Exploring Verbal Cues to Deception: Testing Quantitative Linguistic Methods on English and Spanish
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- CONTENTS
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- CHAPTER 1. Introduction
- 1.1 Deception and language
- 1.2 Aims of the book
- 1.3 Structure of the book
- CHAPTER 2. Deception, its nature and its detection
- 2.1 Shaping deception
- 2.2 The study of deception
- 2.2.1 Theories of deception
- 2.2.2 Professional methods of deception detection
- 2.3 Research on verbal cues to deception: state of the art
- 2.3.1 Essentials of forensic computational linguistics
- 2.3.2 Types of data in deception detection
- 2.3.3 The role of linguistic variables in computer-assisted deception analysis
- CHAPTER 3: Research methodology
- 3.1 Contextualizing the studies
- 3.2 Method
- 3.2.1 Nature of the study
- 3.2.2 Corpora
- 3.2.3 Statistical analyses
- CHAPTER 4. Experiment 1: Low-stakes deception
- 4.1 Introduction
- 4.2 Linguistic analysis and variables
- 4.2.1 LIWC variables
- 4.2.2 Further stylometric variables
- 4.3 Results and discussion
- 4.3.1 Results for English
- 4.3.2 Results for Spanish
- 4.3.3 Subcorpora in English
- 4.3.4 Subcorpora in Spanish
- 4.3.5 Summary of results in both languages
- CHAPTER 5. Experiment 2: Low-stakes vs. high-stakes deception
- 5.1 Introduction
- 5.2 Data analysis
- 5.2.1 Linguistic analysis
- 5.2.2 Statistical analysis
- 5.3 Results and discussion
- 5.3.1 Results: High-stakes dataset
- 5.3.2 Results: Low-stakes dataset
- 5.3.3 Summary of results
- CHAPTER 6. Final remarks, limitations of the study and further research
- 6.1 Final remarks
- 6.2 Limitations of the study
- 6.3 Further research
- REFERENCES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book marks the culmination of several years of hard work. This would not have been possible without the insights and support I received from wonderful people who must be acknowledged here. First and foremost, I am especially grateful to Pascual Cantos, PhD and Rafael Valencia-García, PhD, who generously provided insights and guidance during the preparation of an earlier version of this work for submission as a doctoral thesis. I would not be where I am today without their mentoring.
I am also happy to acknowledge the expert help of Carole E. Chaski, PhD, who has been strongly supportive to me. Likewise, it is with a genuine sense of gratitude that I report the financial support provided by the Institute for Linguistic Evidence. My special thanks go to this scientific research organization for providing vital research funds and enthusiastic support during these years of hard work, and for surmounting the difficulties to promote a paradigm shift in the application of linguistics as a forensic science.
Furthermore, I am very much indebted to Dr. Carlo Strapparava, Dr. Rada Mihalcea, and Sgt. Larry Barskdale, MA, as they shared their linguistic corpora with me, making part of this project possible.
Special thanks go to the management teams of the College of Arts and Humanities of Universidad de Murcia (Facultad de Letras, Delta Force) and of ←ix | x→the Department of English Studies (Filología Inglesa, Filing Power) for their trust in me, as well as their close interest in my research throughout the project.
I have also had the pleasure of working with the capable editing team at Peter Lang, and my thanks in particular go to Ulrike Döring and her team for their empathy and practical assistance.
I have a warm feeling of gratitude towards Sam, who has been a virtual witness to countless hours of work and a faithful companion during this lengthy process (you know, yo he venido aquí a hablar de mi libro). I owe my thanks to him and to all my friends, as they are one of my most valuable assets.
Moreover, I am particularly indebted to my family for being always there with support and love. I am more than grateful for Miguel’s backing, and for being a committed husband, father and friend all these years.
Finally, a special mention goes to Mario and Eduardo, who inspire me every day to juggle the responsibilities of motherhood, professorship, and college administration while trying to remain grounded.
CHAPTER 1. Introduction
1.1 Deception and language
The distinction between truth and deception has captured considerable attention from different domains, and the popularity enjoyed by deception detection has transcended formal research, reaching popular culture and giving rise to several forms of entertainment such as “cheap” or “paperback” literature; it has even reached the television industry, becoming the central theme of different TV series1 or of the well-known show Lie Detector, where tools like the polygraph are used to check the veracity of the statements made by both the general public and important figures. However, this increasing appeal of deception detection has also fed widely held myths into the popular consciousness. For instance, most people think that a liar can often be spotted just by observing their behavior. Most relevantly, in the majority of cases, it is felt that, as Vrij (2010: 1) ironically puts it, “[f]ortunately, we are well protected against them, because professional lie catchers are good at spotting such liars.” Nonetheless, this is just practitioners’ and researchers’ desideratum.
The investigation of linguistic cues to deception in written language is of utmost importance, not only in the forensic context with statements written by ←1 | 2→witnesses and people implicated in crimes, but also because of the increase seen by computer-mediated communication, where written texts constitute a fundamental element.
Nevertheless, the substantial body of literature on deception detection which is currently available should not mean that all is said in this field. Certain aspects of this area have not received enough attention. For instance, it is worth noting the lack of research into this issue from a discursive perspective, exploring the potential linguistic variations according to the topic dealt with. Last but not least, as mentioned above, most machine learning approaches to the issue at hand have not given a comprehensive description of the linguistic cues to deception at a contrastive linguistics level, but have rather dealt with broader dimensions in a single language.
Details
- Pages
- 156
- Year
- 2023
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783034347112
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783034347129
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9783034341882
- DOI
- 10.3726/b20697
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2023 (April)
- Keywords
- Linguistic cues to deception in written English and Spanish Computational classification of true and false statements Laboratory-produced lies in an experimental setting
- Published
- Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2023. 156 pp., 26 fig. b/w, 43 tables.
