- Email: [email protected]
Verbal Representation of Lies in Russian and Anglo-American Cultures
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 236 (2016) 114 – 118
International Conference on Communication in Multicultural Society, CMSC 2015, 6-8 December 2015, Moscow, Russian Federation
Verbal representation of lies in Russian and Anglo-American cultures Rodmonga Potapovaa, Olga Lykovab* b
a Moscow State Linguistic University, Ostozhenka 38, Moscow 119034, Russian Federation National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), Kashirskoe shosse 31, Moscow 115409, Russian Federation
Abstract A number of researchers maintain that certain differences exist in the way lies are represented verbally in Russian and Western cultures. While Russian dictionaries tend to place particular emphasis on the immoral nature of lies, American ones underscore their illegality. The overall aim of this study is to analyze peculiarities of the conception of lying in these cultures. The study is based on the comprehensive analysis of 240 fragments from Russian and Anglo-American literature that describe lies and their realization. The results show that Russian people have a unique conception of lying that differs greatly from those of Western cultures. TheAuthors. Authors. Published Elsevier © 2016 2016The © Published by by Elsevier Ltd.Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute). Peer-review under responsibility of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute). Keywords: Lie; deceit; untruth; verbal communication; lying; false utterance; falsehood; philological analysis; cultural differences
1. Introduction People face lie and deception in almost all spheres of human activity; it is linked to our social life, the way we relate with one another (Martins and Carvalho, 2013). People lie for different purposes: to protect themselves or somebody else, to avoid punishment, to win admiration from others, to maintain privacy or because it is required by politeness. Nobody wants to be deceived. But still some
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +7-495-788-5699; fax: +7-499-324-2111. E-mail address: [email protected]
1877-0428 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute). doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.12.045
Rodmonga Potapova and Olga Lykova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 236 (2016) 114 – 118
115
studies show that humans are lied to as many as 200 times a day and they tell two to three lies in a ten-minute conversation (Jellison, 1977). Therefore any attempt to remove lies from our lives is “utopian, psychologically wrong and futile” (Dubrovsky, 1994). There are many definitions of lying offered by numerous researchers all over the world. According to Paul Ekman, who is one of the world's leading deception experts, a lie occurs when one person intends to mislead another, doing it deliberately, without prior notification of this purpose, and without having been explicitly asked to do so by the target (Ekman, 2009). According to the definition offered by Ekman the sender intends to mislead the communication partner “without prior notification of this purpose”, i.e. depriving him of the legal right (admitted by the sender) to receive full information, his “right to the truth” (Kant, 1994). As can be seen from the above lie can be considered as denial of right to receive information, i.e. illegal action. The psychology of understanding and identification of lie is rather new and understudied research area for the Russian science. During the Soviet period, the research of lie was under an unstated ban therefore the history of its studying in Russia begins from the 90s of the 20th century (Leontieva, 2012). Significant contribution to examination of the concept of lying was made by a famous Russian scientist V. Znakov who analyzed moral, psychological and social nature of lying. His research featuring 317 Russian and 49 Vietnamese people allowed to reveal cross-cultural peculiarities of the conception of lying. Along with that he examined historical sources, definitions of lying in Russian and foreign dictionaries and correlated the obtained data with those performed in the book by Ekman “Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage” (Ekman, 2009). The analysis of the obtained results revealed that the major part of the definitions of lying given by Russian participants coincide with those performed in Russian explanatory dictionaries and statements of Russian philosophers who emphasized the immoral nature of lying. According to Znakov, Russian people consider lying to be an immoral action. Therefore the conception of lying in Russian culture can be denoted in terms of morality, as opposed to the traditions of Western cultures, where the conception of lying is considered in terms of its lawfulness. The