representation of self-attention. The extent to which a person can be sincere depends up the extent to which the person is capable of self-expression without constraint. A person is far freer to perform impulsive acts when there are no consequences linked to the performance of such acts. Such freedom to act is reduced by the revelation of identity. For example, once the identity of a philanthropist is revealed the person may receive unwanted requests for other charitable donations. On the other hand, when individuals present themselves to others, they increase the likelihood that their actions will have consequences in the form of shaping others' opinions of them. Furthermore, the more honest a person is in their self-presentation, the more they are likely to believe the consequences of an action are not merely a possibility but a prohahilip. Thus, revealing one's identity compels the individual to frame their actions in such a way as to minimize the likelihood of creating negatively valenced perceptions of that identity (or its prior concealment). If, for instance, the hypothetical philanthropist referred to above does not conceal their identity, but makes contributions to, say, only one. or one type, of charity, they risk being publicly criticized for having a "pet cause" and not a truly charitable nature. 11. f .I Inferring sincerih*in F2F cwnmunication

In F2F communication, sincerity (in general) is inferred from observations of possessions and social interactions. According to Belk [3]. we are the sum of our possessions; our identity is inferred from the presentation of our possessions. We make determinations about a person's sincerity through information derived from our observations of the match between revealed identity and behavior [I]. We question poorly concealed or explained inconsistencies between identities and behaviors. A person's sincerity is inferred from two dimensions of self-presentation: congruency and consistency. Congruency refers to the parallelism between how a person verbally symbolizes a relationship and how they actually conduct the relationship [ 11. Sincerity also depends on consistency, or the extent to which a person's self-presentation is consistent with their representative behavior. Sincerity can thus be seen as honesty in selfpresentation and relational intent that endures relational longevity and the accumulated knowledge of others. Honesty in self-presentation is most easily inferred from assessing the match between what people say about themselves and what can be visually observed about them. In a FZF meeting. L4.e can determine much about a person from a myriad of unobtrusive measures

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like artifacts, gestures, and mannerisms. These observations give us personal information that makes inconsistencies difficult to conceal or explain [3]. Information gleaned from visible behavior assists us in making perceptual attributions that either confirm or disconfirm the apparent truth-value of a person's self-presentation. Summarizing to this point, sincerity in F2F interaction is inferred from consistent honesty and openness about one's self. Whereas, duplicity uses sincerity as a front for egodefensive or nefarious ends advanced by concealment or self-conscious interaction management. Yet, how is real sincerity discerned from contrived sincerity? This question is difficult enough to ask in terms of F2F communication. With the growing popularity of computer-mediated communication (CMC), the question becomes even more important to ask and most difficult to answer. 11.1.2 Sincerity and anonymity in CMC

Although the term CMC refers to a variety of communication channels that are electronically mediated, this assessment focuses on text-based asynchronous electronic mail [email]. The fact that email typically is uncensored and unregulated makes it an ideal channel for managing self-presentation. On the other hand, email also fosters intimate and supportive interpersonal relationships (Bechar-Israeli [4]) in which the disclosure of identity is purely optional. While sincerity is a necessary taken-for-granted element of F2F communication, its status in CMC is more likely to be a ponderable (or arguable). Many computer-mediated contexts are predicated on anonymity. Spears and Lea [5, 61 propose that the identifiability of one's self-presentations directly influences the ways in which the individual engages in online communication. As discussed in Chapter 9, their social identity and deindividuation (SIDE) model argues that anonymity facilitates deindividuation . Postmes and Spears [7] explain the mechanism for deindividuation as the capacity to act with relatively low risk of identity threat. Reduced threats to one's identity also lowers an individual's need to engage in self-monitoring. A decline in self-monitoring increases the likelihood of disinhibition as a group member whenever disinhibited behavior is supported by group norms. Feeling like one is part of the group frees an individual from mindful identity management in deference to one's group identity and the group's collective identity. Postmes, Spears, and Lea [8, 91 have shown the amount of identity protection afforded by communication channels dictates whether an individual's communication is more strongly affected by identity needs or group norms. However, the SIDE model assumes that online communicators are completely in control of personally revealing online information or fully skilled at self-concealment. Not even F2F interactants are capable of maintaining their social masks all of the time. This leads to the question that grounds the present research: What tools exist for assessing sincere selfpresentations in computer-mediated communication? Vicissitudes of CMC technology can sometimes accommodate interactants' desires for anonymity by allowing users to override email system default settings that includes personalizing information in email message headers. Yet, users of this concealment feature put their anonymity at risk if they choose to be too open in their self-presentations. Anonymity comes with a cost. One's self-presentation is constrained by the self being presented [6]. Behavior inconsistent with the presented self is suspicious. Honesty in relational intent is also inferred through self-presentation. Walther's [ lo] summary of the relevant research notes that an actor's anticipation of subsequent interaction increases the amount of personal information they exchange. Anticipated future social contact causes actors to present themselves in ways that produce positive

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E.A. Mahn. i ..imhiguous Self-Identlficntion

attributions and heightened desires for future affiliation. Regardless of the observability of a person’s forthrightness, some people are duplicitous and intentionally misrepresent themselves. Intentionally successful miscommunication. duplicity, depends on a person being able to make sacrifices for the duplicitous end, keep secrets, and attempt to present a flawless finished product [I]. Success requires that the machinations of duplicity be kept concealed. Presumably, a person that is not honest in his or her self-presentation will not be relaxed or comfortable and will appear nervous from engaging in highly absorbing self-monitoring (Walther and Burgoon [ 1 11). Yet, Goffinan [ 11 warns that the closer an impostor’s performance approximates the real thing, the more intensely others may be threatened. A convincing impostor weakens moral connections between the presumed legitimacy of authorization to play a part and the capacity to play it. Computer-mediated communication is not the only channel in which people use the ability to remain anonymous as a way to conceal themselves. But, standard features in CMC make concealment easier than in other channels. Nonverbal and relational cues are substantially absent in CMC. Cues of social presence, the senses of inclusion that actors are jointly involved in communicative interaction (such as facial expression, direction of looking, posture, dress and non-verbal, vocal cues) are often missing or difficult to emulate in CMC. Social context framing cues in communication settings, and the social status of communication partners, are likewise often difficult to establish (Mabry [ 121). Culnan and Markus [I31 have referred to this removal of information as the ‘*cues filtered out” perspective. As presented in Chapter 9, the Cues Filtered Out perspective provides insight into how interactants distort messages they receive as well as messages they send. These distortions typically involve attributions about the information value of meanings that can or cannot be conveyed on particular channels. Lea and Spears [6] note that participants with too few cues invest the cues filtered-in that are available for interpretation with inflated value leading them to have distorted impressions of their online partners. Similarly, Walther [ 141 asserts that reduced communication cues in asynchronous communication facilitates selective self-presentation. Therefore, miscommunication involving what ultimately results in insincere selfpresentations may not always be mindful because it emanates from misperceptions associated with message cue filtering. I 1.I .3 Anonj~rnih~ and concealment in CMC

The three themes emerging fiom the cues filtered out perspective. anonymity, concealment and distortion of self and other, call into question how honesty in self-presentation can be trusted in CMC. The anonymity of CMC. facilitating and facilitated by concealment in self-presentation, allows distortions to be made through omission of information as well as through selective presentation. One of the main questions surrounding the selectivity of presentation is who distorts, in what way, to what extent, and for what outcome? In order to be truly concealed. one must be invisible to others. Invisibility can only be achieved if one does not participate. As soon as a person interacts, his or her presence is publicly accessible to others even when their identity is shielded through anonymity (O’Sullivan [ 151, Scott [ 161). Thus. interactants cannot be either revealed or concealed because the role they assume is more complex and not fully under their control [ 161. Instead, people reveal themselves to a greater or lessor extent through their participation. Sincerity, genuineness in self-presentation. or concealment and distortion are discernible through the analysis of their message hehatvior (Buller, et. al. [ 171, Reicher and LeLine [ 181). Mam [19] i k w s anonymity. and thereby revelation and concealment. as

E.A. Mabry /Ambiguous SeEf-Identification

25 1

scaleable. A nominal range appears to span from how implicitly or explicitly an individual’s styles of communication function to reveal or conceal their identity in the context of how their self-presentation is framed [ 161. However, there does not appear to be a uniform approach for advancing a precise metric. In fact, Buller, et. al. [17], studying F2F interaction, failed to find a general pattern of deceptive interaction. Instead, they found that the specific type of deception enacted (i.e., falsification, concealment, equivocation) produced relatively different patterns of deceptive interaction. Of central concern to CMC users is how to distinguish between people strategically concealing their identities and those revealing their true identities [ 11. Effective concealment depends on observers not being able to tell the difference. Yet, participants forming intimate relationships with others apparently feel adequately informed about them using no other means than textual messages. Interactants in CMC do, however, have one clue that may give them insights into a person’s self-presentations and relational intent: level of formality. Goffman [2] asserts that social rituals, like greeting rituals, become abbreviated, and informal, when probability and frequency of social contact are high. A person’s self-image can be served by the formality of their self-presentation. An informal presentation appears learned and credible, and focused on the task, rather than the social, aspects of the interaction. Formality and informality seem to parallel the gender descriptors of “agency” and “communality,” thus suggesting that formality may be gendered [21]. The idea that clues allow inferences to be made about a person in terms of selfpresentation and relational intent forms the basis for another theoretical perspective regarding the determination of honesty in self-presentation. Walther [20] proposed that CMC often supplemented the communication channels of people who see each other regularly. CMC merely provides an efficient means of sending messages without the delays of unanswered or returned phone calls or visiting empty offices. Thus, cues filtered out research effects have been limited to initial interactions among strangers. Walther [14] offered an alternative theory stating that relationships in CMC develop despite the lack of social cues, because time and rate of message exchange attenuate the effects of missing information. The alternative he proposed is Social Information Processing theory. In the Social Information Processing perspective, lack of social information changes the pacing of relational development by forcing interactants to adapt their remaining communicative cues, language and textual display, to the processes of relational management. As a result, relational communication changes from impersonal to more personal levels as relational developed forms in CMC. According to Spears and Lea [51, relational development follows a pattern of relational motivation. Exchanging messages leads to impressions derived from decoding text from which psychological knowledge is inferred. In turn, this leads to the management of relational changes and the encoding of relational messages. Social Information Processing theory assumes that interactants rely on disclosed information to determine honesty. Once information is obtained, then, according to Walther [20] strategic probes are used to test the relationship. Over time, however, with many exchanges, relational development should converge with F2F relationship development. The assumption is that, over time, inconsistencies of text and selfpresentation will become evident through self-disclosure and relational knowledge. The cues filtered out perspective questions the viability of inferring believability from a message that is purely text-based. Social information processing claims that, over time and self-disclosure, a high level of relational knowledge can occur. These conflicting views provide a strong argument for investigating the effect of computer-mediated communication on honesty in self-presentation and the communication of relational intent.

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I 1.I . 4 Assessing gender, anon-vmi?,.and concealment in CMC messages Neither cues filtered out nor social information processing perspectives address the production of congruity or consistency despite the centrality of these ideas to the notion of honesty. For the purpose of this project, congruity is the match between the level of relational involvement, topical involvement, or level of formality observed in a message. Consistency is the extent to which self-presentation is consistent with gender-revealing identity information. A primary assumption advanced in this project is that attempted concealment, specifically as it relates to gender identity, can be successfully extrapolated from an actor's communicative performances in online contexts. The constituents of sincere messages are the actor's congruity and consistency of language use serving to disambiguate gender. This can take place either through self-referential identification or message constructions indicative of communicator style attributes like relational involvement, topical involvement, and formality of expression. Spears and Lea [6] suggest that gender may be one subject on which people engaged in CMC are more likely to be evasive in their self-presentations. As an ego-defensive maneuver, how this evasiveness is manifested may be gendered with women being more likely to conceal their gender identity and men more likely to "gender bend" or present themselves as women. Based on this assumption. women or men who reveal too much risk exposing themselves. A person is free to explore the possibilities of the CMC environment only to the extent that he or she is able to j7awlessfv enact the persona he or she has adopted. A flawless performance disallows openness [ 11. Women, according to Spears and Lea [ 5 , 61, conceal their gender to prevent harassment in a largely male-dominated social environment and men experiment with alternative sexual identities for personal gratification. They contend that women are more selfprotective in situations like online discussions where they perceive greater risks fiom being attacked as gender role-incumbents unless group norms mitigate those risks. This reticence leads women to be less forthcoming in their self-attribution of gender and apply greater effort at managing their self-presentations. Thus, it is reasonable to expect that: men and Ii*omen in online discussion groups will difer significantlv in their manner of selfidentzfiing gender. Consistent with the above reasoning, we also would expect that the style of messages men and women contribute in online interaction will be related to the apparent clarity they wish to portray in their appropriation of gender. If the foregoing assumption is correct: levels of relational involvement, topical involvement. and-formalityshould dlffer according to whether and/or howl men and women provide identih?cues in their online messages.

11.2

Gender identity and concealment: new research

The assumptions regarding gender and identity management discussed above were tested in a study analyzing attributes of messages sent to online groups. Data in this study was obtained as part of an international, computer-mediated collaborative research project. The principle goal of the project was to facilitate the investigation of CMC by examining messages contributed to computer-mediated bulletin boards and discussion groups accessible on the Internet. Over a period of months, research objectives and methodological practices were chosen, then a trained group of researchers analyzed samples of messages obtained from electronic discussion groups. A complete explanation of the project is contained in Rafaeli. Sudweeks. Konstan. and Mabr?,1221.

