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118 Deception at Work

Such phrasing is referred to as a ‘projection’ because the subject seems to disassociate him-
self from personal accountability.

THE FOOTBALL MANAGER especially when he was trying to justify poor
results.
Kevin Keegan, the ex-England football
manager, often referred to himself as ‘Kevin’,

Use of pronouns

• Pronoun n. (Gram.) word used instead of (proper or other) noun (without naming) the
person, place or thing already known from the context. There are different types of
pronouns. Examples:
– personal (first person) – I, me, mine, myself;
– personal (second person) – we, us, you, he, she, it, they;
– possessive – my, mine, ours, hers, his, its;
– demonstrative – this, that;
– distributive – each, either;
– impersonal – any, some, anyone, something;
– interrogative – who, what, which;
– relative – who, what, which, that;
– reflexive – myself, oneself, one, himself.

Everyone subconsciously selects pronouns. Generally ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘my’ (first person singular) in-
dicate a positive commitment and their use in the past tense is consistent with the truth. Clumsy
construction of sentences to avoid FPSPT is a clear warning of deception. Also a mixture of posses-
sive and demonstrative pronouns, especially with the definite article ‘the’, can be interesting.

THE CAR I had nothing to do with it, honest. That car
just went up in the air … woosh!’
The subject said : ‘My Jaguar was parked on
the drive. I had owned it for a few years. I
jumped in the car and then it just exploded.

Also, the stilted or exaggerated use of ‘I’ can be a sign of concealment or deception, possibly
resulting from a discontinuity in the process of imagination.5 For example:

STILTED USE OF FPS not know Bill Smith.’ This extract is a sign of
extreme censorship.
‘I am the manager. I know about the system.
I have no reason to take the money. I do

5 Memory of events is usually in chronological order: imagination is jumbled