Seeing Bullshit Rhetorically: Human Encounters and Cultural Values

Abstract

This essay explores the idea that calling bullshit exemplifies Mercier and Sperber”s social intuitionist theory. It discusses a range of empirical research related to bullshit, including belief in the worldviews of Individualist vs. Communitarian and Hierarchical vs. Egalitarian with regard to accepting and rejecting ideas. Calling bullshit fits well with using the heuristics of like/not like and cognitive mechanisms of debunking misinformation.

Linguistic Indicators in the Identification of Fake News

“…Media researchers and cognitivists also draw attention to illocution as an important issue. Leonard Shedletsky emphasizes the functioning of disinformation ("bullshit" phenomenon) by writing that in order to explain this phenomenon it is necessary to focus on the intent or character of the speaker, on the audience (their values and beliefs) and on the text itself (Shedletsky 2018). When studying fake news, the computer scientists focus mostly on: the way the false information is distributed, the data on the sources of information, the combinations of various data that aid in the identiication of fake news.…”