The case of the dropped cigarette
The words are revealing
Analysing words doesn’t need to involve high-stakes crime or unsolved mysteries. Here’s a look at the dropped cigarette and the £80 fine.
Here are Macey’s words on what happened:
I was walking in to St Stephens, it was raining and really busy as a lot of people were heading inside, I did drop my cigarette and accidentally burnt my hand.
I'm not usually one for littering but I did make a mistake, the woman came after me and my group of friends and asked us 'which one of you was smoking?'
There had been more than just me but I'm honest so I said to her that I had been so she asked me to wait while she took a few details.
I gave her my name and address when she asked and I asked her if she was fining me or something, she told me she'd get to that later on.
She told me she'd seen me drop a cigarette on my way into the centre so I said I was sorry and offered to go and pick it up and put it in the bin, she just said it was too late for that.
If I hadn't been honest, what would she have been able to do? There were a group of us and a few of us were smoking, we were in a big crowd of people all heading indoors.
It feels like I've been punished for being honest more than anything else.
It’s important to say first off that I don’t believe Macey is lying about any element here. Her words are a great study into how someone can say something and people take lot of meaning from it which isn’t there.
From the headlines and the coverage this story has had, it seems that people think Macey dropped a cigarette accidentally and got fined for owning up.
Only Macey doesn’t say that. At all.
Let’s break it down
She says:
I did drop my cigarette and accidentally burnt my hand
The order is important, she dropped the cigarette and burned her hand. I’ve no idea how she burnt her hand after dropping the hot thing, but she does admit to dropping her cigarette and, in this description, she does not claim it was accidental.
A lot of what Macey says is worded in a way that distracts from the fact that she dropped a cigarette.
For example:
it was raining and really busy as a lot of people were heading inside
This is irrelevant to the story, so why is it added? I’d suggest it’s to create an “excuse” for dropping the cigarette or paint a scenario where it may not have been her the warden saw.
There had been more than just me but I'm honest so I said to her that I had been
Have you ever been taught a phrase that says ignore everything that comes before the but? That’s precisely what to do here. In her own words, Macey is honest so said she had been smoking. The fact other people had been smoking is irrelevant again but could frame Macey as unfairly picked on. Obviously, in her own words, this wasn’t unfair as she had admitted dropping the cigarette.
Honesty
In the last two paragraphs, Macey paints herself as a victim of her honesty:
If I hadn't been honest, what would she have been able to do? There were a group of us and a few of us were smoking, we were in a big crowd of people all heading indoors.
It feels like I've been punished for being honest more than anything else.
This is a common tactic to see in criminal deception (which this isn’t). The person who committed the crime states that as there is no proof they did the crime, then there is no way they could have done it. No, it just means there’s no proof, nothing more, nothing less.
Macey isn’t a criminal. But she is trying to convince she is a victim at the same time as saying she did do the act she was fined for.
I don’t doubt for one second that Macey is honest, she states that all the way through and you’ll find no lies in her words.
Which brings me to the final words of Macey that I want to look at:
I'm not usually one for littering
Statements in the negative are always worth looking at. Why not just say “I don’t litter at any time”? Because that wouldn’t be true.
There is a way of saying “I’m not usually one for littering” in the positive rather than negative, which is “sometimes I litter”. Which isn’t as handy if you want to be seen as a victim.
I know Macey’s fine is a huge amount of money for her, her case is relatively trivial though, however so many of the techniques Macey uses to tell the story are in use in much bigger ways all the time. Her words are a great example to look at.
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