A Web of Deceit: A Neo-Gricean View on Types of Verbal Deception

This paper differentiates between several types of verbal deception and related notions: lying, bald-faced lies, bullshit, and deception without lying, inclusive of half-truths/lies of omission and withholding information. This is done in the light of the Gricean work on speaker meaning materialised by what is said and implicature, both being dependent on maxims, which can be observed or nonfulfilled (flouted or violated). To meet this objective, both Grice's and neo-Gricean postulates on truthfulness, lying and deception are revisited. Defining distinct types of deception with Grice's concepts, the paper teases out the complex interdependence between the two levels of speaker meaning: (un) truthful implicature and (un) truthful what is said.