White lies, polite lies [ Reading & Writing / Communication ]
… sincere: Sincerity, in her understanding of the term, had been seen as a contradiction to social politeness ever since Rousseau ’s Émile (1762). 11 . Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, ed. Claudia L. Johnson (New York and London: Norton, … the speaker, and thus incapable of participating in polite society. If only in the subtext, Edgeworth pitches the Rousseauesque ideal of sincerity against the polite lie. Even the narrator cannot quite decide whether to celebrate blunt …
Conversation | Falsehood | Lies | Politeness
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