Duplicity in political texts: Are lie-spotting strategies efficient in L2 contexts?

Abstract

Deceitful behaviors are mostly verbal, largely culture-bound, and relatively political. Verbal deceitfulness gives us such a survival advantage that some evolutionary biologists believe that the capacity to speak and the ability to lie have been developed hand in hand. This study was an attempt to investigate the relative impacts of using verbal (VSL) and semiotic (SLS) lie-spotting strategies on Persian Speaking EFL learners’ interpretation of political discourse. A research sample of male and female EFL learners was selected and assigned into two groups (n1=30, n2=22). Participants were all recognized as intermediate EFL learners after running an English general proficiency test (PET). Later, in two parallel experiments, the participants were exposed to VLS and SLS in 16 classroom sessions before they performed on a post-intervention political discourse comprehension. Both experimental groups showed a lapse in their posttests. Descriptive and inferential statistics supported meaningful impacts of both verbal and semiotic modalities of lie-spotting strategies despite the participants’ regressive performance in both experiments on the post-intervention test. The researcher concluded that applying VLS and SLS was a novelty to the subjects in this study who were required to differentiate between their pure comprehension of the political texts and dubious interpretation of the intended message which in turn suggests incorporating more political and journalistic texts and employing lie-spotting strategies in L2 contexts.