following definition of lie was given by a famous Russian philosopher V. Solovyov: “In contrast to the delusion and mistake, lie means conscious and morally reprehensible opposite of the truth” (Solovyov, 1996). As can be seen from the definition above Russian scientists tend to describe lying as a negative action that is morally wrong. The aim of the study was to contribute to the current findings that claim that Russian people have a particular understanding of lying - they suppose it to be an immoral and dishonorable action while Western people tend to describe lying as an illegal action. We tried to execute comparative analysis on the basis of Russian and AngloAmerican literature to analyze peculiarities of the conception of lying in these cultures and to arrange contextual indicators accompanying realization of lies in literary works. 2. Data and methods 2.1. Materials People’s national character, their experience and traditions are reflected in literature. The research was conducted on the basis of comprehensive analysis of 240 fragments from Russian and Anglo-American literature that describe lies and their realization. To reduce experimental errors the continuous sampling method was implied and all the analyzed features were considered in terms of presupposition. As used herein “Presupposition” shall mean that literary fragments analysis consisted of three stages. At first we analyzed the realization of lies in communication acts and denoted features accompanying lies. Then we re-read the book under analysis to know the plot and be sure while marking features in terms of morality. Finally we analyzed the literary fragment again in terms of presupposition, i.e. knowing whether a communication partner understands the immoral nature of lying or not. Presupposition also justifies the term “communication act” as we now know about the intentions of communication partners. From the above material a sample of 100 communication acts describing lies, their realization and other means of direct and indirect denial of right to receive information was selected. For the integrity of the sample collection 40 fragments from Russian literature and 60 fragments from Anglo-American were selected. All the books under analysis were most famous classical works (J. Austen, F. Dostoevsky, etc.) and modern bestsellers (Harry Potter, P. Koelho, etc.) both selected from internet top 100 ratings, as they seem to be the best culture representatives. For
116
Rodmonga Potapova and Olga Lykova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 236 (2016) 114 – 118
choosing fragments describing lies the continuous sampling method was implied, i.e. the books were read entirely and the picking-up of fragments was done manually. The usage of literary fragments is of particular interest because the results of modern linguistic research show that a realistic literary text is equivalent to reality for observing of emotional situations (Romanov, 2004). Therefore observations based on the speech of literary characters are of equal objectivity in comparison to the speech of real people in analogous communication acts. Furthermore according to Ekman the results of his analysis of speech acts do not contradict literary descriptions (Ekman, 2009). Alongside with describing acts of verbal communication, nonverbal features accompanying realization of lies were described by numerous researchers all over the world, e.g. “A Dictionary of the Language of Gestures” (Dmitrieva, Klokova, and Pavlova, 2003) containing descriptions of 1300 kinetic units was arranged on the basis of Russian literature. These studies indicate the significance of studying namely literary fragments for observing lies in our research, as the gained results can be used not only while examining different cultures, but also while examining real-life situations. This widens the application area of the results and provides new challenges for future research. 2.2. Procedure The comprehensive research procedure including linguistic and paralinguistic analysis of verbal communication acts was implied when analyzing the literary fragments. As used herein “Paralinguistics” shall mean a philological discipline examining aspects that accompany verbal communication, i.e. mimicry, gestures, body movements, etc. (Kolshansky, 1974; Potapova, 1998; Potapova and Potapov, 2006, 2011). The analysis of fragments consisted of three stages. At the first stage syntactic, morphological and lexicalphraseological stylistic analysis of communication acts was held. It allowed to reveal linguistic and paralinguistic means of realization of lies, demonstrated means of linguistic manipulation which can accompany lies and identified alternative means of indirect denial of right to receive information (other than lies). Within the analysis of literary fragments linguistic and paralinguistic means of realization