Social Lies: An Idealized Cognitive Model Analysis

This thesis is a cognitive analysis of social lies within the theoretical framework of Lakoff's Idealized Cognitive Model (ICM) (1987). It is intended to be a corpus study based on a questionnaire and data collected from newspapers, magazines or real communication, etc.First, the previous study of lie is critically examined, such as Galasinski's pragmatic analysis (2000), Coleman and Kay's prototype analysis (1981) and Sweetser's ICM analysis (1990). Based on the previous study, this thesis formulates a social lie ICM, which consists of the help maxim, and three sub-ICMs: Ordinary communication, justified belief, and social experience. Then a questionnaire and a detailed analysis of social lie are made within the ICM framework.According to the questionnaire result, most subjects tend to regard (i) those which are only beneficial to the addresser as prototype lies, score 9.5-9.9; (ii) those which are beneficial in social communication as prototype social lies, score 5.9-7.8; (iii) those which are beneficial to the addressee or the third party as non-prototype social lies, score 3.2-5.1; (iv) those rhetorical cases as the most peripheral lies, score 1.6-2.8. This result conforms the social lie ICM on the whole. That is, a case tends to be considered a prototype social lie if it fits the social lie ICM perfectly well. Conversely, non-prototypical cases are imperfect fits of the social lie ICM.A further analysis demonstrates that most prototype social lies are uttered in order to show politeness, save the face of the addressee or the third party, which are beneficial in social communication. These social lies observe Leech's Politeness Principle (1983), despite their breaching of Grice's Cooperative Principle (1975). In contrast, non-prototypical cases are made out of the reason of benefit tendency or communicative strategy. The corpus study also shows that the rhetorical cases, such as metaphor, irony or euphemism, are ordinary tools in human communication.