Page 76 - Deception at work all chapters EBook

Signs of Deception 117

Use of nouns

• Noun n. (Gram.) word or phrase used as name of person, place or thing.
• Synonym n. (Gram.) word or phrase identical and coextensive in sense and usage with

another of the same language.

Nouns may be proper when they refer to a specific entity (such as the King) or common when
they refer to a general class such as ‘investigators’.

The gender of a noun may be masculine, feminine or neutral.

A writer may give away a great deal of information in the way in which he uses nouns and
pronouns to ‘label’ people and things.

Changes in the use of labels when they are not consistent with the writer’s likely emotions
are suspect.

FROM GENTLEMAN TO YOB

‘I saw this gentleman walking along. He and story was written, the writer had already
a youth appeared to be drunk. The man decided that the man was a ‘yob’, so why
walked up to me and said, “Up yours.” The did he refer to him as a ‘gentleman’? This
fat pig then hit me in the face without any is inconsistent and the phrase ‘If I get my
provocation and I fell to the ground, the hands … again’ reveals that the writer was
youth just stood there. If I get my hands on far from a passive victim and had probably
this yob again I will kill him.’ already given the ‘gentleman’ a smack or
two. The syntax throws great doubt on the
The change of labels for the same person truth of the story. However, the consistent
from ‘gentleman’ to ‘man’ to ‘fat pig’ to ‘yob’ use of the noun ‘youth’ suggests he was a
is interesting. On the one hand it could passive bystander and that he could be an
accurately reflect the changing emotional important witness.
state of the writer when reliving the real-
world events. On the other, at the time the

The label used, and changes in the noun or pronoun for the same thing or person can also
be revealing. The excellent website – www.TheirWords.com – contains the statement quoted
on page 88 made by a man following the death of his baby son. The interesting point is that
he refers to his son as ‘his body’, suggesting he was already dead before he hit the floor

Also significant is the use of a synonym (rather than a pronoun) when the person refers
to himself.

PROJECTION TO A THIRD PERSON

In the ‘Praise the Lord’ scandal, Tammy frequently used the word ‘President ’ when
Bakker said, ‘No one would believe that Jim referring to his part in the deletion of tapes.
and Tammy would do such a thing.’ She In both cases the writers appeared to be
could have said, ‘We didn’t do it’, which standing outside their own bodies, thus
would have been much more convincing. distancing ‘I’ from the unpleasant truth.
Similarly in Watergate, Richard Nixon