SPEAKING OF INFORMATION MANIPULATION - A CRITICAL REJOINDER

This essay critically examines two articles addressing deceptive messa ges. We take exception with the Jacobs, Dawson, and Brashers claim tha t IMT is inconsistent with Grice, and compare their arguments to those of Grice. The Jacobs et al. data are reanalysed and shown to be incon sistent with their premise that deception derives solely from erroneou s Quality implicatures. Burgeon, Buller, Guerrero, Afifi, and Feldman' s article describing information management also is addressed. Althoug h the scope of their endeavor is impressive, we believe that their con ceptual definitions lack precision and that their proposed set of info rmation dimensions offers little practical utility as means of decepti on detection. We also believe that their findings do not significantly contribute to our knowledge of deception.