A thick description, as opposed to a thin description, tries to go beyond a simple gesture or a simple act. The main difference would be how deep into that single occurrence we decide to go.
In Chilean society we usually have this practice informally called ‘sacar verdad por mentira’. This practice involves only a statement, which may look innocent, but beware, here could be someone trying to ‘sacarte verdad por mentira’. It is typical of any speaker to make statements. Even more than that, it is natural and almost obvious of any speaker to make use of statements to communicate and not only to state facts. But in ‘sacar verdad por mentira’ we have a total different use of a normal statement.
To illustrate how this work, I will picture an imaginary, yet common, situation that could happen to anyone. Let’s suppose there was a meeting. Only old friends from high school were invited, you couldn’t go, but you heard from Person C that someone cried the whole party and so, the event was ruined because everyone felt uncomfortable. You are person B, you do not really know the fact, because you weren’t there, and Person C might know the fact, but maybe it is not a reliable source. So you go to person A, which was at the meeting and knows everything that happened. You want to know the truth, but of course, you can’t go and tell him or her, someone told me that this person would not stop crying and etc. What do you do? You want to be polite, but at the same time you are dying to know: Le sacas verdad por mentira.
You go to person A and say to him or her: “It’s a shame I could not go, you had such a wonderful time, everyone was so happy about the meeting”. You know this is not true, of course, and Person A knows it too, so she or he would reply “What are you talking about? It was such a disastrous night, this person wouldn’t stop crying and we felt so uncomfortable, it was horrible!” And so, there you have your truth. You gain it by means of lying, but not exactly. You were not lying since you weren’t trying to deceive the other person.
This phenomenon is really common among Chilean society (or at least, the part of society I have been brought up in and the part I have been able to look at). My theory is also based in the fact that almost everyone knows the name of this practice (as it was mentioned before, ‘sacar verdad por mentira’) and by the fact that almost everyone tries not to be caught in such common trap.