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I I .2.I Research data A complete discussion of sampling is available in Rafaeli, et. al. [22] and will be abbreviated here. Various computer bulletin boards, lists, and news-groups were canvassed for a period of approximately one-month. Messages were randomly sampled across days and times. Only lists in English were retained for the message pool. An N = 3000 messages, from 30 different online discussion groups, comprises the database. A standardized, message content analysis coding protocol was collaboratively developed by a subgroup of the research team [22]. The content analysis measured 46 message variables; 40 variables were hand-coded and six were machine coded. The coding protocol required trained coders to read the literal text of a message and apply all applicable code to each message. A message was evaluated on whether it contained content descriptive of facts, opinions, humor, challenges, meta-communications, presence of graphic art, formality of composition, quoted material, emotional tone (or flames), sender characteristics (e.g., gender, status), and stylistic various factors (e.g., appropriate subject line attribution, presence of personalized signature lines). A subset of the project's message variables were used in this study are listed in Table 11.1. Over 40 researchers participated as coders. Coders were provided online training, proficiency tests, and expert guidance. Training involved coding a set of sample messages chosen to cover the range of code variables. Coders rated the messages and returned their results via electronic mail. Low concordance on the training sample of messages led to additional coaching and more training messages being sent for test coding. High agreement with preferred responses to training messages qualified a person as coder for the purpose of receiving messages to be analyzed in the main study. Coders were electronically sent sets of 100 messages. In addition to the set of messages, coders were supplied with various reporting style formats for submitting their work, and a post-task questionnaire requesting impressions of the list coded and information about coding and reporting practices. Completed sets of formatted codes were returned via electronic file transfer to a host computer system. Work was automatically screened using custom software to debug technical errors (e.g., off line formats, typographical errors); rejected codes were returned to the coder for correction. Given the methodological approach taken in the project, coding reliability proved to be a complex task. Two conventional methods for assessing reliability were used: Brennan and Prediger's [23] modification to Cohen's kappa, qn), coefficient, and Cronbach's [24] Alpha coefficient, &a). The kappa coefficient permits an assessment of inter-rater reliability under conditions where marginal values of an n x n coding matrix are free to vary. Kappa was computed for nominal and ordinal variables. Alpha was computed for scaleable variables.

Table 11.1. Study 1 : Variables

item

Range

Operational Description

Retiabilie

Measurement Variables

Relational Involvement Argumentativeness Promoting Cohesiveness

Scaled: Friendly to hostility Scaled: Strong AgreemenrsStrong Disagreement

R,, u

=

1-6 1-5

.58 67

u

=

75

Topical Involvement Opinion Referencing Messages Connecting Prior Message Lines Quoted

1-3 1-4 1-9 1-4

No: peripheral: central to message

(1

=

54

None; 1: 2-: sequential string No: yes None: 1 - 10: 1 1-2s;26-

K

=

60

K

-

76

K

=

xx

K

7

.x7

K

=.so

Formality Emoticons Emodevices Articons

R,,

53

R,,

1-3 1-3

1-3

.52

Smiley faces. winks. etc.: None: 1 : 1CAPS, !!!!. etc..: None; I : -7Keyboard graphics: None: 1 : -7-

h' = 97

1 = Female; 2 = Male

K

I = Not; 2 = name/signature; 3 = stated: 3 = indirectly implied: 5 = 2. 3. and/or 4

K

Research Design Variables

Gender Gender Identification

1-9 1-5

T

.'6

.66

A sample of 1,000 messages, 100 messages cross-coded from 10 discussion groups/lists, constituted the data for reliability analyses. Because coders were not fixed across lists, reliability calculations were performed on a list-wise basis (for each 100 crosscoded message sample) and averaged. Some difficulties were encountered as both list-wise and variable-specific results yielded substantial variability and, for some variables, moderate to low reliability values. List-wise coefficients could not be computed for some variables due to attenuated variances caused by high percentages (exceeding 95%) of intercoder agreement. Reliability results were within acceptable ranges. Table 1 1.1 contains reliability results for Study 1 message variables contributed from two separate studies that have used the project's database (Mabry [ 2 S ] . Karge, et. al. [26]) plus additional analyses conducted for this study.

I 1.2.2 Memiires of gender. conc*ealrnent.and C.WCv?wssagt~.s

Two types of analysis variables are used for Study 1 analyses: research design variables and measurement variables. These variable types are identified in Table 1 1 . 1 . Variables used in the research design were: gender of the message author. and the mode of gender identification of the message author (if present). Measurement variables were constructed from Relational Involvement. Topical Involvement. and Formality. Constructing summated measures did lead to a loss of data due to uneven patterns of unreconciliable or missing data. Gender. Both research design variables for this study are related to gender: apparent gender and the mode of its expression in a message. The latter is important because it involves how forthcoming communicators were in their disclosure of gender. This variable notes whether and/or by what methods online interacts re\.ealed their gender. The coding

