摘要
What is a lie？ Why do people tell lies？ What compels them to make false utterances？ How do people treat lie, deception or fudge？ Is the attitude to them the same in different cultures？ If not, what differences are there？ An answer to these and some other questions is being sought in the paper. Producing a false utterance, the sender deprives the communication partner of the right to receive full information. The article presents views of Russians and representatives of Anglo-American culture on telling lies drawing the readers＇ attention to very serious situations, such as family conflicts between spouses, aggravated with lies. The material for analysis is taken from the texts by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov and the American novel writer Irwin Shaw. The analysis is based on the study of verbal and non-verbal markers of false utterances generated by quarreling spouses. A complex method of researching the literary material combining linguistic, extra-linguistic, and paralinguistic analysis of conflict speech acts with false utterances of different kinds is applied.
