Playing with Truth

This book presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the development of communication from infancy to adulthood, focusing on how communicative competence emerges through socially shared practices. It examines a wide range of communicative forms, such as deceit, white lies, pretense, humor, and irony, and argues that adult communicative registers are acquired through communicative games that children play with adults from an early age. Adopting the view that communication is a fundamental human competence, this book seeks to move beyond the analysis of isolated phenomena to develop a unified theoretical framework capable of accounting for the diversity of communicative behaviors. Although language is used across a wide range of contexts and purposes, the chapters in the book identify core cognitive processes that support communication at different levels of developmental complexity. Drawing on theoretical pragmatics alongside experimental and observational research in cognitive development, the book offers an account of communication as it unfolds in everyday interaction rather than idealized settings. It is intended for researchers and advanced students in developmental psychology, cognitive science, pragmatics, linguistics, and communication studies.