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Deceptiveness as a tactic in political English

A case study from 1789

 | Tampere University
ORCiD logo with link | Tampere University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Tampere University.

Published online: 22 January 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jaic.25018.rud
Abstract
The article examines Roger Sherman’s tactic of argumentation in a Congressional debate in June Sherman, Roger. 1789. “Observations on the New Federal Constitution, and the Alterations That Have Been Proposed as Amendments.” The Salem Mercury, 30 June 1789.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar against considering a bill of rights in a timely fashion. It is argued that Sherman had a covert intention with his objections, and that they were only pretexts, put forward to create a deceptive implicature to block any consideration of amendments and of a bill of rights. The article then focuses on the evidence for claiming that Sherman had a covert intention in the debate and attention is also drawn to the political circumstances of the debate that may have been relevant to his choice of tactics. A distinction between overt and covert intentions is shown to be needed in the investigation of deceptive implicatures. The article also provides an example of how historical databases can be used as a source of data in the pragmatic study of language.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Background on deceptiveness, informal fallacies and the enactment of the United States Bill of Rights
  • 2.Sherman’s fallacy in the debate of 8 June 1789 and the analysis of ad socordiam
    • Ad socordiam as an argumentation scheme
  • 3.Concluding Observations
  • Notes
  • References
References (49)
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