Dear all,

We are delighted to inform you that Prof. Joana Garmendia (ILCI, University of the Basque Country) will give a guest talk titled "Lies we don't say" on Monday 13 November, from 10:15 to 11:45, in room MIS 10 3.16, as part of the seminar 'Insinuation and the pragmatics of what is (and what is not) said'. Please see poster attached [pdf] for details and abstract. All welcome!

Abstract: A pragmatic theory of lies should be capable of explaining, first, what makes lies special among the various deceptive uses of language and, second, why we don’t consider figurative speakers to be lying even if they put forward something they believe to be false. According to traditional conceptions on lies, the liar says what she believes to be false, and it is this feature which distinguishes them both from other deceptive uses of language and from figurative phenomena. This view brings us to a rather restrictive conception of lies. Alternatively, commitment-based approaches contend that a speaker lies when, in a linguistic act of communication, she commits herself to a content she believes to be false. The scope of these accounts varies depending on the particular notion of commitment they endorse. If we adhere to a notion of commitment that is general enough, the result is an approach that can address the challenge posed by insincere implicatures in general, and lies via figurative language in particular.