We asked Maya to write a short piece to explain the genesis and process of her prize-winning dissertation project.
In October 2024, upon graduating from the University of Suffolk’s BA (Hons) English Literature and Linguistics course, I was honoured to receive the Suffolk Book League award for Best Dissertation in English. The central focus of my dissertation was the language of lies. This project consisted of three main stages of investigation, each exploring a different area of importance for building an understanding of the language of lying. Throughout each section of the project, the research aim remained the same: to determine whether an awareness of the different linguistic techniques associated with lying language could be used to create a perceivably deceptive or sincere literary narrative.
The initial section of my dissertation focused on collating and examining existing studies which have been conducted to determine which linguistic cues are present within moments of falsity. Once evidence of these cues had been gathered and evaluated, a list of honest and dishonest features was established.
An interesting point that arose from this previous research is that people are generally inefficient at detecting deception. Thus, the focus of investigation in the next section of my dissertation then shifted to the devices that are commonly believed, rightly or wrongly, to be markers of veracity or falsity. This investigation was carried out in the form of an experiment in which 16 participants were required to listen to 12 recorded passages and make a judgement, in the form of a Likert scale, about the level of honesty they believed each passage to possess. Alongside this numerical selection, participants were required to provide a written reasoning for their judgement. The qualitative and quantitative data from these responses was then analysed to extrapolate patterns of consistencies that existed between the rating assigned to each recording and the features referred to in participants’ written reasoning. The results of this experiment were used to construct a comparison between linguistic facts and societal beliefs when it comes to the detection of lying language.
This subsequently led to the dissertation’s third section, which featured an analysis of Ian McEwan’s 2001 metafictional novel Atonement. The purpose of this section was to explore how the findings of the previous stages correlate with the linguistic choices of an author in honest and deceptive moments in a literary text. Extracts were gathered that contained a range of examples of honest or deceptive displays from throughout the novel. These extracts were then studied to see which of the previously established linguistic markers were present in moments which were intended to be perceived by an audience as honest or dishonest.
Ultimately, the results of each section of this research project formed the final conclusion that when used in conjunction with one another, objective knowledge and subjective beliefs can indeed be used to create recognisably honest or deceitful narratives.
There were many points throughout the research process at which I doubted whether I would be able to explore everything I wanted to within the space of one paper. However, with the invaluable feedback and support that I received from my wonderful dissertation supervisor, I persisted with my ideas and managed to produce a final dissertation that I am proud of on a topic which I would love to revisit in the future.
Maya White
Comments