When exploring discursive untruthfulness, modern American politics is an obvious example. Donald Trump\u2019s presidency has been continuously criticised for his use of falsity, with the aim of promoting his own biased views. However, untruthfulness is irrefutably underpinned by the notion of \u2018lying\u2019, an act that is near impossible to identify: in order to lie, the person must know that what they are saying is insincere. The difficulty with this stems from our inability to know whether someone believes what they are claiming. How can you prove that the individual understands that they are being untruthful? They may instead have a strong belief in their ignorant opinion, which blinds them to the evident truth of the situation. But should ignorance excuse false claims? Or do we place too much value on the notion of a \u2018lie\u2019?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the summer of 2017, I took part in testing the untruthfulness framework described by Christopher Heffer in his forthcoming book Lying and Bullshit in Language and Life: The TRUST Untruthfulness Framework<\/em>. The \u2018TRUST\u2019 (Trust-Related Untruthfulness in Strategic Text) framework aims to provide a theoretical understanding of discursive untruthfulness. The TESSAT steps involve following a systematic process: selecting Text, finding Evidence of a lack of truthfulness, assessing justifiable Suspensions of truth, analysing Sincerity and Accuracy, and finally investigating the breach of Trust.\u00a0 Through doing so, the framework aims to provide an analysis of untruthfulness, which may encourage accountability of those making false claims or failing to investigate the truth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The framework suggests that perhaps someone may still be held accountable, despite it being unprovable that they have told a blatant lie. The heuristic excels when analysing the assertions of Donald Trump, for instance during a recent televised meeting with lawmakers in February 2018. The trauma caused by the slack gun laws in America, and Trump\u2019s response to calls to tighten them, shows the need to hold politicians accountable for more than blatant insincerity. Referring to the 2017 Pulse nightclub shooting, Trump asserted:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2018You take Pulse nightclub, if you had one person in that room that could carry a gun and knew how to use it, it wouldn\u2019t have happened, or certainly to the extent that it did.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Trump\u2019s delusional claim ignores the fact that an off-duty officer was present that night, and exchanged gunfire with the attackers. This did nothing to reduce the horrific death count of 49 innocent people; Trump was undeniably abusing his influential role as president to spout false information.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But was he lying? It could be possible that Trump, with his internal biases and positive opinion of gun use in America, believed that gun ownership could have stopped the tragedy. He also may not have been aware of the presence of Officer Adam Gruler in Pulse that night. Although it is that unlikely he did not have this knowledge, does this possibility excuse his falsity? The TESSAT heuristic helps us to hold public figures such as Trump accountable for these careless statements, despite being unable to prove the presence of a lie. The president, as someone with a vast amount of power and responsibility within America, should have investigated the facts behind his brash claim. When questioning the breach of trust, the inaccuracy becomes even more harmful. Trump\u2019s Republican audience may be considered vulnerable since they also most likely hold the same biases as him. Gun laws are a matters of serious debate in America, with a vast number of citizens holding the opinion that they are a vital part of their culture. Through this, Trump\u2019s untruthful statements could be taken as fact, despite being utterly false.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The TESSAT step analysing the breach of Trust highlights another important aspect of the TRUST framework: how someone\u2019s power (or lack of) affects the severity of the untruthfulness. During my time working on TRUST, I drew on a real-life example when considering this, involving a family friend with the disconcerting opinion that veganism is \u2018only an excuse for anorexia\u2019. This is evidently a biased and inaccurate personal opinion, coming from someone who has not studied the motives for veganism. However, is she truly breaching the trust of her audience in a refutable way? I could identify immediately that this was purely an opinion, and I would not consider myself a vulnerable listener. It is unlikely that the individual had harmful motives, and she does not hold a position of power. This causes the breach to be far less severe than within a political or media context. Hence, not only does the framework emphasise the accountability attached to being insincere or recklessly inaccurate, but it also considers the context surrounding the assertion. As a person in a position of power, with most likely reproachable motives and a vulnerable audience, Trump is a prime example of an individual harmfully abusing the truth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Despite the unlikelihood that the TRUST framework can be used as an objective measure of untruthfulness, it is extremely worthwhile to explore beyond \u2018lying\u2019 as an indicator of accountability. It has the potential of being influential to those outside academia since the framework is easy to use and encourages a systematic way of revealing untruthfulness. Fake news and filter bubbles constantly surround us, and make it difficult to decipher what is fact and what is untruthful discourse. Perhaps implementing frameworks such as TRUST may help us work toward understanding the role of reckless inaccuracy, and end the reliance on the lie.