---
title: Motte and bailey
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/motte-and-bailey/
description: Motte and bailey advances a bold claim, retreats to a modest one when pressed, then reoccupies the bold one. Definition, the tell and examples.
section: Techniques
---

![Illustration: a dense, generic Cold War intelligence analyst's evidence wall of press photography, redacted reports and aerial reconnaissance imagery.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-evidence-wall.jpg)

[Techniques](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/) · Rhetorical

# Motte and bailey

In brief

Someone advances a bold claim, falls back to a modest one when challenged, then returns to the bold one; the tell is a slogan and a footnote that do not describe the same thing.

![Illustration: a schematic fortress diagram with a small fortified tower beside a much larger, loosely defended courtyard.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/technique-cards/motte-and-bailey.jpg)

Illustration, not an archive object

On this page

- [History and effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/motte-and-bailey/#history-and-effect)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/motte-and-bailey/#how-it-works)
- [Why it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/motte-and-bailey/#why-it-works)
- [Examples across eras and sides](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/motte-and-bailey/#examples-across-eras-and-sides)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/motte-and-bailey/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Where it ends: edge cases and legitimate persuasion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/motte-and-bailey/#where-it-ends-edge-cases-and-legitimate-persuasion)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/motte-and-bailey/#sources)
- [The science](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/motte-and-bailey/#the-science)
- [Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/motte-and-bailey/#case-studies)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/motte-and-bailey/#images)

Related techniques

[Semantic hijacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/semantic-hijack/) [Bothsidesism](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/bothsidesism/) [Euphemism / doublespeak](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/euphemism/)

Also called Bait and retreat, Equivocation defense

Advance a bold claim; when pressed, retreat to a modest claim; then reoccupy the bold one.

## The tell

The slogan and the footnote do not describe the same object.

## Not this

Clarifying a claim you actually hold.

## [Write](https://propagandaarchive.org/write/)

- [Fair, grey or deception: where each archive technique sits](https://propagandaarchive.org/write/the-line/)

On this page

## History and effect

Named by philosopher Nicholas Shackel in 2005, after the medieval fortification: an easily defended tower behind an exposed, valuable yard.

It lets the speaker enjoy the reach of the bold claim while only ever having to defend the modest one.

Lineage: Shackel 2005

## How it works

The technique needs two claims that can travel under one name. The bailey is the ambitious claim: the one that, if true, would justify the purchase, the policy, the vote or the anger the speaker wants. The motte is a modest claim that almost anyone would grant. Because both are phrased in the same vocabulary, a slogan, headline or rally line can carry the bailey while a footnote, a clarification or a court filing carries the motte. In ordinary circulation the audience meets the bailey. Only when a critic, journalist, regulator or judge presses does the speaker fall back to the motte, often adding that the critic has attacked a straw man.

The sequence has three moves. First, advance: the bold claim goes out through channels where reach is high and scrutiny is light (advertising, speeches, broadcasts, social posts). Second, retreat: under challenge, the speaker restates the claim in its defensible form and treats the bold reading as the critic's misunderstanding. Third, reoccupy: once the challenge has passed, the bold version returns to the high-reach channels without amendment. Because both versions share their words, the speaker can call the episode consistency.

The method depends on an asymmetry of audiences. The people who hear the bailey (customers, voters, followers) are many, and most never see the retreat. The people who hear the motte (courts, fact-checkers, academic critics) are few, and they are often satisfied once the modest claim is conceded. It also depends on real ambiguity: phrases such as "constructed," "no proof" or "stolen" each have a strong and a weak reading. Because the technique is a relationship between two statements made to different audiences, it usually appears only when the popular and the defended versions are laid side by side.

## Why it works

Paul Grice's account of conversational implicature (1975) explains the retreat. Listeners assume a speaker is being relevant and informative, so they infer the strongest reading that fits the context. An implicature, unlike a logical entailment, can be cancelled: the speaker can later say "I never said that" and be technically right. Steven Pinker, Martin Nowak and James Lee (2008) model indirect speech as a way to transmit a message while keeping plausible deniability; the motte is the deniable reading held in reserve.