of lies were considered in the aggregate and in terms of presupposition in order to gain higher accuracy. Working on each fragment included analysis of lie and other verbal and nonverbal means of denial of right to receive information, describing emotional state of communication partners while realization of lies and means of linguistic manipulation. The stage was based on the experimental part of the Ph.D. thesis by O. Popchuk (Popchuk, 2006). At the second stage of the research data interpretation was conducted. At the final stage statistical analysis of the results was implied being aimed to estimate the percentage of features indicating the immoral nature of lies by Russian and Anglo-American participants of communication acts and to reveal the most frequent features of lies in their speech. The statistical analysis of the obtained results consisted of two stages. At the first stage a binary code was assigned to each of 100 fragments (1-if a feature indicating the immoral nature of lies was present in a fragment, 0if not). This allowed to calculate the percentage of features indicating the immoral nature of lies by Russian and Anglo-American participants of communication acts. At the second stage of the statistical analysis the most frequent features accompanying lies for Russian and Anglo-American communication partners were revealed. That was executed by dividing the feature frequency by the overall number of fragments. Then obtained numbers were converted into percent and ranking procedure was used. 3. Results and discussion The results obtained at the first stage of statistical analysis are presented in Table 1. An overall sample consisted of 40 fragments from Russian literature and 60 fragments from books written by Anglo-American writers. The number of fragments indicating the immoral nature of lies is 19 out of 40 for Russian literature (47,5%) and 18 out of 60 for Anglo-American one (30%).The significant difference in the percentage shows different level of understanding of lying in terms of morality. It is evident from the obtained data that Russian people have a particular understanding of lying, they consider it to be morally wrong. Table 1. Percentage of features indicating the immoral nature of lies by Russian and Anglo-American participants of communication acts.
Rodmonga Potapova and Olga Lykova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 236 (2016) 114 – 118
Source
The overall number of fragments
The number of fragments indicating the immoral nature of lies
The percent of fragments indicating the immoral nature of lies
Russian literature
40
19
47,5%
Anglo-American literature
60
18
30%
The research allowed to reveal 34 features accompanying realization of lies. In the tables below 8 most frequent features accompanying realization of lies by Russian and Anglo-American communication partners are represented. The obtained data was collected by dividing the feature frequency by the overall number of fragments, posterior representation of the obtained numbers in percent and by usage of ranking procedure. Table 2. The most frequent features accompanying lies for Russian communicants. Features
The number of fragments
The percent of all fragments
Blush
12
30%
Stumbling, repetition
9
22,5%
Pausation
8
20%
Counter-questions
7
17,5%
Imperative mood
6
15%
Embarrassment
6
15%
Smile
5
12,5%
Breaking eye-contact
4
10%
Table 3. The most frequent features accompanying lies for Anglo-American communicants. Features
The number of fragments
The percent of all fragments
Pausation
14
23%
Imperative mood
11
18,3%
Counter-questions
9
15%
Accusation of fantasizing
8
13,3%
Anger
7
11,6%
Embarrassment
6
10%
Change of topic
6
10%
Appeal to vanity
4
6,6%
The presented evidence shows that 4 out of 8 most frequent features accompanying lies by Russian communication partners (blush, embarrassment, smile, breaking eye-contact) indicate the conception of lying in terms of morality, while as few as 1 out of 8 features in fragments from Anglo-American literature (embarrassment) emphasize the immoral nature of lies. It should be pointed out that there are some differences in nonverbal communication behavior in different cultures and the same feature could have different meanings regarding Russian and Anglo-American communication partners, that is why the features were analyzed in terms of presupposition, i.e. we read the literary works entirely to be sure while marking features in terms of morality. 4. Conclusion The results obtained show that there are considerable differences in the conceptions of lying in Russian and Anglo-American cultures. This did not come as a surprise: according to the studies by Znakov and Leontieva, we expected to find more indicators of immoral nature of lying in fragments from Russian literature rather than in
117
118
Rodmonga Potapova and Olga Lykova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 236 (2016) 114 – 118
Anglo-American ones. However some significant observations were made while analyzing the obtained data. The statistical analysis allowed to arrange contextual indicators accompanying realization of lies in literary works and to reveal the most frequent features accompanying lies for Russian and Anglo-American communication partners, which can be used for content analysis in further research. The comprehensive research procedure offered in this study can henceforth be implied to examine the functioning of false statements in communication acts and used for conducting comparative analysis of conceptions of lying in different cultures. The obtained data provide new challenges for future research due to the concept of lie being rather new and understudied research area for the Russian science. References Dmitrieva, L, Klokova, L., and Pavlova, V. (2003). Slovar yazyka zhestov [A dictionary of the language of gestures]. Moscow: AST. Dubrovsky, D. (1994). Obman. Filosofsko-psihologichesky analiz [Deception.Philosopho-psychological analysis]. Moscow: REI. Ekman, P. (2009). Telling lies: clues to deceit in the marketplace, politics, and marriage (Revised ed.). WW Norton & Company. Jellison, J. M. (1977). I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, and other lies we love to tell. Chatham Square Press; Chicago: distributed by Contemporary Books. Kant, I. (1994). O mnimom prave lgat' iz chelovekolyubia [On supposed right to tell lies from benevolent motive]. Collected Works. Vol. 8. Moscow: Choro. Kolshansky, G. (1974). Paralingvistika [Paralinguistics]. Moscow: Nauka. Leontieva, T. (2012). Russian and English view on lies in conflict dialogues—analysis of conflict communication acts in Russian and English fiction. Journalism and Mass Communication, 2 (8), 840-851. Martins, M., and Carvalho, C. (2013). Lie and deception in adolescence: A study with Portuguese students. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 82, 649–656. Popchuk, O. M. (2006). Linguistic and paralinguistic means of realizing a false utterance in the act of communication. Ph.D. thesis. Moscow: Linguistic University. Potapova, R. (1998). Elektronnaya entsiklopediya eksperta-fonoskopista. Russky yasyk. Lingvisticheskoe obecpechenie [Digital encyclopedia of an Audio-Expert]. Moscow: MSR-FONO-E.CD-ROM. Potapova, R., and Potapov, V. (2006). Yazik, rech, lichnost.[Language, speech, personality]. Moscow: Jaziki Slavanskoi Kultury. Potapova, R., and Potapov, V. (2011). Kommunikative Sprechtaetigkeit: Russland und Deutschland im Vergleich [Communicative language behavior]. Koeln; Weinmar; Wien.
ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 236 (2016) 114 – 118
International Conference on Communication in Multicultural Society, CMSC 2015, 6-8 December 2015, Moscow, Russian Federation
Verbal representation of lies in Russian and Anglo-American cultures Rodmonga Potapovaa, Olga Lykovab* b
a Moscow State Linguistic University, Ostozhenka 38, Moscow 119034, Russian Federation National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), Kashirskoe shosse 31, Moscow 115409, Russian Federation
Abstract A number of researchers maintain that certain differences exist in the way lies are represented verbally in Russian and Western cultures. While Russian dictionaries tend to place particular emphasis on the immoral nature of lies, American ones underscore their illegality. The overall aim of this study is to analyze peculiarities of the conception of lying in these cultures. The study is based on the comprehensive analysis of 240 fragments from Russian and Anglo-American literature that describe lies and their realization. The results show that Russian people have a unique conception of lying that differs greatly from those of Western cultures. TheAuthors. Authors. Published Elsevier © 2016 2016The © Published by by Elsevier Ltd.Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute). Peer-review under responsibility of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute). Keywords: Lie; deceit; untruth; verbal communication; lying; false utterance; falsehood; philological analysis; cultural differences
1. Introduction People face lie and deception in almost all spheres of human activity; it is linked to our social life, the way we relate with one another (Martins and Carvalho, 2013). People lie for different purposes: to protect themselves or somebody else, to avoid punishment, to win admiration from others, to maintain privacy or because it is required by politeness. Nobody wants to be deceived. But still some
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +7-495-788-5699; fax: +7-499-324-2111. E-mail address: [email protected]
1877-0428 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute). doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.12.045
