Cover not available

In:The Pragmatics of Hypocrisy
Edited by Sandrine Sorlin and Tuija Virtanen
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 343] 2024
► pp. 44–73

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 3
Politics, religion, and drama

Exploring the metapragmatics of hypocrisy

 | Vienna University of Economics and Business
Published online: 1 March 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.343.03gil
Abstract
This chapter explores the metapragmatics of hypocrisy by taking a corpus-based approach to analysis. Specifically, the paper focuses on examining which social actors are labelled as hypocrites, what situations accusations of hypocrisy tend to occur in, and how language is used to construct people’s understanding of what hypocrisy is. To achieve this, instances of the lemma hypocrisy are examined within the Times Online 2000s corpus. Collocation analysis is used to explore the discourses in which the lemma is found, and as a result six broad categories are identified: social actors; religion and morality; society, social issues and justice; class system; drama; and metaphors. Exploration of these collocates and their respective concordance lines helps to further the understanding of this complex phenomenon, and it goes some way towards bridging the gap between traditional deception theory stemming from social psychology, and more recent empirical work within pragmatics.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Theoretical outlook
    • 2.2Hypocrisy and word-deed misalignment
    • 2.3Research questions
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Corpus-based methods
    • 3.2Data
  • 4.Results and analysis
    • 4.1Social actors
    • 4.2Religion and morality
    • 4.3Society, social issues, and justice
    • 4.4Class system
    • 4.5Drama
    • 4.6Metaphors
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (44)
References
Archer, Dawn, and Mathew Gillings. 2020. “Depictions of Deception: A Corpus-based Analysis of Five Shakespearean Characters.” Language and Literature 29 (3): 246–274. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Paul. 2006. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London: Continuum. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid KhosraviNik, Michal Krzyżanowski, Tony McEnery, and Ruth Wodak. 2008. “A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press.” Discourse & Society 19 (3): 273–306. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, and Tony McEnery. 2013. Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: The Representation of Islam in the British Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, Andrew Hardie, and Tony McEnery. 2006. A Glossary of Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Balfour, James. 2019. “‘The Mythological Marauding Violent Schizophrenic’: Using the Word Sketch Tool to Examine Representations of Schizophrenic People as Violent in the British Press.” Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies 3: 40–64. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie, Rochelle Lieber, and Ingo Plag. 2013. The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monika, and Helen Caple. 2017. The Discourse of News Values: How News Organizations Create Newsworthiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Buller, David, and Judee K. Burgoon. 1996. “Interpersonal Deception Theory.” Communication Theory 6 (3): 203–242. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burgers, Christian, Margot van Mulken, and Peter J. Schellens. 2011. “Finding Irony: An Introduction of the Verbal Irony Procedure (VIP).” Metaphor & Symbol 26 (3): 186–205. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2009. “The Metalanguage of IMPOLITENESS: Using Sketch Engine to Explore the Oxford English Corpus.” In Contemporary Corpus Linguistics, ed. by Paul Baker, 64–86. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan, and Michael Haugh. 2021. “The Metalinguistics of Offence in (British) English: A Corpus-based Metapragmatic Approach.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 9 (2): 185–214. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
DePaulo, Bella, M. 1992. “Nonverbal Behavior and Self-presentation.” Psychological Bulletin 111 (2): 203–243. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
