A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Conception of Lie

Lying has been explored by scholars in a number of fields, from philosophy to linguistics. From the perspective of philosophy, several scholars have provided a definition of the word lie. However, there is no unanimous definition. The lack of consensus creates division even among the scholars who research the topic of lie, dividing them into deceptionists and non-deceptionists. The deceptionist scholars suggest that a lie needs intention to deceive, while the non-deceptionist scholars dispute this argument. One thing in common between these camps is that they all have an agreement that believed-false is the most prominent element to determine a lie. Believed-false determines a lie based on the belief of the speaker that the proposition is false. In another research field, Coleman and Kay’s (1981) conducted a prototypical semantic research of the English word lie with English native speakers as respondents. The results of Coleman and Kay’s (1981) study support the philosophers’ argument. Since the definition of lie is mainly given by Western philosophers and also many experimental studies have been conducted in the Western lingua-cultures, it would be interesting to find out whether the perception and judgement of lying is shared universally. In order to do that, the present research follows the methodology of Coleman and Kay (1981)The data for this dissertation was collected using a questionnaire containing at least eight stories. Respondents from four countries: Indonesians, Chinese, Hungarians and Russians, filled out the questionnaire. The main question of the research is whether these lingua-cultural groups support the suggested elements of Coleman and Kay (1981) and their order of the elements. The research also addresses the factors involved in the interpretation of lying, and the perception of several types of lies, such as half-truth, untruthful implicatures, and white lies. The primary finding was belief-false were disregarded by Indonesian and Chinese people. These two groups considered falsehood or objective falsity as the most important element, whereas Hungarians and Russians perceived believed-false or subjective falsity as the most prominent element to define lying. Several factors were involved in the interpretation of lying, such as (1) the religion, (2) the social distance of the interlocutors, and (3) the age of the speaker. Regarding the types of lie, Indonesians and Chinese people consider untruthful implicature as a more lie-like statement, whereas Hungarians and Russians perceive it to be less lie-like. Moreover, all lingua-cultural groups have uncertain perception regarding half-truth and perceive a white lie as an acceptable and justified lie. The consideration that lie should be universally defined as the speaker’s false belief is the result of the tendency of ethnocentric discussion of lying by the Western scholars