Plausible Deniability and Evasion of Burden of Proof

This article examines the normative structure of certain distinctive types of arguments that use techniques of plausible deniablility to evade fulfillment of legitimate requirements of burden of proof. Understanding how such techniques are used in everyday argumentation is shown to be crucial to gaining insight into how informal fallacies work as effective tactics of deception when two parties reason together. The techniques use an indirect form of putting forward a proposition that a target respondent (or audience) is meant to accept, while building in a defense to shield off the need to respond to any request to justify (or give evidence to support) the proposition queried by the respondent. Jamieson (1992, p. 84) cites a technique of "veiled attack" used in recent political campaigns where a "double message" buries a "taboo" proposition in a socially acceptable surface (coded) text of discourse. The goal is to achieve "plausible deniability," as illustrated by the following case (Jamieson, 1992, p. 84):