This study explores the nature of lying and its relationship to fiction. The purpose of this study is to challenge Meibauer’s (2015:158-182) claim that fiction cannot lie because authors do not...Show moreThis study explores the nature of lying and its relationship to fiction. The purpose of this study is to challenge Meibauer’s (2015:158-182) claim that fiction cannot lie because authors do not present their fiction as true. In doing so, this study will provide a compare-and-contrast analysis of the opening title cards of Joel and Ethan Coen’s film Fargo (1996) and Spike Lee’s film BlacKkKlansman (2018). Whereas the opening title card of the latter film appears to justly claim that it is based on a true story, the former appears to falsely assert this. This suggests that fiction may possess the capacity of lying. To determine this, the first chapter of this study establishes a pragmatic definition of lying, which, in essence, entails a speaker (S) asserting a proposition (p) which he/she does not believe in. Since this study focuses on fiction, the second chapter endeavors to establish a definition of fictional communication, which, in essence, entails an author (U) performing assertive illocutionary acts through fictive utterances and an audience (H) who ought to make believe the propositions (P) put forward in these utterances. The analysis and results of this study, which applies the theory provided in the first two chapters to the title cards of Fargo (1996) and BlacKkKlansman (2018), indicate that a speaker may well lie by means of a work of fiction.Show less
Social media have increased the ways in which people can and do communicate with each other. This could have consequences for speech act theory as founded by J.L. Austin and refined by J. Searle....Show moreSocial media have increased the ways in which people can and do communicate with each other. This could have consequences for speech act theory as founded by J.L. Austin and refined by J. Searle. This thesis shows that the introduction of social media has led to the existence of a new illocutionary act that is not covered by existing speech act theory: the illocutionary act of hashtagging. It is argued that hashtagging is a meta-speech act that has no counterpart offline and is deserving of its own category within existing speech act theory.Show less
