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Deception by Professor of Linguistics and English Rukmini Bhaya Nair (Hardback)
£85.00
Available
Product Ref. (e.g. ISBN, SKU)
9781350466579
Published:
27 Nov 2025
Format:
Hardback
Number of pages:
304 pages
Dimensions:
234x156mm
Weight:
0.000kgs
Argues that lying is fundamental to the survival of the human species, through a series of philosophical, psychological and cultural examples spanning different traditions and disciplines.
Deception challenges readers to think about their own lies - from their first lies in childhood to the clever, provocative ones they told just recently. Scouring a number of texts in philosophy, poetics, literature and theory, both western and eastern, the book urges that, at a time when phrases like 'fake news' 'gaslighting' and 'false narratives' have become an intrinsic part of global vocabulary, an interdisciplinary discussion on the intertwined future of the twins 'lying' and 'truth-telling' is an urgent imperative. Rukmini Bhaya Nair explores the distinction between lies, metaphor and narrative performativity, presenting them as part of an interactive continuum informing how cultures engage with the concept of truth. With an engaging intellectual energy, Nair's discussion traverses an impressive diversity of writers and thinkers including Paul Grice, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Paul De Man, Noam Chomsky, the Natyashastra of Bharata, Sylvia Plath and Salman Rushdie. She argues that literary texts permit a re-evaluation of truth-telling conventions and offer a space to theorize and understand crises and problems in the world. Augmenting observations on philosophy, fiction, poetry and literary theory with scholarship in cognitive linguistics, the book shows how metaphors, fictions, and lies can function as potent cognitive stimulants.Deception lays the groundwork for a truly inter-disciplinary account of lying as a deep-rooted form of linguistic behavior, which will appeal to anyone interested in research on developmental psychology, philosophy of language, literary and cultural studies, and linguistics.
About the Author: Rukmini Bhaya Nair is Professor of Linguistics and English Emerita at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, UK, and has taught at universities ranging from Singapore to Stanford. Awarded an honorary doctorate by Antwerp University for her contributions to narrative theory, Nair has authored 9 books and over 100 articles. Her books include Narrative Gravity (2002) and Poetry in a Time of Terror (2009). One of India's leading poets, The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry writes that: "her work is widely admired for its postmodern approach to lyrical meaning and feminine identity". Nair says she does research in linguistics for the same reason that she writes poetry - to discover the limits and possibilities of language.
| Number of pages | 304 |
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