The project investigates whether lying with visual means is possible and to which extent visual communication generates commitment. While previous research has primarily focused on spoken and written language, this project expands the scope to visual communication, examining gestures, emojis, photos, and drawings. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining methods from theoretical linguistics, philosophy, and experimental research to deepen our understanding of lying and commitment across modalities.

Building on results from the first project phase, the current project pursues four main objectives:

Evaluate and refine diagnostic tools for measuring commitment
Existing diagnostics for commitment have primarily been developed for spoken and written communication. This project assesses their applicability to visual communication and develops a new diagnostic tool suitable for a wider range of communicative acts across modalities.

Gather experimental data on lying and commitment across modalities
The project conducts controlled experiments to investigate how different visual communicative acts are perceived in terms of lying and commitment attribution. A novel aspect of this research is the systematic collection of data for photos and drawings, as well as the attempt to compare communicative acts across modalities.

Examine the lying-misleading distinction across modalities
The project starts from the assumption that lying is possible with content for which the sender has acquired strong commitment, whereas communicative acts without commitment are merely misleading. By testing candidate cases of lying and misleading with both verbal and visual means, the project explores whether this distinction holds across modalities. Special attention is given to the role of (visual) implicatures and hedges.

Investigate the theoretical implications for the definitions of lying, misleading and assertion
The empirical findings on lying, misleading, and commitment in the visual domain contribute to ongoing philosophical and linguistic debates on the nature of assertion, the definition of lying, and how to best capture the lying-misleading distinction.

Besides integrating theoretical analysis with experimental research, the project also bridges linguistics and philosophy, providing new insights into how lying and commitment function across different modalities. The results will not only contribute to linguistic and philosophical theories but also have practical implications, particularly given the rapid rise of image-based communication in digital contexts.