Richard Petty and John Cacioppo's elaboration likelihood model (1986) explains why the bailey reaches most of the audience intact. Most people meet a slogan with little elaboration, attending to the headline, the source and the mood rather than to qualifiers. Ziva Kunda's review of motivated reasoning (1990) adds that people who want the bold claim to be true accept it on less evidence and pay less attention to the retreat. See [Motivated reasoning](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/motivated-reasoning/) in the Learn library.

Research on coded or "multivocal" political language points the same way, though it is contested. Tali Mendelberg (2001) argued that implicit racial appeals in U.S. campaigns worked because they could be denied, and lost force once they were made explicit. Gregory Huber and John Lapinski (2006) did not find that implicit appeals outperformed explicit ones in their larger sample, so the specific claim that deniable messages reliably beat open ones is disputed. Bethany Albertson (2015) found that coded religious appeals reached in-group listeners without alienating others, which is the audience split this technique relies on. The narrower conclusion survives the dispute: different audiences take different readings, and the speaker can answer to whichever is safer.

## Examples across eras and sides

- **The Frank Statement (United States, 1954).** The major U.S. tobacco companies told newspaper readers, "We believe the products we make are not injurious to health," and in the same advertisement made the smaller claim that there was no proof smoking caused lung cancer and that more research was needed. A federal court later found the companies used the Statement and the research committee it announced as part of a decades-long effort to maintain public doubt ([A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/frank-statement-1954/)). (Sources: Brandt 2007; United States v. Philip Morris 2006)
- **"Reality is socially constructed" (France, the United States and Britain, 1970s to 1990s).** Shackel coined the term for a pattern he found in some postmodernist and social-constructionist writing: a striking thesis about truth or reality being a social product, defended under challenge as the uncontroversial point that human beliefs and categories are shaped by society. Sokal and Bricmont made a similar complaint about relativist claims that moved between a radical and a trivial reading. The stakes here are academic and far lower than in the other entries, and many scholars in these fields reject the characterization of their work. (Sources: Shackel 2005; Sokal and Bricmont 1998)
- **Iraq and September 11 (United States, 2002 to 2003).** Senior officials repeatedly linked Iraq, al-Qaeda and the September 11 attacks in public statements while building the case for war. The Senate Intelligence Committee later concluded that statements suggesting an Iraq and al-Qaeda partnership were not substantiated by the intelligence. In September 2003 President George W. Bush told reporters there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, while surveys found that many Americans believed he was. This is a looser case, since the bold claim travelled mainly by juxtaposition. (Sources: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2008; Kull, Ramsay and Lewis 2003)
- **The £350 million bus (United Kingdom, 2016).** Vote Leave's campaign bus said that Britain sent the EU £350 million a week and proposed funding the NHS instead. Challenged, campaigners defended the number as a gross figure before the rebate, and after the vote several Leave figures described the NHS line as a possibility rather than a pledge. The UK Statistics Authority called the figure misleading during the campaign, and in 2017 its chair called its renewed use "a clear misuse of official statistics." (Sources: UK Statistics Authority 2016; Norgrove 2017)
- **"Stolen" in public, "not a fraud case" in court (United States, 2020 to 2021).** After the 2020 presidential election, President Donald Trump's lawyers and allies told the public the election had been stolen through fraud. At a November 2020 hearing in a federal court in Pennsylvania, Rudy Giuliani told the judge the case was not a fraud case, and when Dominion Voting Systems sued Sidney Powell for defamation, her lawyers argued that reasonable people would not take her public claims as statements of fact. The court filings defended a far smaller claim than the public statements made. (Sources: Donald J. Trump for President v. Boockvar 2020; US Dominion v. Powell 2021)
- **"Classic earmarks" (United States, 2020).** In October 2020, 51 former intelligence officials signed a public letter saying the New York Post's reporting on emails from Hunter Biden's laptop had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation," while also stating that they did not know whether the emails were genuine and had no evidence of Russian involvement. Headlines reported it as calling the story Russian disinformation, and Joe Biden cited it in the final presidential debate. Material from the laptop was later authenticated by news organizations and used as evidence by federal prosecutors in 2024. (Sources: Former intelligence officials 2020; Bertrand 2020)

These cases differ widely in consequence. A tobacco campaign and a war justification are not on the same scale as an academic dispute; the label describes a shared argument form, not equal harm or intent.

