This has to be one of the most common dilemma people face most of the time. 'Should I tell the truth, nothing but the truth or do I lie??' Seriously, it all depends on your intentions and the reasons why you want to hide the truth. For example, your girlfriend asks you if the new dress she bought looks nice on her and you answer that it makes her look big. Dudes...big means fat in a girl's dictionary. A big no-no. Now, obviously, in order to not hurt her feelings and prevent from getting a slap from her, you should not tell the whole truth. Another example, there's this hot dude who you really want to talk to but you don't know how. Well, you could always say that you are lost and ask if he could tell you the directions. Anyway, there are three alternatives to self-disclosure.
1 - Altruistic lies
Altruistic lies are also known as white lies. You know, those type of lies that are defined as being harmless and helpful to the person you are talking to. People tell white lies for various reasons like to avoid conflict, present a competent image, initiate interaction or to protect resources. Example - there's this person who is talking to you non-stop as in he talks and talks and talks and worse of all, he does not even know that he making you bored to death. What should you do?? You could say " That all sounds really interesting! Anyway, oh, look at the time! I'm sorry! I really have to go now." Something along those lines. Problem solved.
2 - Equivocation
Equivocal language can be defined as a deliberately ambiguous statement that can be understood in more than one way. Intentionally ambiguous speech is usually used to avoid lying and telling a painful truth. We do this a lot. For example, you are at your friend's house and she is cooking dinner. Once she gives you the meal she cooked, you take a taste. It is not really to your liking and you would prefer to eat something else. Your friend worked really hard to cook a nice meal for you so you end up saying "I've never tasted anything like this." This is better to say than saying that it taste horrible.
3 - Hinting
Hints are more direct than equivocal statements. Some hints are used to save the receiver or sender from embarrassment. A good technique to save face. Example - You want to invite your crush to this place. "I heard that the new shopping mall has lots of nice shops and many interesting restaurants. It's almost lunchtime. Have you eaten at the Mexican restaurant there? I hear it's really popular." You say this because you want to invite the person there but you don't want to risk a rejection to your invitation. Hopefully the person can take the hint.
See? There are various alternatives to telling a straight lie. Even though honesty is the best policy, there are times when we get in undesirable positions where telling the whole truth might just worsen the situation. So we do those alternatives mentioned previously to save our face and the other person's face.
-Hidayah-
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment