In All bullshit and lies? Insincerity, irresponsibility, and the judgment of untruthfulness, Heffer addresses the question of how to analyse untruthfulness in discourse using a heuristic grounded in contemporary theories of pragmatics, philosophy of language, and discourse analysis. Heffer proposes the TRUST framework (Trust-related Untruthfulness in Situated Text), through which he provides clear, functional, and user-friendly definitions for otherwise vague terms in media studies. These include truthfulness, deception, insincerity, withholding, misleading, evasion, and the titular act of bullshitting, which is a term of art for a speech act combining what Heffer calls discursive insincerity and epistemic irresponsibility.
In chapters 1 and 2 of the section ‘Theoretical underpinnings’, Heffer introduces much of the pragmatic and philosophical machinery employed in the framework. In chapter 1, Heffer argues that truthfulness is grounded in the human need for trust and cooperation. He claims it is speaker insincerity, particularly an epistemic type, which leads to untruthfulness in discourse. Much of the discussion draws on Grice's cooperative principle and in particular, the Maxim of Quality on speaker truthfulness.
In chapters 3 through 7 of the section ‘The TRUST framework’, Heffer elucidates each of the steps of the TRUST heuristic. Chapters 3 and 4 explain how to identify untruthful claims and find evidence for falsification and, then, how to determine if an untruthful act is ethically significant or justifiable. Chapter 5 discusses many insincere discourse strategies available to a speaker. Chapter 6 explores epistemically irresponsible discourse strategies, such as dogma, distortion, and bullshit. Chapter 7 completes the discussion of the TRUST framework by introducing a sub-framework to analyse the degree of culpability for untruthful speakers.
Chapter 8 in ‘Case studies’ applies the TRUST heuristic to three highly public discourses involving untruthfulness: claims of voter fraud following the US elections in 2016, the BREXIT Battle Bus used during the Vote Leave campaign, and Tony Blair's 2002 statement to parliament regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Chapter 9 utilizes an alternative approach to the TRUST method to analyse the discourse surrounding the so-called ‘Salisbury Nerve Agent Attack’ and the poisoning of Russian spy Sergei Skripal in March, 2018. This alternative perspective shifts the units of analysis from individual speaker claims and short texts to the general discourse environment of untruthfulness in contemporary international discourse.
Overall, the book provides a ‘systematic practical framework for analysing untruthfulness in situated contexts’ (11). The scope of research invoked is broad and thorough. The greatest contributions towards the field may be the detailed typology of terms related to deception and untruthfulness and the role of epistemology and speaker knowledge state in judging and interpreting untruthful discourse. The ideal audience for this book would be scholars of media and/or language use with some familiarity with core theories of pragmatics and the philosophy of language.
