Construction of identity and the rhetoric of lying in Romanian political discourse

Starting from the pragmatic descriptions of lying and the most influential theories concerning social identity, this paper explores, on the basis of authentic examples, the relationship between identity construction and the rhetoric of lying in Romanian political discourse. We are interested in presenting, on the one hand, the strategies used to denounce a political leader as a liar and to fix this negative image in the collective imagination and, on the other hand, the strategy used by the politician to refute these accusations and rebuild his credibility ethos. Through this analysis, the paper also addresses the questions of the social and moral implications of lying in Romanian public space.