Břečka, klam a proud řeči

Abstract

The author starts with H. G. Frankfurt’s account of bullshit as a statement made without regard to the difference between truth and falsity and suggests certain generalizations that extend the applicability of the concept to all types of speech acts and (in the second step) to extralinguistic acts. Special sections are devoted to various types of circumstances eliciting the emergence of bullshit, the consequences of its mass spreading for the basic functions of language and for its conventional grounding in some population, the occurrences of bullshit in AI performances and the depiction of bullshit in narrative fiction. Like H. G. Frankfurt (but with different conclusions), the author discusses the relationship between bullshit and humbug as defined by Max Black. In the debate on the latter phenomenon, he focuses on specific types of humbug that are parasitic upon some components of the structure of speech acts.