Leading Questions

We earlier analyzed, and fulminated against, self-posed phony questions; handing out “Greatness” kudos to banal questions (and then dodging them); and the crypto-injunctive “Thank you for…” gambit. 

Thinking along those lines, I noticed something similar on this morning’s “Weekend Edition” on NPR, concerning a recent appropriation bill for the pandemic:

   Some of that is earmarked for testing -- yes?

The questioner was Scott Simon, and the question was posed to an area-expert on the ground, as one of a list of items to be got through.   It came across as time-saving and businesslike, but strictly speaking, as opposed to a neutral “Is some of that earmarked for testing?”, it is what is eristically called a leading question.   That technical term does not mean “a burning question” (nor, for that matter, a “great question”), but refers to the judicially deprecated practice of leading the witness.

* Structurally, considered as an illocution, Simon’s utterance is roughly the dual of the “Rumsfeld ploy”. 

In Rumsfeld, what is in essence a statement  is separated into two clauses:  an initial clause containing the actual content, and phrased as an interrogative; followed by a very brief clause, phrased as a declarative (and addressing the question).  

In the Scott Simon gambit, what is in essence a question  is separated into two clauses:  an initial contentful clause framed as a declarative; followed by a very brief clause, phrased as an interrogative.

*  Rhetorically, considered from a perlocutionary standpoint, the move resembles the “Thank you for…” in that it cogs the dice to elicit a desired behaviour (compliance or assent).

On a scale from most neutral, to most bullying of the witness, we note:

*  Did you take the money?

*  Didn’t you take the money?

*  You took the money -- yes?

*  You took the money, didn’t you?  (with an interrogative up-tone on the final clause)

*  You took the money, didn’t you (with flat declarative intonation on the final clause).   And, on a strengthened prosecutorial note:

* You took the money, now didn’t you.

There are side-subtleties, which we shall ignore, except to contrast

   * You took the money, didn’t you?  (Assumes that you did, and purports not to expect you to dare deny it.

  * (Oh, so) you took the money, did you?  (Affects surprise at a suggestion that you did.)

The latter contrasting pair recall the Latin interrogative particles   nonne (expecting a positive answer) and num (expecting a negative).

Word of the Day: “Collectedly”

[After weeks of essayistic Bigthink, I now, quâ linguist, perform the humble function pioneered by Miss Fidditch -- the grammatical equivalent of sweeping up the droppings behind a horse.]

When I taught French at Berkeley, it was my strict rule never to utter an ungrammatical or idiomatic sentence within earshot of my students:  for such, even bracketed by Awful Warnings, might neurologically  nonetheless  imprint itself  upon the immature and budding brain.   That is decidedly true for language-learning; recent studies suggest -- depressingly -- a broader application, to the effect that well-meaning academic or governmental campaigns informing the public “Don’t do X!”, actually enhances the status of ‘X’ in the mind (if we can call it that) of much of the public.  And this, not out of contrarian orneriness, but from simple psychology (or perhaps, the psychology of the simple):  Classic example, the unwisdom of Nixon’s “I am not a crook!”  Inevitably, that conujures up a picture of Nixon in the garb of a Beagle Boy -- granted, with a red slant line across it;  but such is the unconscious, as Papa Sigmund has taught us, that such a proviso will, in practice, fail of its effect.

And so to today’s mini-morsel.

The media are reporting that the Colorado Springs killer proceeded … and here we shall deliberately not quote what they are transmitting, since it is inherently semantically toxic.  What the witnesses meant to say, was, that the killer proceeded “calmly and collectedly”.   Collected:  self-composed, self-possessed.  As in the classic phrase, "Cool, calm, and collected."
What makes the adjective collected (and its associated adverb) somewhat tricky, is that its sense bears only an indirect relation to current uses of the verb collect, and none at all to the noun collection.   The use is originally metaphorical, as in "collect one's thoughts", "gather one's wits".  Or, in modern slang, "get it together".

A single person cannot move “collectively”, any more than a single person can “disperse”.  (That latter verb, with its obligatorily plural subject, is a favorite example of linguists.)

Thus ends our lesson for the day.

Synonymy and “Elegant Variation”

By all accounts, classical Arabic has an extraordinary wealth of vocabulary.   But a better term might be:  a huge heap of words.   Quantity does not qualify as ‘wealth’ in this area, unless it translates to quality.  Only then does a Worthaufen become a Wortschatz.

