Newsletter: The royals, the FBI and a killer’s denial.

Welcome to the latest Never A Truer Word Newsletter. As always, I’d love to discuss anything raised here in the comments, or by replying to this email.

LIES OF A KILLER

Iain Packer was jailed for the murder of a young woman last month. He gave two interviews to a journalist 5 years ago denying he was the killer. Have a look at the video here to see the deceptive language and techniques he uses… includes a classic “absolutely”. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-scotland-68428648

(This might only be available in the UK, sorry!)

QUALIFIED WORDS

This made me laugh. A perfect example of a set of words which appear to say something strong, but when you dig down into them, truly say nothing. Can you spot all the qualifiers and vagueness?

How many can you spot? Let’s take a look…

THE WAR ON JUST

Regulars will know I’m wary whenever someone uses the word “just”. So wary that the word has its own chapters in books! I often point out that the use of “just” doesn’t PROVE someone is lying, but it is indicative that some sort of deception is taking place. Deception is not necessarily malicious, it can come from a lack of confidence and a need to downplay one’s actions. Both of those concepts play beautifully into this message…

STATEMENT ANALYSIS IN ACTION

The Consult podcast is one of my favourites due to the fair and balanced way they speak about the evidence in the cases they discuss. One of their more recent episodes carried a detailed discussion of statement analysis that I really enjoyed.

And finally, by royal appointment

What do you spot?

“Like many amateur photographers” is social proof, everyone does it so it’s ok. It’s manipulative saying “you can be mad at this, many people do the same”.

Kate doesn’t say here she is an amateur photographer she merely does things like them

“I do occasionally experiment with editing” talks about what she occasionally does. It does not specifically say “I did on this occasion edit the photograph”

“I wanted to express my apologies” is in past tense, does she no longer? Did she ever?

This feels like a story with more statements to analyse soon.

Until next time…