Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Part 1 Introduction
- Part 2 Lie-detection techniques
- Part 3 Special issues facing a lie-catcher
- 6 Lies travel: mendacity in a mobile world
- 7 Coping with suggestion and deception in children's accounts
- 8 True or false: ‘I'd know a false confession if I saw one’
- 9 Crime-related amnesia as a form of deception
- Part 4 Enhancing lie-detection accuracy
- Part 5 Conclusions
- Index
- References
6 - Lies travel: mendacity in a mobile world
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Part 1 Introduction
- Part 2 Lie-detection techniques
- Part 3 Special issues facing a lie-catcher
- 6 Lies travel: mendacity in a mobile world
- 7 Coping with suggestion and deception in children's accounts
- 8 True or false: ‘I'd know a false confession if I saw one’
- 9 Crime-related amnesia as a form of deception
- Part 4 Enhancing lie-detection accuracy
- Part 5 Conclusions
- Index
- References
Summary
My Master heard me with great Appearances of Uneasiness in his Countenance, because Doubting, or not believing, are so little known in his country, that the Inhabitants cannot tell how to behave themselves under such Circumstances. And I remember in frequent Discourses with my Master … [when] having Occasion to talk of Lying, and false Representation, it was with much difficulty that he comprehended what I meant; although he had otherwise a most acute Judgment. For he argued thus; That the Use of Spech was to make us understand one another, and to receive Information of Facts; now if any one said the Thing which was not, these Ends were defeated; because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving Information, that he leaves me worse than in Ignorance; for I am led to believe a Thing Black when it is White, and Short when it is Long. And these were all the Notions he had concerning that Faculty of Lying, so perfectly well understood, and so universally practiced among human Creatures.
Gulliver's travels Jonathan Swift (1726 emphasis added)Gulliver travelled to many countries, of which the most peculiar was the land of the Houyhnhnms – a land whose equine inhabitants were so honest that ‘they had no word in their language to express lying or falsehood’. On those rare occasions when the need arose, the Houyhnhnms referred to lying as ‘saying the Thing which was not’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Detection of Deception in Forensic Contexts , pp. 127 - 147Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
References
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