Accordingly, while writing my dissertation at Berkeley (in linguistics, not Near Eastern studies; a necessary distinction), I endeavored to examine specific areas (Wortfelder) of CA lexical semantics in the spirit of Jost Trier’s classic Der deutsche Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des Verstandes.   The results, alas, were disappointing.

Now, I had not then (and have not since) read widely or deeply enough in Classical Arabic literature, to have any real Sprachgefühl in the matter.   But even an algebraist would be struck by the frequency of cases in which, in that literature, subjects (X, Y, Z ) are given attributes (a, b, c, …) in the following pattern:

<X is a, b, and c;   X is b, c and d;  X is a, c, and e;  Y is a, b, and d;  Z is a, b, c, and e; …>

without intervening material distinguishing the nuances of the predicates.  Such procedures do not enrich the language, but impoverish it:  much as the supernumerary letters appended by medieval copyists who were paid by the line  did much to complicate, but little to improve, orthography. 

European philologists have similarly complained of Middle French historical texts, which only at first blush appear to offer a rich characterology of their actors, but the purportedly psychosocial portrayals turn out to be boilerplate.

In my book The Semantics of Form in Arabic, I treated this matter in the chapter titled “Accumulation”.  The word is here a sort of learnèd pun:  accumulation in the (diachronic) sense of heaping up and retaining vocabularly over the course of the pre-Islamic, Koranic, and later Islamic centuries, and in the (synchronic) sense of Latin accumulatio (ah-koo-moo-LAH-tee-oh), a term of rhetorical analysis referring to the piling-on of descriptors in parataxis.   Deftly done (by writers like Gunther Grass), it can be exquisite.  If done in lazy pseudo-synonymy, the device serves only as a preventive against misprints or misspeakings  (“I do hereby solemnly swear, affirm, and attest, that I do leave, devise and bequeath…”).

~

Contiguous/paratactic Häufung (accumulatio) is only one category of a more general phenomenon, which  since Fowler  has been known as elegant variation.  (Wikipedia has a brief but informative article on the subject here.)     It is the process whereby the student drafts out something like

Animal Farm was an interesting book.  It interested me very much.  It says many interesting things about many interesting animals, in a way that holds the reader's interest.

and then, having been admonished not to keep repeating and repeating and repeating the same words over and over  again and again, reaches for the trusty thesaurus (a.k.a. dictionary of synonyms a.k.a. semantic lexicon) and revises as follows:

Animal Farm was an interesting book.  It fascinated me very much.  It says many intriguing things about a plethora of gripping animals, in a way that holds the reader's fascination.

Mr Roget, you have much to answer for.

~

These reflections from grad-school days (indeed, from high school, when I read Fowler’s Modern English Usage religiously  devoutly  with intensely fascinated gripping interest) returned earlier today  as I listened to “Morning Edition”.  The anchor announced that Russia had “rejected” the new U.N. report alleging Bad Things Happening in eastern Ukraine.   The verb struck me as comical.   Such a report consists of a sequence of allegations and attributions -- sourced propositions assessable as to truth value, warrantability of assertion, etc.   You can refute a statement (proving it untrue), or deplore it (conceding its likely truth but denouncing the circumstances of publically stating it), or pooh-pooh it (conceding that it might be true, but is too unimportant to warrant your attention);  but reject sounds as though it has some official and effective status, as when you reject a suitor or reject an invitation (in which case the original proposal is null and void).  Russia can certainly veto a proposal in the Security Council, but what does it mean to “reject” an entire report (and does that mean: in part, or in toto)?

That is to say:  If the court accuses you of having carnally interfered with Mrs O’Leary’s cow, and of murdering her eleven children, you are not in a position to simply “reject” the accusation, like writing “Return to sender” or “Not at this address” on an unopened envelope.  If summoned to appear in court, you might plead Not Guilty; you might point out that, being but four years old, you are not legally answerable to such a charge; but you do not really have the Bartleby Option of replying “I would prefer not to.”

But the broadcast segued into the segment from a reporter, who, covering the identical facts, used a different verb for the Russian response to the report:  dismiss, if memory serves.  [Note:  Both the NPR and WAMU web sites are seriously deficient in listing and/or indexing major stories -- this was after all the lead item this morning.   Searching those sites, I could not find it.   So I might have misremembered one of the three or four verbs that were used pseudo-synonymously on that broadcast this morning-- discount was one of them, I believe -- , but structurally the point being made here remains intact.]

Dismiss is marginally weaker;  as, a judge may dismiss a case in the sense of declining to hear the appeal or sending it back to a lower court,  which is a weaker result than explicitly finding against the appellant.

Shortly after that, a different reporter used yet a different verb to describe the Russian response, one with yet slightly weaker connotation.

That sort of thing cannot be as easily explained as the case of the interest of our interested reader of an interesting book, since the texts in question were not contiguous, and were uttered in each case by someone different.  Still, it may be significant that the strongest -- and least justifiable -- term  came at the outset, from the anchor.   That strategy -- draw the listener in from the beginning, then gradually let him down  (“We don’t have that particular item you saw in the window  available for sale today, but perhaps we can interest you in…”) -- is widely abused in journalism;  we dissected one such case from this morning’s Washington Post here.

Enten/Eller -- Johnny Dollar edition

Each Sunday evening, the local NPR station  takes a breather from its strenuous shilling  for the paraphiliac agenda, and tosses a bone to the Middle-Aged Straight Guy, in the shape of “The Big Broadcast”.  Reliably, it leads off with one of the “transcribed adventures” of Johnny Dollar, “the man with the action-packed expense account”. 

Tonight’s episode included the following line, uttered in Brooklynese:

“Listen, Dollar.  Let’s not waste  either your time or either mine.”

Linguists immediately recognize a demotic counterpart to the expressions for what in standard English is <<either X or Y>>, in such languages as Latin, standard French, or standard Arabic (the latter being even closer):

<<aut X, aut Y>>

<< ou X, ou Y>>

<< immâ X, wa-immâ  Y>>

We wait  with bated breath  for next week’s episode …

Syntactic Funfact of the Day: the Scope of Quantifiers

In modern grammar, a quantifier is a word like most, many, only;  and its scope in the sentence  consists of the words (or, rather, the concepts behind them) to which it applies.

Thus, in

            (1)  Most men and women like penguins.

the word most would, on the normal reading of the sentence, apply to men and women, and the sentence means that a majority of adults like penguins.  Whereas in

            (2)  Most men and quite a few women like hamsters.

most applies to men only.

The scholastics and their inheritors delighted in the syntax and semantics of such constructions.  A parade-example is

            (3)  Only Satan pities himself.

which is ambiguous, meaning either

            (3i)  The only individual who pities Satan is Satan himself.

or

            (3ii) Only Satan is given to self-pity.

           

Contrast

            (4)  Satan pities only himself.

which is unambiguous, and means “Satan pities himself and no-one else”  -- as opposed to “Satan pities himself and no-one else does”, which is another way of saying (3i).  This behavior is typical:  as a rule of thumb, a quantifier farther out to the syntactic edge will tend to admit readings of either broad or narrow scope, whereas a quantifier nestling well-embedded is more likely to be narrow.

Careful attention to where you place your quantifiers, and to the possible uncertainties  of interpretation with which you might be burdening the reader in case of scope-ambiguity, are sound linguistic hygiene.

(Note:  During the heyday of "Generative Semantics", to which your reporter was exposed at a tender age,  the term "Satan" in such sentences  was generally replaced by "Nixon" or "LBJ".  A distinction without a difference.)

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~ Commercial break ~

Relief for beleaguered Nook lovers!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

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~

I was reminded of those old chestnuts earlier today, when reading a bit about Africa, currently so prominently in the news.    The following sentence appears in the article Mauritania, in the Third Edition of the Concise Columbia Encylopedia:

            (5)  Slavery was only officially abolished in 1980.

Encyclopedia articles tend to receive more careful copy-editing than do the daily newspapers;  nonetheless, a crucial ambiguity has here escaped the grammarian’s pen.  (5) can mean either

            (5i) Slavery was officially abolished only in 1980 (and not before)

-- that is, where only modifies in 1980;  or

            (5ii) Slavery was “abolished” in 1980 -- but only officially, not de facto.

That makes quite a big difference, especially for the existent or non-existent slaves!

I suspect that what the writer intended was (5i), but that the actual truth is (5ii).  Indeed, it is even possible that subconscious awareness of the real as opposed to the official state of affairs  led the writer to a sort of quantificational Freudian slip, where the meaning (5ii) peeps through below the surface.

By now curious as to the real-word state of events, I checked Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Mauritania

which reports that, although officially abolished in 1981 (sic), the practice lives on -- nay, continues to enjoy a rude good health, with up to one fifth of the population being slaves.

(Only Satan is especially pleased at this.)

