Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Language And Cross-Cultural Perceptions Of Deception, Brent Logan Laing

Theses and Dissertations

While much research has shown that some linguistic features can indicate a person is lying, this line of research has led to conflicting results. Furthermore, very little research has been done to verify that these supposed linguistic features of deception are universal. In addition, few studies have researched the cross-cultural perceptions of deception, which knowledge could greatly improve the detection of deception across cultures. The current study addresses these gaps in the literature by analyzing and comparing truthful and deceptive discourse of eight native English-speaking Americans and eight non-native English-speaking Ghanaians. The discourse was elicited in one-on-one interviews where each …