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protocol differentiated names and/or formatted signatures, direct references to the individual’s gender in the message text (e.g., “I am a woman.. ..”), indirect references to the individual’s gender in the message text (e.g., “Us men ought to stick together....”), the presence of two or more types of attributions (mixed modes of gender identification), or the absence of any identification of gender in the message body or headerdfooters. Relational Involvement. This variable was designed to measure the relational tone of a message expressed through the presence (or absence) of interpersonally sensitive language or language that promotes group solidarity: argumentativeness and messages promoting cohesiveness. The items were reflected and summed to calculate a profile variable measuring each message’s relational involvement. The summated variable produced a scale range with higher scores indicating the actor’s greater value for pro-social behaviors. Topical Involvement. Both adherence to, and amount of expression about, a message’s central them was used in constructing a measure of topical involvement. Message content variables used in constructing this index included: opinionation, presence and length of matter quoted from prior messages in the group, extent of prior message referencing, and references to continuities observed in preceding message strings. The relative presence of these variables indicates attempts not only to stay on topic but also increase credibility with other members of the group. These items were reflected and summed to form a profile measure of topical involvement. A high score corresponded to a high level of topical involvement. Formality. This variable measures the level of formality (or informality) present in the message and relied on the presence (or absence) of graphical expressions of emotion denoting departures from conventional message composition styles. Content variables used in constructing this item included: presence of emoticons (e.g., “smiley” faces), emodevices (irregular use of punctuation or capitalization for emphasis), and articons (artistic or illustrative use of symbols). Items were reflected and summed to compose a measure of the relative amount of formality or informality present in each message. This measure was directionally scaled so higher scores reflected less formality. 11.2.3 Research findings on gender and concealment

In order to facilitate a precise assessment of the assumptions this research addressed, data analysis was subdivided into tests of specific hypotheses regarding the potential effects of gender and identity management on message style. To confirm the independence of the summated message style items for separate analyses, Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient was calculated for the relational involvement, topical involvement and formality scales. The Alpha coefficient indicated the three scales were significantly independent (R, = -.O 1) of each other and could be analyzed separately. The first hypothesis contends that women would perceive online discussions as holding greater risks for them as interactants, compared to men, and lead them to engage in less disambiguated, sincere, self-presentations through their self-attribution of gender. Preliminary analyses of the N = 3,000 messages indicated that messages produced by men outnumbered women’s message output by a five to one ratio (Men = 2,162, Women = 427). Thus, men were clearly dominant on-line interactants in the discussion groups sampled. The contingency table comparison for men and women according to their manner of self-identification produced a significant Chi-square value ( ~ ~ ( =4 1) 19.77, p < .0001). Approximately the same percentage of messages from men and women contained no embedded gender attributions (Women [W] = 9.8% versus Men [MI = 9.4%). Women

756

E .4 .Mahn, /.4mhrguoiis Self-Identification

were less likely to explicitly provide their names compared to men (W = 74.5% versus M = 87.5%). And, women were four times more likely to enact indirect references to their gender (W = 6.8% versus M = 1.6%). Yet, women were also considerably more likely to use either direct gender references (W = 4.0% versus M = .05%) or produce messages containing more than one form of gender reference (W = 4.9% versus M = 1 .Ooh).These findings are consistent with basic thrust of the hypothesis. Consistent with the forgoing results, we would expect the styles of message enactments by men and women to vary according to the state of apparent clarity in their appropriation of gender. That is the underlyng argument advanced in three remaining hypotheses on the presence of relational involvement, topical involvement, and message formality. However, results for the test of hypothesis one clearly suggest that the statistical interaction of gender and mode of gender identification is the proper model for testing the remaining hypotheses. Therefore, the data for the hypotheses were analyzed in a 2 (Gender) x 5 (Mode of Identification) univariate analysis of variance [ANOVA] with relational involvement, topical involvement, and formality as dependent variables [27]. Hypothesis two proposes that the amount of relational involvement in the messages of men and women would be significantly related to the clarity of their gender appropriation. The results are inconclusive. The ANOVA interaction effect was not significant ( F (4. 1,203) = 1.62, p < .15). This indicates that any differences in the identity management of men and women in online groups did not affect the stylistic content of their messages. Yet, it is possible that the styles of online messages varied between men and women and mode of identity management without interacting. The main effect for gender also was not significant (F ( 1. 1,203) = 2.57, p > .lo). Means for this analysis are contained in Table 11.2. However, the main effect of mode of identification was significant (F (4, 1,203) = 5.65. p < -0001. o’= .15). Table 1 1.3 contains the means for this analysis. Multiple comparisons between means indicated that the relational involvement mean for mixed, or multiple, forms of gender appropriations (M = 4.07) was significantly lower than those for all other identification modes. This indicates that message senders were more likely to be confrontational when gender identity was not concealed or not consistently concealed throughout a message. Table 11.2. Means for Men and Women on Message Variables