Weasel Words of the Day: “stronger”; “about”.

weasel word [fr. the weasel’s reputed habit of sucking the contents out of an egg  while leaving the shell superficially intact] (1900) :

a word used in order to evade or retreat from a direct or forthright statement or position

-- Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition

Certain terms are, in our society, inherently weasel-words:  pro-life; pro-choice.   Nobody in the debate opposes either “life” or “choice” simpliciter;  to find such factions, you would have to attend a meeting of Death-Eaters (anti-life) or neuroscientists (denying the existence of the faculty of choice -- Free Will).   The resort to these euphemisms  degrades the debate.

For other terms, it’s not so obvious.  Take the expression “Let me be perfectly clear.”   For many people, this phrase seems consumately weasely in itself;  but really, this is only because of its well-known characteristic use by Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon, who would typically follow up the phrase  with a lie or an obfuscation.  But such infractions do not inhere in the phrase.   Owing to our long memory of its Nixonian misuse, no-one can any longer say it with a straight face  (a snide version of the phrase, "Read My Lips", similarly fell out of favor owing to a spectacular mishap by Bush senior); but in principle, a straightforward and respectable use exists for it.   At the lower end, it would be just a kind of throat-clearing, giving the reporters time to get out their pencils and lend an ear.   (Note to the new generation: Back in Nixon’s day, reporters used these things called “pencils”.  They’re kind of hard to describe.)  At the highest end, the use of the phrase would follow the following pragmatic conditions.  (Note to the laity:  “Pragmatic” in the linguistic sense of pragmatics, the discourse-related partner of semantics,  rather than in the politician’s sense of “yes this is lame but let’s do it anyway  because anything else could hurt our poll numbers”.)

Conditions of legitimate use:

(1)  What I am about to say is no off-the-cuff throwaway line.  I have thought about what I am about to say, and you are free to quote me; I won’t complain, when the outcry arises, that the remark was “taken out of context” or that “that wasn’t what I meant”.

This licenses the expression’s use in a moral and alethic sense;  so used, it is admirable, statesmanlike.

Then further, at the next meta level up,  there is a pragmatic consideration that licenses the speaker even to use an expression (any expression that make such claims as in (1), not just this one) in the first place:

(2)  I am, by general acknowledgement, in a position of some authority;  I am a person whose words must be well-weighed, as they are likely to be acted upon.

~

We earlier analyzed (and excoriated) certain other weaselly expressions that lately have proliferated weed-like in the public square: as, “Well, again, …”    Here are two more -- neither of them obvious weasels, but which reveal their mustelid nature upon analysis.

(I)  “stronger”

This one looks innocent enough, and most uses of it indeed are.   The instance that caught my attention, on the news broadcast this morning on NPR, was not truly weaselly in the sense of wittingly devious, but it was at best intellectually lazy -- and thus, in the event, reprehensible, since the woman who used it is a prominent newscaster for National Public Radio, and should know better.   The subject was U.S. policy towards Syria, and the newswoman asked her interviewee whether, in his opinion, the U.S. reponse should be “stronger” -- point à la ligne;  no indication of what that might entail.

It is a subtle point, but that move already corrupted the terms of the discussion, by presupposing a linear dimension of assessment, running from weaker to stronger.  There are a very few cases in life where so simple an evaluatory topology may be in place:  say,  “This beam is stronger than that one”.  (Note:  I had to rack my brains to come up with a use that would be semantically impeccable; but even here, you would need to qualify:  Are you speaking of transverse bearing-strength; longitudinal bearing-strength;  resistence to sharp impact, from an impact angle ranging from 0 to 180; resistence to compression; resistance to elongation; resistence to torsion; or what.  You see, even the simplest things  are not so simple).    Such a state of affairs certainly does not obtain in the boiling Syrian cauldron:  not statics but chaos theory would be the relevant quantitative handmaid.

But it is worse than that.  The antonym of “strong” is “weak”, and weak is what no President ever, ever wants to be called -- not simply for political reasons, but for socio-psychoanalytical (the President as the symbolic Father of the Country; weak = impotent:  the worst possible thing for a would-be father to be).  Hence, the subtext or subspin offered by presenting the problem in terms of “stronger” or “weaker” politicies, is simply to provoke unconsidered military action -- “Don't just stand there -- bomb something!”   Such an attitude does indeed characterize the premature-ejaculatory public pronouncements (better some jism that falls to the ground, than not getting it up at all, one supposes) of some Republican Vulcan chickenhawks:  but they know not whereof they speak.