Rodmonga Potapova and Olga Lykova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 236 (2016) 114 – 118
115
studies show that humans are lied to as many as 200 times a day and they tell two to three lies in a ten-minute conversation (Jellison, 1977). Therefore any attempt to remove lies from our lives is “utopian, psychologically wrong and futile” (Dubrovsky, 1994). There are many definitions of lying offered by numerous researchers all over the world. According to Paul Ekman, who is one of the world's leading deception experts, a lie occurs when one person intends to mislead another, doing it deliberately, without prior notification of this purpose, and without having been explicitly asked to do so by the target (Ekman, 2009). According to the definition offered by Ekman the sender intends to mislead the communication partner “without prior notification of this purpose”, i.e. depriving him of the legal right (admitted by the sender) to receive full information, his “right to the truth” (Kant, 1994). As can be seen from the above lie can be considered as denial of right to receive information, i.e. illegal action. The psychology of understanding and identification of lie is rather new and understudied research area for the Russian science. During the Soviet period, the research of lie was under an unstated ban therefore the history of its studying in Russia begins from the 90s of the 20th century (Leontieva, 2012). Significant contribution to examination of the concept of lying was made by a famous Russian scientist V. Znakov who analyzed moral, psychological and social nature of lying. His research featuring 317 Russian and 49 Vietnamese people allowed to reveal cross-cultural peculiarities of the conception of lying. Along with that he examined historical sources, definitions of lying in Russian and foreign dictionaries and correlated the obtained data with those performed in the book by Ekman “Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage” (Ekman, 2009). The analysis of the obtained results revealed that the major part of the definitions of lying given by Russian participants coincide with those performed in Russian explanatory dictionaries and statements of Russian philosophers who emphasized the immoral nature of lying. According to Znakov, Russian people consider lying to be an immoral action. Therefore the conception of lying in Russian culture can be denoted in terms of morality, as opposed to the traditions of Western cultures, where the conception of lying is considered in terms of its lawfulness. The following definition of lie was given by a famous Russian philosopher V. Solovyov: “In contrast to the delusion and mistake, lie means conscious and morally reprehensible opposite of the truth” (Solovyov, 1996). As can be seen from the definition above Russian scientists tend to describe lying as a negative action that is morally wrong. The aim of the study was to contribute to the current findings that claim that Russian people have a particular understanding of lying - they suppose it to be an immoral and dishonorable action while Western people tend to describe lying as an illegal action. We tried to execute comparative analysis on the basis of Russian and AngloAmerican literature to analyze peculiarities of the conception of lying in these cultures and to arrange contextual indicators accompanying realization of lies in literary works. 2. Data and methods 2.1. Materials People’s national character, their experience and traditions are reflected in literature. The research was conducted on the basis of comprehensive analysis of 240 fragments from Russian and Anglo-American literature that describe lies and their realization. To reduce experimental errors the continuous sampling method was implied and all the analyzed features were considered in terms of presupposition. As used herein “Presupposition” shall mean that literary fragments analysis consisted of three stages. At first we analyzed the realization of lies in communication acts and denoted features accompanying lies. Then we re-read the book under analysis to know the plot and be sure while marking features in terms of morality. Finally we analyzed the literary fragment again in terms of presupposition, i.e. knowing whether a communication partner understands the immoral nature of lying or not. Presupposition also justifies the term “communication act” as we now know about the intentions of communication partners. From the above material a sample of 100 communication acts describing lies, their realization and other means of direct and indirect denial of right to receive information was selected. For the integrity of the sample collection 40 fragments from Russian literature and 60 fragments from Anglo-American were selected. All the books under analysis were most famous classical works (J. Austen, F. Dostoevsky, etc.) and modern bestsellers (Harry Potter, P. Koelho, etc.) both selected from internet top 100 ratings, as they seem to be the best culture representatives. For
