Misleading statements are utterances through which a message is conveyed without the speaker believing it to be true – but also without lying directly, that is, in a literal sense. Misleading statements can arise in various ways, for example through explicatures, implicatures, combinations of text and image, and formal expectations such as rhyme. They occur in various text types (advertising, political communication, comedy, crime novels, poetry, …) and serve very different purposes (attracting attention, defamation, humorous punchlines, surprising twists, …). The workshop examines whether the various types of misleading statements can be treated uniformly or whether they each require entirely different analyses. A particular focus is placed, firstly, on the linguistic devices used to mislead in different text types; secondly, on what kind of common ground model should be adopted for the theoretical analysis of misdirection; and thirdly, on the question of in which cases one can, on a theoretical basis, speak of a strategy. The workshop will be conducted primarily in German, though presentations in English will also be offered. Contributions to the discussion in both German and English are very welcome.