DePaulo, Bella M., James J. Lindsay, Brian E. Malone, Laura Muhlenbruck, Kelly Charlton, and Harris Cooper. 2003. “Cues to Deception.” Psychological Bulletin 129 (1): 74–118. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Effron, Daniel A., Kieran O’Connor, Hannes Leroy, and Brian J. Lucas. 2018. “From Inconsistency to Hypocrisy: When Does “Saying One Thing but Doing Another” Invite Condemnation?” Research in Organizational Behavior 38: 61–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ekman, Paul, and Wallace V. Friesen. 1969. “Nonverbal Leakage and Clues to Deception.” Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes 32 (1): 88–106. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Feinberg, Leonard. 2002. Hypocrisy: Don’t Leave Home Without It. Colorado: Pilgrims’ Process.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Firth, John R. 1957. “A Synopsis of Linguistic Theory, 1930–1955.” In Studies in Linguistic Analysis, ed. by John R. Firth, 1–32. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fried, Carrie B., and Elliot Aronson. 1995. “Hypocrisy, Misattribution, and Dissonance Reduction.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21 (9): 925–933. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giles, Howard, Justine Coupland, and Nikolas Coupland. 1991. Contexts of Accommodation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gillings, Mathew. 2021. A Corpus-based Investigation into Verbal Cues to Deception and Their Sociolinguistic Distribution. Unpublished PhD Thesis: Lancaster University.
. 2022. “How to Use Corpus Linguistics in Forensic Linguistics.” In The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics, 2nd edn, ed. by Anne O’Keeffe and Mike McCarthy, 589–301. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2024. Corpus Linguistic Approaches to Deception Detection. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gillings, Mathew, and Carmen Dayrell. 2023. “Climate change in the UK Press: Examining Discourse Fluctuation over Time.” Applied Linguistics. [URL]. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gillings, Mathew, and Gerlinde Mautner. 2023. “Concordancing for CADS: Practical Challenges and Theoretical Implications.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. [URL]. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gillings, Mathew, Gerlinde Mautner, and Paul Baker. 2023. Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hancock, Jeffrey T., Michael T. Woodworth, and Stephen Porter. 2013. “Hungry Like the Wolf: A Word-pattern Analysis of the Language of Psychopaths.” Legal and Criminological Psychology 18 (1): 102–114. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hardie, Andrew. 2012. “CQPweb – Combining Power, Flexibility and Usability in a Corpus Analysis Tool.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 17 (3): 380–409. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “Log Ratio – An Informal Introduction.” [URL] [Accessed 2 Nov 2023].
Haugh, Michael. 2018. “Corpus-based Metapragmatics.” In Methods in Pragmatics, ed. by Andreas H. Jucker, Klaus P. Schneider, and Wolfram Bublitz, 619–643. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lauriano, Lucas A., Juliane Reinecke, and Michael Etter. 2021. “When Aspirational Talk Backfires: The Role of Moral Judgements in Employees’ Hypocrisy Interpretation.” Journal of Business Ethics 181: 827–845. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Louw, Bill. 1993. “Irony in the Text or Insincerity in the Writer? The Diagnostic Potential of Semantic Prosodies.” In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair. ed. by Mona Baker, Gill Francis and Elena Tognini-Bonelli, 157–176. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Masip, Jaume, Eugenio Garrido, and Carmen Herrero. 2004. “Defining Deception.” Anales de Psicologia 20 (1): 147–171.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Newman, Matthew L., James W. Pennebaker, Diane S. Berry, and Jane M. Richards. 2003. “Lying Words: Predicting Deception from Linguistic Styles.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 29 (5): 665–675. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Runciman, David. 2006. The Politics of Good Intentions: History, Fear and Hypocrisy in the New World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stubbs, Michael. 2001. Words and Phrases. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taylor, Charlotte. 2017. “The Relationship between Irony and Sarcasm: Insights from a First-order Metalanguage Investigation.” Journal of Politeness Research 2 (1): 209–241. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tognini-Bonelli, Elena. 2001. Corpus Linguistics at Work. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vrij, Aldert. 2008. Detecting Lies and Deceit: Pitfalls and Opportunities. Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Watts, Richard, Sachiko Ide, and Konrad Ehlich. 1992. “Introduction.” In Politeness in Language. Studies in its History, Theory and Practice, ed. by Richard J. Watts, Sachiko Ide, and Konrad Ehlich, 1–17. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wieting, Stephen G. 2015. The Sociology of Hypocrisy: An Analysis of Sport and Religion. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2020. The Politics of Fear: The Shameless Normalization of Far-right Discourse, 2nd edn. London: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Castro, Adrián
2025.  The year’s work in stylistics 2023 & 2024 . Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 34:3 ► pp. 302 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue