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The Manipulative Disguise of Truth
Tricks and threats of implicit communication
Becoming effective hunters of manipulative communicative moves is far from an easy capacity to develop. This book aims at offering a guide to the most dangerous traps of deceptive language as triggered by implicit communication strategies such as presupposition, implicature, topicalization and vague expressions. A look at different contexts of language use highlights some of the most remarkable implications of using indirect speech and of how it affects the correct comprehension of a message. Within the remit of communication and pragmatics studies, this work marks an advancement in the direction of delving into the linguistic manifestations of manipulative discourse, its most common contexts of use and the educational paths that can be undertaken to master it in everyday interactions.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 322] 2021. xvi, 220 pp. + index
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 26 April 2021
Published online on 26 April 2021
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- List of tables | pp. xi–xii
- List of figures | pp. xiii–xiv
- Acknowledgments | pp. xv–xvi
- Introduction | pp. 1–4
- Chapter 1. Features and functions of implicitness in verbal communication | pp. 5–38
- Chapter 2. Quantitative and experimental approaches to implicit and manipulative communication | pp. 39–70
- Chapter 3. The manipulative evidentiality of implicit communication | pp. 71–96
- Chapter 4. Manipulation in news discourse: The function of presuppositions in the language of journalism | pp. 97–120
- Chapter 5. Manipulating translations | pp. 121–146
- Chapter 6. Teaching how to detect manipulative language | pp. 147–202
- Conclusion | pp. 203–208
- References | pp. 209–222
- Index | pp. 223–226
“This is genuinely an interdisciplinary book, full of insights and careful analysis, very informative, clearly written and all the epigraphs are wisely selected. [...] Masia's book is a great achievement, in which both a humanistic approach and scientific endeavor are perfectly balanced. It is a book full of insights, and more importantly, it challenges us conceptually and methodologically. It incorporates various disciplines, that use different methods of analysis; and above all, shows that the author perfectly knows where the limits are, and where some further investigations could continue. Masia has not only shown a high degree of expertise, but also a genuine cooperative spirit in writing it.”
Cristián Santibáñez, Universidad Católica de la Santísima de Concepción, Chile, in Journal of Pragmatics 200 (2022).
“This book is an up-to-date work concerning implicit language and manipulative power it possessed. The author goes to great lengths to provide the readers with both the latest discussion and frontier understanding within this research purview, making this book an enlightening guidance for the expert or lay reader. The book is very readable owing to the book’s clear structure and informative content, and thus is worth being added to the reading lists for scholars and students of linguistics, politics and communication.”
Chao Jiang & Zhou-min Yuan, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, in Pragmatics and Society 14:4 (2023).
Cited by (10)
Cited by ten other publications
Coppola, Claudia, Giorgia Mannaioli & Viviana Masia
Mayr, Paul
Brocca, Nicola, Viviana Masia & Davide Garassino
Federici, Annalisa
Masia, Viviana
2024. The evidential dimension of implicitly conveyed disagreement in
political debates. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 12:1 ► pp. 66 ff.
Masia, Viviana
Billig, Michael & Cristina Marinho
de Oliveira Fernandes, Daniel & Steve Oswald
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