Message Variables

Men

Women

Relational Involvement Topical Involvement Formality

4.92 I .76

4.70 1.78 1.36

1.15

The third hypothesis asserts that the amount of topical involvement in the messages of men and women would be significantly related to the clarity of their gender appropriation. The ANOVA interaction effect for topical involvement was not significant (F (4, 1.203) = 1.10, p < .40). Therefore, the underlying hypothesis could not be supported by the data. The main effect for gender also was not significant (F ( 1 , 1,203) = .33, p < .60). The main effect for mode of identification was significant (F (4. 1,203) = 6.23. p < .0001, (0’ = .14). Table 11.3 contains the means for this analysis. Multiple comparisons indicated that the topical involvement means fur direct appropriations (M = 2.03) and mixed modes of identification (M = 1.98) were significantly different from those of other identification

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257

modes. However, the results make it impossible to support this hypothesis. Table 11.3. Means for Modality of Gender Identification on Message Variables

Message Variables

None

Relational Involvement Topical Involvement Formality

4.67 1.74 1.25

Gender Identification Name Direct Indirect Mixed 4.95 1.75 1.14

4.52 2.03 1.96

4.50 1.88 1.51

4.07 1.98 1.68

Note. None = no explicit gender reference; Name = a name attributed to a gender included with message; Indirect = reference to one's own gender only by comparison or implication; Direct = explicitly stating one's gender; Mixed = a combination of two or more modes (except None).

The final hypothesis argues that the amount of formality of expression in the messages of men and women will be significantly related to the clarity of their gender appropriation. The ANOVA interaction effect for message formality also was not significant (F (4, 1,203) = 1.75, p < .15). Again, there was no significant difference in the way men and women engaged in identity management that affected the formality of messages they expressed in online groups. The main effect for gender was significant (F (1, 1,203) = 23.68 p < 0001, a2= .23). Means for this analysis are in Table 11.2. A comparison of the means showed that men were significantly more formal in their message enactments than women. The main effect of mode of identification also was significant (F (4, 1,203) = 53.45, p < .001, o2 = .42). Table 11.3 contains the means for this analysis. Multiple comparisons indicated that message formality means for messages with no gender identification (M = 1.25) or identification only through a name (M = 1.14) were significantly lower, indicating greater formality, than other forms of gender identification. And, the mean for indirect appropriations was significantly different from all other means. Therefore, once again, while there were substantial differences on formality scores related to mode of gender identification, gender and mode of identification did not statistically interact and the research hypothesis could not be supported.

I I .2.4 Gender, identity management, and concealment: research implications The results of analyses of mode of gender and mode of gender identification and message variables were inconclusive. Men and women participating in online discussion groups tend to use different forms of self-referential message constructions. Therefore, the overall amount of and potential for miscommunication caused by identity management was not substantially isolated to one gender. Also, it would not be accurate to conclude that only men used more disambiguating strategies. Women's use of gender-revealing self-referential messages showed a more complex trend. First, the majority of messages from women paralleled the content patterns observed for men. Second, women were more likely to create messages including either direct references to their sex or containing mixtures of references with varying types of self-identification. Women also were four times more likely than men to use indirect selfreferences to their gender in the messages they sent to online groups. The three hypotheses specifically asserting relationships between gender, self-

identification, and language variables measuring relational involvement, topical involvement, and message formality were not supported. It would be tempting to attribute these results to factors like the attenuated range of the summated scales (based on items with only two or three categories). However, this explanation would be inconsistent with the significant ANOVA main effect results obtained using these variables. The research design variables of gender and mode of identification of the interactant were robust. They produced significant ANOVA main effects for all of the message style variables. These results provide strong, though not unequivocal, support for the presumptive rationale underlyng the hypotheses. Results for comparisons between men and women's use of relational involvement language were not in the direction expected. If women in on-line groups are disposed to be more guarded with their presence. they would be expected to have lower relational involvement scores than men. The results did not confirm that expectation. Women's scores were significantly higher than men's scores. Results for the topical involvement and formality seemed consistent with the basic assumptions underlying the strategic self-presentation hypothesis suggested by Spears and Lea [ S , 61. Women were significantly less likely to be as involved in the topicality of online discussions. They were also less likely to use formal language in their messages. However, there is evidence from F2F research that deception and informality are positively related [ 171. These outcomes seem consistent with the expectation that, in order to enact a more viable means of self-protection online, women will appear more detached in the presence they project through their messages. Yet, this distance may be tempered by a less formal style of self-presentation. This finding is also consistent with the assumption that as women perceive less risk in a group setting they may become less concerned with identity management thereby reducing their social distance as members by using less formal messages. In general, the results of the data analyses appear to bear out these implications. Looking broadly at the overall pattern of results. we have some reason to be optimistic that, even with failures in the potency of certain statistical tests. the underlying rationale motivating this project has been reinforced by these findings. There is some evidence to suggest that both men and women approach on-line discussions as though sincerity was not overly problematic. This suggests that online messages are influenced by a sort of normative halo-effect regarding taken-for-granted assumptions of genuineness accorded F2F interaction. Second, and just as important, we also have demonstrated that the exportability of assumptions about managing identity that govern F2F contexts are open to manipulation in online contexts (albeit for unarguably good reasons). The self-referential nature of communication can present a Janus-faced dilemma for many people. Genuine selfpresentation can be precipitous in contexts that are relatively inaccessible to conventional social control mechanisms. The results of this study clearly indicate that participants in online groups apparently make choices regarding their persona and presence. These choices are instanciated in participants' communication styles evidenced either mindfully or unmindfully in the ways they construct messages that are shared publicly with. for the most part. strangers or cursory acquaintances. Thus, while not usually intended. the pragmatic realities of online contexts can make miscommunication either difficult to avoid or socially necessary.

