"The researchers believe that verbosity in some ways might be a marker for deception because the person doing the lying is doing a lot to paint a picture that actually isn't true."

"It's worth pointing out here that different studies have produced different results on this, Steve, so context certainly matters. In analyses of online dating profiles, for example, people who lie about themselves have often been found to use shorter descriptions rather than longer descriptions. It could be because dating actually offers better fact checking. If you claim to be a rock climber but refuse to go rock climbing, you'll be very quickly found out.... On the other hand, in a presidential primary debate, politicians might throw out several hundred claims, most of which are not going to get fact checked. So politicians who might actually have greater latitude to stretch the truth."

From an NPR discussion titled "Researchers Examine How To Spot A Lying Politician."

This gets what is one of my favorite tags: clear speech.

Justice Kennedy — substituting his idea of a "fair" question — stumbles through the problem of a government official faced with abiding by a Supreme Court decision she believes is morally wrong.

Justice Anthony Kennedy was taking questions from Harvard Law students last week, when one student asked a somewhat garbled question about whether government officials can act on their own understanding of the meaning of life. Scroll to 50:44 to begin at the student's question:



Kennedy says that he'll "refaze" the question "in a fair way," which seemed both disrespectful to the student and, like not bothering to enunciate all the letters in "rephrase," a bit lazy. But the crowd of students chuckled its support for the most powerful person in the room as he diminished their peer.

The "fair" rephrasing was:

Uh what what what is the duty of the public official if he or she cannot, in good conscience and consistent with her own personal and religious beliefs, enforce a law that they think is morally corrupt? 

The student had talked about "rational norms" and "judgment of the truth of new insights" and the "truth" and never used any words that connoted religion, morality, or corruption.

So, basically, Kennedy plugged in a question that the student's question reminded him of and that he had a good shot at answering in a predictable, conventional way. This is a strategy that is very commonly used by law students answering exam questions, and that I always warn my students against: I'll notice and you can't get credit for that. You must face the difficulties of answering the question in the form it is asked.

But Justice Kennedy was not writing an exam; he was talking to a friendly crowd that had just warmly chuckled its approval of his rejection of the question that was asked.

Did anyone really understand the question? I've listened to it a few times, and it is pretty hard to absorb and figure out how to approach answering. Why did the student ask it that way? Was it unfair? I'd have loved to have heard a more spontaneous dialogue between Kennedy and the student that began, perhaps, with Kennedy's saying: "Here's why I think your question is unfair: You're using words like 'rational norms' as if the official is looking, scientifically, at the facts, but I think you're really talking about religious beliefs and moral compulsions imposed not by reason and facts but by God."

But Kennedy plugged in the conventional answer, phrased — fazed — in the most noncommittal way:

"Great respect, it seems to me, has to be given to people who resign rather than do something they think is morally wrong, in order to make a point. Uh, however, uh, the rule of law is that, as a public official in performing your legal duties, you are bound to to enforce enforce the law. Um and it's it's it's difficult sometimes to see whether or not what you're doing is transgressing your own personal philosophy. This requires considerable introspection. Um and it's it's it's a fair question that officials can and should should ask ask themselves. Um but um certainly, in an offhand comment, it would be difficult for me to say that people are free to ignore decisions of the Supreme Court. Lincoln went through this in the Dred Scott case. Um and uh these are difficult moral questions."

It's the theater of thoughtfulness studded with ums and repetitions and expressions like "considerable introspection" and assertions about how "difficult" it all is, until you've either forgotten the question —  not just the original question but the substituted "fair" question, even as he reminds us "it's it's it's a fair question" — or you decide he's just said what you feel he must have said — what you want him to have said — and you go off and write a little article about it:



You know, if you're going to be mealy-mouthed, people can use you however they want.

"All I hear and see all day are men speaking their opinions, and I give mine in the same exact manner, and you would have thought I had said something offensive."

Said Jennifer Lawrence, who only "spoke my mind and gave my opinion in a clear and no-[BS] way; no aggression, just blunt" and was met with the response (from a male co-worker): "'Whoa! We’re all on the same team here!' As if I was yelling at him."

Yes, I know, you're going to doubt whether the way she spoke was really "in the same exact manner" that she'd heard from males. We weren't there. We don't know. But it does seem that woman are expected to pad their statements for the comfort of others and when we don't, it can be disconcerting. You can leverage that power, you know! You don't have to take care of others. And of course, by talking about it, Lawrence is declining to serve in the role of caring nurturer.

At the link, a WaPo columnist named Alexandra Petri attempts some humor by translating famous lines into the form of speech supposedly expected of a woman in a meeting. E.g.:

“Give me liberty, or give me death.”
Woman in a Meeting: “Dave, if I could, I could just — I just really feel like if we had liberty it would be terrific, and the alternative would just be awful, you know? That’s just how it strikes me. I don’t know.”

It's not like men can just say “Give me liberty, or give me death” at a meeting, and, in fact, Patrick Henry had a lot of verbiage padding the remembered line. And even that sentence had a blabby intro clause easing the bluntness: "I know not what course others may take; but as for me..." That's not that different from Petri's "That’s just how it strikes me...."

How objective are we, really, about the bluntness of other people's speech in comparison to our own? Of course, we are subjective, but that brings us back to Jennifer Lawrence's point: Part of our subjectivity in how we hear others is our response to their gender. That's the texture and energy of human life. It will not be eradicated. But we can be more aware and make better music.