Towards the Semiotics of (In)sincerity (A Few Preliminary Remarks)1
Journal: Recherches sémiotiques
Year: 2018

Simply stated, sincerity is an intention to express the truth, while insincerity is an intention to mislead. A sincere person can be wrong and give false information, while an insincere person can make a mistake and speak the truth. Sincerity – and not the truth – is what is detected with a polygraph (a mentally ill person responding to the question “Are you Napoleon?” with a negation may well register as lying on a polygraph test). In this paper I bring different examples (from texts which belo