E.A. Mabry /Ambiguous Self-Identification

11.3

259

Gender, status, and concealment in CMC

We use information obtained from observing people's F2F social interactions to make inferences about the genuineness of their self-presentations [2]. An important clue to a person's sincerity is the way in which he or she performs facework (Goff'man [28]. Facework is a general term for negotiations between social actors involving their autonomy, solidarity, and approbation (Lim and Bowers [29]). Solidarity and approbation refer to positive face, which addresses desirability needs, including regard for a person and respect for a person's abilities [28]. Autonomy refers to negative face, or a person's need not to be imposed upon by others. Attention to face can be observed through the level of openness with which he or she engages others [30]. Finding from the preceding study reported that the percentages of men and women sending messages containing no embedded gender attributions was approximately equal. Women were less forthcoming than men in explicitly providing potentially revealing information. Similarly, women were four times more likely than men to indirectly refer to their gender. Yet, women were much more likely than men to use direct gender references as well as author messages containing more than one form of gender identification. Most compelling, however, is the finding that confrontational messages were more likely to contain identity information. This result is not easily reconciled with theoretical stances like the cues filtered out perspective. It is consistent with SIDE model reasoning only if we can assume that online participants felt a strong enough sense of in-group identification to mitigate risks associated with revealing identity information [71 Findings from the previous study also suggest that participants in CMC groups become more willing to engage in sincere self-presentation as they become more ego-involved with their participation. However, using gender as the only proxy for identity management may not yield the most powerful measure of identity. In fact, evidence bearing on the management of anonymity suggests that social power can mitigate anonymous activity [18, 191. This reasoning is consistent with the SIDE model and Social Information Processing [ 141 perspectives. In the latter case, providing information is a way of garnering prestige. Anonymity becomes a hurdle to accumulating status through information sharing because it inhibits the formation of credibility impressions [ 151. Status is also a corollary to facework and, by extension, openness in self-presentation. Higher status people have greater face needs. However, their social power also provides more social capital for negotiating face needs and more presumed control over threats to their sense of face. Yet, women's status resources as communicators are different than men's. And, differential uses of language often leads to miscommunication between men and women [30]. The potential for such miscommunication seems even greater in online group contexts. As the preceding research has demonstrated, both gender and identity management shapes the styles of CMC messages enacted in online groups. Men and women also can choose to reveal or conceal other social status cues besides gender. Gender is also an interactive status marker that is often only manifestly evident during communication [31]. Other status cues, based on conferred or achieved social position, can also have a great bearing on individual and group identity. Therefore, status cues not specifically related to gender could enhance, or even subsume, the status value of gender. There is also evidence that social status and concealment decisions are related [ 191. And, evidence from research on deception in F2F interaction shows that status markers like expertise influence perceptions of messages from both senders and receivers [ 171. Literature regarding concealment and uncertainty indicates that interpersonal openness is more likely to be signaled in the patterns of message content and exchanges that define

