Joe Pei
What constitutes an authentic lie? Do males and females lie differently, especially when they are purposeful? Lying has always been a mysterious part of people’s everyday social lives, as it varies from individual to individual. This study aims at uncovering patterns embedded in deceptions among different genders. Politicians are naturally perfect subjects with which to study deception strategies, as they often need to lie to achieve various goals — covering a bad habit in the past, hiding a contrary political stance, or making an empty promise to gain ballots. They are usually also the most deliberate, as sometimes a lie being exposed might lead to the end of their career. This study looks at the different language patterns in House of Cards, a famous American political drama that closely resembles a true officialdom. Upon reading this article, you will be fascinated by the unconventional gender differences the study discerns in forming and delivering deceptions.
Background
Whether admitted or not, much of our social behavior is controlled for the purpose of interpersonal presentation (DePaulo, 1992), and lying constitutes a considerable portion of our social behavior. On the one hand, much research has been conducted around the topic, and past research and studies have found many strategies self-reported by good liars. On the other hand, a heterogeneous sample of written and spoken text reveals consistent gender differences in language use (Newman et al. 2008). This paper combines former studies on gender differences and lying behaviors and takes it one step further to study how men and women tell lies differently and especially whether, in addition to common strategies implemented by good liars of both genders, some strategies are more evident in successful male deceptions, while others are more evident in female deceptions.
Through analyzing selected language features with conversation analysis, as well as looking at the presence of politeness patterns, the study finds various unconventional gender differences in forming and delivering deceptions, which gives novel insights on how men and women set up different images in their environments and thus survive and move up differently.
Methods
In this research, data was collected from House of Cards. The main focus was on Francis and Claire Underwood, a couple who worked their way up the officialdom and later became the 46th and the 47th president of the United States. In this analysis, four instances of deceptions, two successful ones and two unsuccessful ones, were collected for each gender and are analyzed and compared from word choices to deliveries. Successfulness was defined as whether the other interlocutor believed in the deception.
In the conversations collected, several aspects of the speech were analyzed in depth. On a macro level, the main focus was on whether a kind image was set up with compliments and politeness strategies. On a micro level, the focus was on rising and falling intonation, length and frequency of pauses, and latching (meaning there is no gap between the end of a prior turn and the start of a new turn).
Results and Analysis
In the tables below, information regarding the number and lengths (in parentheses) of pauses, the changes in intonation, the number of latching, and usage of compliments and other politeness strategies was collected for each conversation and each gender:
The conversation analysis of selected features showed different patterns between successful and failed deceptions for males and females. For females, the figure reveals to us that the differences were mainly in changes in the intonation patterns. Pauses were sometimes present and sometimes absent, and so were latching, but there were significantly more rising intonations in failed deceptions.
Figure 2 is an example of a successful female deception:
The speech took place when Francis and Claire were having disputes on their political beliefs, so Claire went back to her hometown. Annoyed by the rumors of their marital problems, Francis and Claire decided to lie to the public that Claire’s trip was to visit her mother who got sick. Claire’s intonation was notably flat throughout her speech, except for a slight rising intonation in the last sentence. There were two pauses in the speech, one after the word ‘battling’ and another after ‘dignity,’ possibly to strengthen these words. Most notably, Claire did not use any compliment or show any sign of politeness. She purely stated the made-up reason behind her coming back to her hometown and requested for the media to respect their privacy and nothing more. The finding contradicted the standard model of women’s language according to Lakoff (Lakoff, 1973), which stated that women use more rising intonations and polite forms.
For males, there were also varying patterns of successful and failed deceptions. Intonation patterns and latchings were somewhat random, unlike in the female deceptions. More pauses were present in failed deceptions, while there was no pause in successful ones.
Figure 4 presents an example of a successful male deception:
The conversation took place when Francis was blamed for a mistake when he and Donald Blithe (a member of the House of Representatives) were responsible for reforming an education act. He tried to make Donald believe it was his fault so he could resign and hand his power entirely to Francis. He used two latchings in lines 5 and 10, possibly expressing that he was quick and firm in his response, thus showing he was recalling rather than making up a story. There were not many changes in intonation patterns except for a slight falling contour in line 3, and this was common in male speeches as men used less rising intonations, and frequently the speeches stayed constant in terms of intonation. There were many strengthenings of words in Francis’ response in between lines 5 and 8. His voice was raised in pitch. The emphasis was mainly on words that complemented Donald — words like ‘vital,’ and words that showed Francis’ hatred towards the made-up “betrayal” against Donald. With those emphases, Francis was likely to convey pathos to Donald and quickly gained his trust.
The two genders also displayed opposite results in their usage of politeness. The successful female deceptions displayed no compliments, while the failed deceptions showed signs of compliments and politeness. For males in a successful deception, the lie teller always showed signs of politeness and even gave compliments, while in unsuccessful ones, these features were not present.
Discussion and Conclusion
In this research, analysis showed that male and female successful lie tellers differ not only in their delivery but most surprisingly, in the different attitudes they displayed towards the other interlocutor. It was more or less understandable that for males in an officialdom, they needed to make nice to let the other interlocutors feel respected and in turn, make a good impression in front of them and appear convincing. However, for females, successful lie tellers actually abandoned the use of compliments and politeness strategies and appeared more assertive and competent. The finding presented in the paper coincides with William Labov’s famous gender paradox theorem, which states that “women conform more closely than men to sociolinguistic norms that are overtly prescribed, but conform less than men when they are not” (Labov, 2001). Officialdom is undoubtedly a new environment for women, and there are not many “overtly prescribed” norms for them to conform to. It might be because of this that women tend to utilize new and unexpected strategies, which in turn helps them survive and move up in officialdom differently from males. In the future, more studies can be done to further explore other environments and positions to which women were traditionally less exposed.
References
DePaulo, B. M. (1992). Nonverbal behavior and self-presentation. Psychological bulletin, 111(2), 203.
Labov, W. (2001). Principles of linguistic change Volume 2: Social factors. Language in Society. Oxford University Press.
Lakoff, R. (1973). Language and woman’s place. Language in society, 2(1).
Newman, M. L., Groom, C. J., Handelman, L. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2008). Gender differences in language use: An analysis of 14,000 text samples. Discourse Processes, 45(3).