![Bayeux Tapestry scene: soldiers attack the timber tower on the motte of Dinan castle](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/images/motte-and-bailey-bayeux-tapestry-dinan.jpg)

*Scene 19 of the Bayeux Tapestry (1070s): soldiers of William of Normandy attack the wooden fortification on the mound of the castle of Dinan with fire; the inscription reads "contra Dinantes" (against the men of Dinan). The word "motte" names such a fortified mound, and "bailey" the enclosure beside it, which is the image behind the argument's name. Photo: Myrabella, 7 March 2013, CC0.*

![Full-page newspaper advertisement, A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers, 1954](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/frank-statement-1954.png)

*"A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers", full-page advertisement placed by U.S. tobacco manufacturers, 4 January 1954, from the gallery entry [A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/frank-statement-1954/).*

![Title page of Senate report 110-345, 2008](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/images/motte-and-bailey-senate-report-110-345-2008.jpg)

*Title page of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's *Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information*, S. Rept. 110-345, ordered printed 5 June 2008 (cited in the Iraq example above). United States Senate.*

## How to spot it

- Put the slogan and the clarification side by side and ask whether they describe the same thing.
- Note which version runs in the high-reach channel (poster, headline, rally, post) and which appears only in fine print, a correction, a deposition or a court filing.
- Watch what happens after the challenge fades: if the bold version returns unchanged, the retreat was tactical.
- Ask what the modest claim would justify on its own. If it would not support the action the audience is asked to take, the request rests on the bold claim.
- Look for accusations of straw-manning aimed at critics who quoted the bold version accurately.
- Treat legal arguments that the speaker's own public statements were opinion, hyperbole or not meant literally as a signal worth comparing with how those statements were presented.

## Where it ends: edge cases and legitimate persuasion

The distributed version is the hardest case. A movement's slogan can mean different things to different members: in 2020, some organizers said "defund the police" meant abolition (Kaba 2020), while other advocates and officials said it meant moving some funding to social services. Different people openly holding different meanings is a coalition disagreement, not this technique. It becomes a motte and bailey when the same speaker or organization moves between the readings depending on who is asking, or knowingly lets surrogates carry the bold version while its spokespeople defend only the modest one.

Neighboring techniques overlap. In [Semantic hijacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/semantic-hijack/), one word is stretched until it covers a new set; in a motte and bailey, two meanings alternate depending on the pressure. [Euphemism / doublespeak](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/euphemism/) softens the name of an act, while this technique keeps a strong claim in play and a soft one in reserve. [Limited hangout](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/limited-hangout/) concedes a small truth to protect a larger secret, and the motte can work as that concession. [Bothsidesism](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/bothsidesism/) often supplies the motte, as when "there is no proof" retreats to "the question is still open."

The accusation can also be misused. Calling someone's position a motte and bailey when they have consistently held only the modest claim is itself a straw man. The reader's test has two parts. Would the speaker put the modest version on the poster? And, after retreating, did they withdraw the bold version where it was first made? If the modest claim would not produce the action asked for, and the bold claim is never withdrawn, it is a motte and bailey. If the speaker corrects the record in the same place and at similar volume, it is honest clarification.

## Sources

- Albertson, Bethany L. 2015. "Dog-Whistle Politics: Multivocal Communication and Religious Appeals." *Political Behavior* 37(1): 3-26.
- Bertrand, Natasha. 2020. "Hunter Biden Story Is Russian Disinfo, Dozens of Former Intel Officials Say." *Politico*, 19 October.
- Brandt, Allan M. 2007. *The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America*. Basic Books.
- Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Boockvar. 2020. 502 F. Supp. 3d 899 (M.D. Pa.).
- Former intelligence officials. 2020. "Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails." Open letter, 19 October, published by *Politico*.
- Grice, H. Paul. 1975. "Logic and Conversation." In Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), *Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts*, 41-58. Academic Press.
- Huber, Gregory A., and John S. Lapinski. 2006. "The 'Race Card' Revisited: Assessing Racial Priming in Policy Contests." *American Journal of Political Science* 50(2): 421-440.
- Kaba, Mariame. 2020. "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police." *The New York Times*, 12 June.
- Kull, Steven, Clay Ramsay, and Evan Lewis. 2003. "Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War." *Political Science Quarterly* 118(4): 569-598.
- Kunda, Ziva. 1990. "The Case for Motivated Reasoning." *Psychological Bulletin* 108(3): 480-498.
- Mendelberg, Tali. 2001. *The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality*. Princeton University Press.
- Norgrove, David. 2017. Letter from the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority to Boris Johnson, 17 September. UK Statistics Authority.
- Petty, Richard E., and John T. Cacioppo. 1986. *Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change*. Springer-Verlag.
- Pinker, Steven, Martin A. Nowak, and James J. Lee. 2008. "The Logic of Indirect Speech." *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences* 105(3): 833-838.
- Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. 2008. *Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information*. United States Senate, 110th Congress.
- Shackel, Nicholas. 2005. "The Vacuity of Postmodernist Methodology." *Metaphilosophy* 36(3): 295-320.
- Sokal, Alan, and Jean Bricmont. 1998. *Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science*. Picador.
- UK Statistics Authority. 2016. Statement by the Chair, Sir Andrew Dilnot, on the use of the £350 million a week figure for UK contributions to the European Union, 27 May.
- United States v. Philip Morris USA, Inc. 2006. 449 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C.).
- US Dominion, Inc. v. Powell. 2021. 554 F. Supp. 3d 42 (D.D.C.).

## The science

Research on the psychology this technique relies on, from the [Learn](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/) library:

- [Motivated reasoning](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/motivated-reasoning/) — Motivated reasoning

## Case studies

- [McCarthy's numbers: 205, 57, 81 and the move from 'card-carrying Communists' to 'security risks' (1950-54)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/mccarthy-wheeling-numbers-1950/) — McCarthy's shifting numbers, 1950
- [The MMR scare: from a 1998 press conference to Vaxxed, and its 1802 ancestors](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/mmr-autism-scare/) — The MMR scare: from a 1998 press conference to Vaxxed, and its 1802 ancestors
- [Follow the science, Plandemic: COVID-19 messaging from officials and contrarians, 2020-2022](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/covid-messaging-2020-2022/) — Follow the science, Plandemic: COVID-19 messaging from officials and contrarians, 2020-2022

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Bayeux Tapestry, scene 19 (Dinan), photograph by Myrabella, 2013 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bayeux_Tapestry_scene19_detail_Castle_Dinan.jpg) | CC0 1.0 |
| "A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers", 1954 | Gallery entry [A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/frank-statement-1954/) | See the gallery entry |
| Senate Intelligence Committee report 110-345, title page, 2008 | [Senate Intelligence Committee](https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/110345.pdf) | Public domain (U.S. federal work) |

**Image gaps**

- The Vote Leave bus (2016): no Wikimedia Commons photograph of the bus with a verified free licence was found, so none is hosted; UK Statistics Authority letters are Crown copyright under the Open Government Licence and are linked in Sources.
- The 2020 court filings (Trump v. Boockvar, Dominion v. Powell) and the 51 former officials' letter: not photographed or hosted; no image with a verified free licence found for the letter.

## Related techniques

[Semantic hijacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/semantic-hijack/) [Bothsidesism](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/bothsidesism/) [Euphemism / doublespeak](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/euphemism/)