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Image source: Jamelle Bouie, Flickr (CC BY 2.0)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When exploring discursive untruthfulness, modern American politics is an obvious example. Donald Trump\u2019s presidency has been continuously criticised for his use of falsity, with the aim of promoting his own […]","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[23,33,7,28,91],"custom_author":[126],"class_list":["post-426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-for-debate","tag-changing-attitudes-in-public-discourse","tag-communication","tag-politics","tag-trump","tag-trust","custom_author-sax-daisy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8KPlM-6S","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":432,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/poisonous-words-arrogance-bullshit-and-accusations-of-lying-in-public-discourse\/","url_meta":{"origin":426,"position":0},"title":"Poisonous Words: Arrogance, Bullshit and Accusations of Lying in Public Discourse","author":"Alessandra Tanesini","date":"April 23, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"As is common with international incidents today, the Skripal case, in which a Russian double agent and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury, England, has generated an abundance of fake news, conspiracy theories, deceptions, misleading, bullshit and lying. There have been many accusations of lying and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Open for Debate"","block_context":{"text":"Open for Debate","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/category\/open-for-debate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2018\/04\/all-explanations-arerubbish4754734_43ced6dc.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2018\/04\/all-explanations-arerubbish4754734_43ced6dc.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2018\/04\/all-explanations-arerubbish4754734_43ced6dc.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":365,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/arrogance-and-the-space-of-reasons\/","url_meta":{"origin":426,"position":1},"title":"Arrogance and the Space of Reasons","author":"Alessandra Tanesini","date":"January 29, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoining communicated experience. ---John Dewey[1] \u00a0 One of the truly baffling things about the Trump era in the United States is that just when you think our political life could not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Open for Debate"","block_context":{"text":"Open for Debate","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/category\/open-for-debate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2018\/01\/Hawk.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2018\/01\/Hawk.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2018\/01\/Hawk.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":419,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/reflections-on-transcribing-multimodal-texts\/","url_meta":{"origin":426,"position":2},"title":"Reflections on Transcribing Multimodal Texts","author":"Alessandra Tanesini","date":"March 26, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Since the election of Donald Trump in 2017 the media has often seemed to be in a continual state of shock at the brusque manner of the forty-fifth president\u2019s speech. 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The ranks of anti-vaxxers included lefties skeptical of Big Pharma, hippies distrustful of anything that isn\u2019t \u201cnatural,\u201d cultural conservatives\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Open for Debate"","block_context":{"text":"Open for Debate","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/category\/open-for-debate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2021\/06\/joao-tzanno-1NacmxqfPZA-unsplash-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2021\/06\/joao-tzanno-1NacmxqfPZA-unsplash-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2021\/06\/joao-tzanno-1NacmxqfPZA-unsplash-scaled.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2021\/06\/joao-tzanno-1NacmxqfPZA-unsplash-scaled.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2021\/06\/joao-tzanno-1NacmxqfPZA-unsplash-scaled.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/533\/2021\/06\/joao-tzanno-1NacmxqfPZA-unsplash-scaled.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1625,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/truth-and-the-facebookians\/","url_meta":{"origin":426,"position":5},"title":"Truth and the Facebookians","author":"Alessandra Tanesini","date":"February 6, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Imagine a community\u2014call them the \u201cFacebookians\u201d\u2014whose politics is deeply polarized. 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