Deception and euphemisms as a linguistic strategy in the context of (political) discourse

Abstract

The paper discusses lying as an ordinal function of language in the context of political discourse. To begin with, the phenomenon of lying is regarded as an ordinary linguistic behavior with a spe- cific function for the speaking individual. Based on a variety of empirical data, the aforementioned function is thought to be a certain evolutionary strategy that provides concrete advantages (to in- dividuals).