116
Rodmonga Potapova and Olga Lykova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 236 (2016) 114 – 118
choosing fragments describing lies the continuous sampling method was implied, i.e. the books were read entirely and the picking-up of fragments was done manually. The usage of literary fragments is of particular interest because the results of modern linguistic research show that a realistic literary text is equivalent to reality for observing of emotional situations (Romanov, 2004). Therefore observations based on the speech of literary characters are of equal objectivity in comparison to the speech of real people in analogous communication acts. Furthermore according to Ekman the results of his analysis of speech acts do not contradict literary descriptions (Ekman, 2009). Alongside with describing acts of verbal communication, nonverbal features accompanying realization of lies were described by numerous researchers all over the world, e.g. “A Dictionary of the Language of Gestures” (Dmitrieva, Klokova, and Pavlova, 2003) containing descriptions of 1300 kinetic units was arranged on the basis of Russian literature. These studies indicate the significance of studying namely literary fragments for observing lies in our research, as the gained results can be used not only while examining different cultures, but also while examining real-life situations. This widens the application area of the results and provides new challenges for future research. 2.2. Procedure The comprehensive research procedure including linguistic and paralinguistic analysis of verbal communication acts was implied when analyzing the literary fragments. As used herein “Paralinguistics” shall mean a philological discipline examining aspects that accompany verbal communication, i.e. mimicry, gestures, body movements, etc. (Kolshansky, 1974; Potapova, 1998; Potapova and Potapov, 2006, 2011). The analysis of fragments consisted of three stages. At the first stage syntactic, morphological and lexicalphraseological stylistic analysis of communication acts was held. It allowed to reveal linguistic and paralinguistic means of realization of lies, demonstrated means of linguistic manipulation which can accompany lies and identified alternative means of indirect denial of right to receive information (other than lies). Within the analysis of literary fragments linguistic and paralinguistic means of realization of lies were considered in the aggregate and in terms of presupposition in order to gain higher accuracy. Working on each fragment included analysis of lie and other verbal and nonverbal means of denial of right to receive information, describing emotional state of communication partners while realization of lies and means of linguistic manipulation. The stage was based on the experimental part of the Ph.D. thesis by O. Popchuk (Popchuk, 2006). At the second stage of the research data interpretation was conducted. At the final stage statistical analysis of the results was implied being aimed to estimate the percentage of features indicating the immoral nature of lies by Russian and Anglo-American participants of communication acts and to reveal the most frequent features of lies in their speech. The statistical analysis of the obtained results consisted of two stages. At the first stage a binary code was assigned to each of 100 fragments (1-if a feature indicating the immoral nature of lies was present in a fragment, 0if not). This allowed to calculate the percentage of features indicating the immoral nature of lies by Russian and Anglo-American participants of communication acts. At the second stage of the statistical analysis the most frequent features accompanying lies for Russian and Anglo-American communication partners were revealed. That was executed by dividing the feature frequency by the overall number of fragments. Then obtained numbers were converted into percent and ranking procedure was used. 3. Results and discussion The results obtained at the first stage of statistical analysis are presented in Table 1. An overall sample consisted of 40 fragments from Russian literature and 60 fragments from books written by Anglo-American writers. The number of fragments indicating the immoral nature of lies is 19 out of 40 for Russian literature (47,5%) and 18 out of 60 for Anglo-American one (30%).The significant difference in the percentage shows different level of understanding of lying in terms of morality. It is evident from the obtained data that Russian people have a particular understanding of lying, they consider it to be morally wrong. Table 1. Percentage of features indicating the immoral nature of lies by Russian and Anglo-American participants of communication acts.
