Re: I understand this, I'm not arguing that an AS should not be able to be sarcastic - Edit 1
Before modification by DomA at 06/12/2009 08:35:44 PM
If she had said she hadn't noticed outright without any sarcasm then it would be more debatable.
Her statement, sacrastic or not is still a lie... how does this not violate the 1st Oath?
It doesn't matter what words she uses, the binder caught on her intent, on the meaning she was giving her words, which was altered by her tone. Aes Sedai can make a completely false statement if they believe they're telling the truth. It's similar with sarcasm: they are saying one thing, and mean something else. By using a clearly sarcastic tone, Cadsuane made those words mean something else, something which was "true".
She wasn't trying to hide her meaning. By the tone, these words meant something like "everyone in Bandar Eban knows that", which isn't a lie. Not a shred of an attempt to deceive in there. RJ made it very clear the first Oath doesn't hinder Aes Sedai from using sarcasm and exageration at all as long as they don't intend to hide the sarcasm in order to deceive (he gave the example of a blind person asking the colour of something. AS could not answer sarcastically for that, but if the person saw normally they could use sarcasm and say "it's obviously black" - their words meaning "what sort of question is this, you can see as well as I it's white"
. In these cases, it's all about intent. They can mislead by omission too, because the oath stops them from speaking out lies, but doesn't force them to finish statements. They mean to say one thing and end up saying another by stopping in the middle.
Aes Sedai can speak hypothetically - in that case they are bound by the letter of the oath: presenting a true hypothesis without regard for the fact they hope it will be taken for a certainty (as Sarene did with Semirhage: it was a chance in a million that Elaida (or Egwene) would be convinced the woman knew too much to be executed, but that chance in a million was enough for Sarene to say "we may be able to convinced her to lessen your punishments" etc.).
Sarcasm doesn't fit into that description, at least not in the case of Cadsuane's statement.
It does.
You're looking at this in the absolute, when what is true or false is always relative to context, tone, intent etc.
In the absolute, Cadsuane's words were untrue. She could not say them in a normal tone. But if she said them with a sarcastic tone, they no longer were untrue as it altered their meaning to something else altogether, something that was clear to her interlocutor as well as herself. She wasn't saying "I had not noticed".
The binder would have stopped her from saying this sarcastically only if she had not noticed for real and was trying to deceive using sarcasm that actually she did notice. In that case, she could not have used a sarcastic tone, she would have had to say the words flat out.
Deadsy brought up Tamra's instructions above. She could not have said those words as a statement, but she could fabricate a lie and gave instructions to Moiraine/Siuan to tell this lie if asked. As long as they knew it to be a lie, she could.
It's all relative.
Looking at another example from Sionid in Malden, she is sarcastic with Perrin (saying something to the affect of not knowing any of that without him), her statement is all 100% true since Perrin was actually the source of her information...
I would need the quote, but if you describe the context well it had nothing to do with the fact Perrin was the source (which if I understand, she didn't believe to reply sarcastically), it was that she was being sarcastic.
The Oath stopped Siuan from exagerating the truth to Moiraine in NS even though her intent was clearly not to deceive.
The binder stopped Siuan because she didn't believe what she was about to say to be true.
And Verin reveals that she is BA with a statement that is obviously a lie "your dress is green" ... if an AS could say this sarcastically, why did Egwene immediately jump to the conclusion that Verin was not bound to the Oaths?
Because Verin said that flat out in a conversational tone, she didn't intend any sarcasm.