E.,4. Mahn /Ambiguous Self2dentjficarion

260

personal relationships [32]. Openness also can define the value of the social capital one brings to a social context. Higher status is more likely to stimulate openness when the source(s) of one’s status are not perceived as targets of ego-threatening reactions from others. The working assumption is that: non-gendered status markers should enhance social power, thereby making gendered identip less tenuous, and lead to greater openness in online social communication. Results from another study investigating the hypothesized effects of gender, status. and identity management on communication are discussed below. However, the message variables previously analyzed were not replicated in this study. The underlying rationale for this hypothesis is not broad enough to be extended to relational or topical involvement. Message formality is easily understood as a stylistic corollary to status. However, the potency of the message formality variable was already established and was not re-tested in this study for the sake of brevity. I I . 3. I Assessing status, identip management, and openness Data for this study was obtained from the same database used in previous study. Testing the hypothesis required the use of gender and gender identification variables, plus the addition of a variable to measure the research design factor of status. Message analysis required the construction of a new summated scale measuring openness. See Table 1 1.1 for information regarding variables carried over the previous study. Three research design variables were needed for testing the hypothesis regarding status, gendered identity management effects on communicative openness: gender of the message sender, mode of gender expression (if present), and communicator status. One analysis variable, communication openness, was tested. The openness variable is explained below. Status was measured using a message content item coded to denote the presence or absence of any form of information about the communicator’s personal status (e.g.. degrees, positions, titles, and so forth). Messages were rated “no” when they did not contain such information and “yes” when they did. The kappa statistic for reliability on this measure was K = .8 1. As was the case in the preceding study, there was some data loss due to aggregating items in scale construction. Table 1 1.4. Openness Variable Item Inclusiveness Personal Addresses Challenges Exhorting Action Openness

Range

1-2 1-2 1-2 1-3

Operational Description

Reliability

Using 1“. person plurals: No; yes Acknowledging others: No; yes Demands authorizatiodverification:No; yes Out-of-group responsiveness: No: peripheral; central to message

K =

.79

K = .71 K = .95 K =

I?,=

.83 40

One summated scale to measure openness was developed by screening relevant message analysis variables included in the database. Four variables that operationalized a sense of interpersonal acceptance and inclusiveness, and willingness to expand thought and proactive behavior, were reliably aggregated to form the openness variable. The variables, brief explanations, and reliability information are presented in Table I 1.4. individually. the items demonstrate strong reliability. The summated scale is weaker but allows for an efficient metric suitable for the statistical design.

26 1

E.A. Mably /Ambiguous Self-dentification

11.3.2 The effects of status and gendered identity management on openness

Previous analyses of the N = 3,000 messages showed that men's message output outnumbered women's by a five to one ratio. Those findings suggested that there is an interaction between participant's gender and mode of gender identification. Therefore, the hypothesis was analyzed using a 2 (Gender) X 5 (mode of identification) univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) [27]. The hypothesis proposed that the amount of openness in message enactments of men and women would be significantly related to the clarity of their gender appropriation and apparent status. The results are intriguing. The ANOVAs for main effects were significant: gender (F (1, 1,194) = 9.77, p < 002, o2= .15); mode of gender expression (F (4, 1,194) = 21.23,p;Virtual groups on the Ittiernet. F. Sudweeks. S . Rafaeli. and M. Mclaughlin. Eds. Menlo Park: AAAI PressMIT Press, 1998, pp. 13-35. [26] M. Karge, N. Burrell, M. Allen and E. A. Mabry. Gender differences in communication styles in computer-mediated communication. Department of Communication. University of \IrisconsinMilwaukee. unpublished report. October. 200 1. [27] G. Keppel. Design and analvsis: .3 re.warc-her!yhandbook. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. 199I . [ 2 8 ] E. Gof€inan, Interaction rittial: E.r.srij*s on ~fuct.-ro-Iuceheha\ior. Garden City. NY: Doubleday and Company. 1967. [29] T. S. Lim and J. W. Bowers, Facework: Solidarity. approbation. and tact. Humari C'ommrrnic*ation Research 17 ( 199 1 ) 4 15-450. [ 301 G. Hiemstra. Teleconferencing. concern for face, and organizational culture, in: Commtinication ).carhook. 6. M. Burgoon. Ed. New Brunswick: International Communication Association. 1982. pp. 874-904. [ 31 ] N.M. Henley and C. Kramarae, Gender, power. and miscommunication. in: ".~~i.~communIc.afiorl" and problematic talk. N. Coupland. H. Giles and J. M. Wiemann. Eds. Newbury Park: Sage Publication. 1991. pp. 18-43. [ 3 2 ] J . R. Brown and L. E. Rogers, Openness, uncertainty. and intimacy: An epistemological reformulation. in: ",l..li.scornmunicatiori *' and problematic raik, N . Coupland. H . Giles and J. M. Wiemann. Eds. Newbury Park: Sage Publication, 199I , pp. 146-165. [33] E. A. Mabry. Group communication and technology: Rethinking the role of communication modality in group work and performance. in: N m . directions in group conimtitiicatiori. L. R. Frey. Ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. in press.

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Author Index Anolli, L. Attardo, S. Balconi, M. Carrera, P. Casado, C. Ciceri, R. Colston, H.L. Fernandez-Dols, J.-M. Ferrero, G. Gibbs, R.W. Infantino, M.G. Mabry, E.A. Mantovani, F. Reboul, A. Riva, G. Zaninelli, S.

ix,3,73,135 159 73 117 117 ix,73,101,135 181 117 V

181 135 247 229 43 ix, 197 vii