Rodmonga Potapova and Olga Lykova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 236 (2016) 114 – 118
Source
The overall number of fragments
The number of fragments indicating the immoral nature of lies
The percent of fragments indicating the immoral nature of lies
Russian literature
40
19
47,5%
Anglo-American literature
60
18
30%
The research allowed to reveal 34 features accompanying realization of lies. In the tables below 8 most frequent features accompanying realization of lies by Russian and Anglo-American communication partners are represented. The obtained data was collected by dividing the feature frequency by the overall number of fragments, posterior representation of the obtained numbers in percent and by usage of ranking procedure. Table 2. The most frequent features accompanying lies for Russian communicants. Features
The number of fragments
The percent of all fragments
Blush
12
30%
Stumbling, repetition
9
22,5%
Pausation
8
20%
Counter-questions
7
17,5%
Imperative mood
6
15%
Embarrassment
6
15%
Smile
5
12,5%
Breaking eye-contact
4
10%
Table 3. The most frequent features accompanying lies for Anglo-American communicants. Features
The number of fragments
The percent of all fragments
Pausation
14
23%
Imperative mood
11
18,3%
Counter-questions
9
15%
Accusation of fantasizing
8
13,3%
Anger
7
11,6%
Embarrassment
6
10%
Change of topic
6
10%
Appeal to vanity
4
6,6%
The presented evidence shows that 4 out of 8 most frequent features accompanying lies by Russian communication partners (blush, embarrassment, smile, breaking eye-contact) indicate the conception of lying in terms of morality, while as few as 1 out of 8 features in fragments from Anglo-American literature (embarrassment) emphasize the immoral nature of lies. It should be pointed out that there are some differences in nonverbal communication behavior in different cultures and the same feature could have different meanings regarding Russian and Anglo-American communication partners, that is why the features were analyzed in terms of presupposition, i.e. we read the literary works entirely to be sure while marking features in terms of morality. 4. Conclusion The results obtained show that there are considerable differences in the conceptions of lying in Russian and Anglo-American cultures. This did not come as a surprise: according to the studies by Znakov and Leontieva, we expected to find more indicators of immoral nature of lying in fragments from Russian literature rather than in
117
118
Rodmonga Potapova and Olga Lykova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 236 (2016) 114 – 118
Anglo-American ones. However some significant observations were made while analyzing the obtained data. The statistical analysis allowed to arrange contextual indicators accompanying realization of lies in literary works and to reveal the most frequent features accompanying lies for Russian and Anglo-American communication partners, which can be used for content analysis in further research. The comprehensive research procedure offered in this study can henceforth be implied to examine the functioning of false statements in communication acts and used for conducting comparative analysis of conceptions of lying in different cultures. The obtained data provide new challenges for future research due to the concept of lie being rather new and understudied research area for the Russian science. References Dmitrieva, L, Klokova, L., and Pavlova, V. (2003). Slovar yazyka zhestov [A dictionary of the language of gestures]. Moscow: AST. Dubrovsky, D. (1994). Obman. Filosofsko-psihologichesky analiz [Deception.Philosopho-psychological analysis]. Moscow: REI. Ekman, P. (2009). Telling lies: clues to deceit in the marketplace, politics, and marriage (Revised ed.). WW Norton & Company. Jellison, J. M. (1977). I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, and other lies we love to tell. Chatham Square Press; Chicago: distributed by Contemporary Books. Kant, I. (1994). O mnimom prave lgat' iz chelovekolyubia [On supposed right to tell lies from benevolent motive]. Collected Works. Vol. 8. Moscow: Choro. Kolshansky, G. (1974). Paralingvistika [Paralinguistics]. Moscow: Nauka. Leontieva, T. (2012). Russian and English view on lies in conflict dialogues—analysis of conflict communication acts in Russian and English fiction. Journalism and Mass Communication, 2 (8), 840-851. Martins, M., and Carvalho, C. (2013). Lie and deception in adolescence: A study with Portuguese students. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 82, 649–656. Popchuk, O. M. (2006). Linguistic and paralinguistic means of realizing a false utterance in the act of communication. Ph.D. thesis. Moscow: Linguistic University. Potapova, R. (1998). Elektronnaya entsiklopediya eksperta-fonoskopista. Russky yasyk. Lingvisticheskoe obecpechenie [Digital encyclopedia of an Audio-Expert]. Moscow: MSR-FONO-E.CD-ROM. Potapova, R., and Potapov, V. (2006). Yazik, rech, lichnost.[Language, speech, personality]. Moscow: Jaziki Slavanskoi Kultury. Potapova, R., and Potapov, V. (2011). Kommunikative Sprechtaetigkeit: Russland und Deutschland im Vergleich [Communicative language behavior]. Koeln; Weinmar; Wien.