Lies in the lexicon: A corpus-based exploration of lexicon in truthful and deceitful narrative accounts

Corpus linguistic studies have shown that lexicon varies according to linguistic register, and cognitive
studies have demonstrated that lexical aspects play a signi cant role in determining the veracity of people’s
accounts. Both lines of research underpin the present study, where the aim is to explore how overall lexical
properties (lexical density and lexical diversity, and noun, verb, and adjective density) are related to the veracity of
narratives. We make use of a corpus of 576 spoken and written narratives, especially collected with the purpose of
investigating linguistic properties in truthful and deceitful accounts. Data were collected in an experiment involving
36 participants who viewed four elicitation lms depicting minor misdemeanors, and subsequently recounted the
events in both written and spoken formats, resulting in four narrative accounts (two truthful and two deceitful, in
which they were asked to alter a critical event regarding“who did it”). The results reveal some signi cant di er-
ences in how verb, noun, and adjective density relate to veracity, but the results are inconclusive. A cautious
interpretation is that narrators make use of di erent lexical strategies depending on veracity but that elicitation
material may strongly in uence the e ects, stressing the di culties in characterizing deceptive written texts.