A Study Of Deception In Lie To Me From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Verbal communication is a crucial interpersonal relationship component in people’s daily life. So far, the deception as a common phenomenon in social communication has became an interdisciplinary project and studied in various fields, including psychology, ethics, philosophy, sociology, rhetoric, linguistics and so on.Though many efforts have been made by previous scholars from different fields, the researches about deception are still inadequate:the definition of deception is still controversial and non-universal:the study of deception lacks a systematic or comprehensive combing, and there is also a lack of adequate analysis for the concrete language phenomenon.In view of the inadequacy of deception study, the author believes that a theoretical work frame containing the factors of psychology, sociology, linguistics and cognition, which can provide a new study angle to make a more convictive explanation in the deception study. Therefore, based on this start point, the author has chosen Verschueren’s adaptation theory as the theoretical foundation of the thesis.Pragmatic perspective proposed by Verschueren explains the pragmatics from a fresh view of society, culture and cognition. And adaptation theory is the core theory of Verschueren’s pragmatic perspective. He considers that based on the properties of language:variability, negotiability and adaptability, the language use is the process of continuous language choice-making. Besides, the notion of adaptability is studied in four tasks or angles:contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, the dynamics of adaptability and the salience of adaptation.To move forward, the author attempts to analyze the motivations, purposes and measures of deceptions in American TV series Lie to Me under the perspective of adaptation theory. As a corpus, the deceptions in Lie to Me will be carefully discussed in order to reach the mutual corroboration between the theoretical knowledge and actual deception phenomenon.The author applies the adaptation theory to analyze the deception and finally gain the findings:the deception is the outcome of the continuous dynamic choice-making by utterers who are adaptive to the utterer or addressee’s social world, mental world and physical world. As one of pragmatic strategies, the deception plays an important role in verbal communication and achieves certain communication aims.