Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 39 No. 4, 2019.

Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.21464/fi39406

Shakespeare’s Iago as a Counter-Example to the Traditional Definition of Lying

Martina Blečić ; Sveučilište u Rijeci, Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilišna avenija 4, HR–51000 Rijeka

Sažetak
This paper aims to question the traditional definition of lying. I do not present my definition of this phenomenon. Instead, I try to show that the traditional definition – to lie one must utter a false claim – is inadequate. To do that, in the first part of the paper, I present Herbert Paul Grice’s theory of conversational implicatures, which are explicitly excluded from the traditional definition. Next, relying on the theory of default meanings, I reject the widespread idea that the speaker can always distance themselves from a pragmatically conveyed message. Then I present the traditional definition of lying and the role that the intention of the speaker and the responsibility of the hearer play in it. In the second part, I apply the insights gathered by that point to Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello. After a brief presentation of the relation between Othello and Iago, I present three examples of dialogues from the play that I consider to be the cases of lying accomplished with conversational implicatures. This kind of analysis has a dual role. The first one is to show the inadequacy of the traditional definition of lying. Even though Iago does not utter a single false claim, he is lying. The second one to point to the limited scope of the possibility of denying a pragmatically conveyed message. Iago’s pragmatic messages are so strong that he cannot distance himself from them, even when he tries to.

Ključne riječi
lying; intention; conversational implicature; pragmatics; Iago; Othello; William Shakespeare; Herbert Paul Grice

Hrčak ID: 240428

URI
https://hrcak.srce.hr/240428

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