Try this experiment.   Ask one of the Congressional sword-rattlers whether the U.S. should ofter “stronger support to the Syrian Christian community than the Obama administration has been willing to offer”;   you are likely to get a forcefully bellowed “Yes!”  But the principle dividing-line at present, in that fractured and ever-shifting Syrian mosaic, runs between, on the one side, the Asad regime and its allies in the religious minorities, Alawite, Kurd, and … Christian;  and on the other, a hodge-podge of ill-coordinated Sunni Syrian rebels, plus an increasingly potent and more tightly organized and more violent al-Nusrah Front, which is run by al-Qaeda.  So, Senator, just what exactly did you have in mind?

There is nothing wrong with toughness per se;  it is simply a socio-rhetorical fact about America that, frequently, the call to “get tough” is made in blithe independence of the facts on the ground.    Thus, if you maintain that the Obama administration have been panty-waisted pussyfoots in dealing with Iran, you are free to do so;  but intellectually you are in arrears if you do this in ignorance of things like the Stuxnet attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet), or the affects of our increased sanctions against that steaming, simmering, and suffering land.  To take one item at random from the morning’s news:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-iran-hanging-20130121,0,2907702.story

In Iran, two muggers caught on video are hanged

The death sentences are seen as a get-tough message from Iranian authorities alarmed about escalating street thuggery amid a sanctions-driven economic downturn.

Students of history are familiar with the sometimes unfortunate effects of harsh sanctions, for instance against the Weimar republic, which paved the way for National Socialism.

(II) “about”

A new rhetorical formula has sprung up, now everywhere to be heard on broadcast political discussion (I say “broadcast” because the formula is more characteristic of speech than of writing):  “It’s not about X, it’s about Y.”

There exists, of course,  a perfectly valid use of this formula:  but it crucially depends on what the meaning of “it” is (to coin a phrase).   If, say, It here refers to A Tale of Two Cities, then the following are pragmatically impeccable statements (the first false, the second true):

(i)  It’s not about London and Paris, it’s about Minneapolis and St. Paul.

(ii) It’s not about the Franco-Prussian war, it’s about the French revolution.

Whereas, the characteristic of the new use which we wish here to put beneath the magnifying-glass (and upon the rack), is that now the word “it” … does not actually refer to anything;  it is more like the “expletive” it (again, I use the term expletive in the sense of grammarians, not in that of the Nixon tapes) in expressions like “It’s raining” or “It’s a shame the way things worked out””.    In the latter instance, the “it” is non-referring, but the copula still has some work to do, having the same value as it does in the non-cleft relative  “The way things worked out is a shame.”   Whereas in the new use -- “It’s not about profits, it’s about America” or “It’s not about moving forward, it’s about the environment”  and so forth -- the copula too is emptied of all significance, having (so to speak) nothing left to copulate with.   The resulting formulae mean almost nothing, and are virtually impossible to paraphrase.

The context of this morning’s use -- again from “Weekend Edition” -- was a discussion of the proposal to put armed guards in every school.   (My own alternative proposal, to put an etymologist in every school, did not come up for discussion.)  The person being interviewed said:

“It’s not about romance or drama,

 it’s about protecting our kids.”

Almost nothing else was offered by way of argument;   the above statement was allowed to ring over the airwaves unchallenged, as a genuine argument in the debate.

Now, take out your pencils (ask Gramps what that means) because this is a test:   Does that statement present an argument in favor of the proposal, or against it?  And, in the event that the statement is semantically vacuous, with no “cognitive content” at all,  was it intended, as a rhetorical move, to support or refute the proposal?

[The exciting answer will be revealed tomorrow.   Meanwhile, tell your friends.]

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http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

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Footnote:   There is an interesting -- and telling -- meta-pragmatic condition-of-use here, basically opposite to that in (2) above for “Let me be perfectly clear”.  The latter is a Winner’s phrase;  whereas “It’s not about X, it’s about Y” is used either by, or when addressing, subalterns.   The very vacuous semantics and collapse of syntax, dissected above, are badges it wears on its sleeve.   The warrant-for-use condition would go something like this:

(3)  Me’m jist folks here, as are y’all -- never did have much of a head for grammar, or argumentation, or cogency, or exposition -- but b’dang this here thing comes from m’heart!

The kinesic equivalent of the phrase would be a plaintive look from a puppy basset-hound.

[Note on the note:  Another linguistic technical expression.  Kinetic is already a twenty-dollar word, whereas kinesic will setcha back a fitty-bone.

For those fond of words costing upwards of a hundred dollars, click here:

Logophilia. ]

Historical bonus:

Over a century ago, the psychologist and philosopher William James  already adverts to the weaseliness of “about”:

All dumb psychic states have … been coolly suppressed; or, if recognised at all, have been named after the substantive perception they led to, as thoughts “about” this object or “about” that,  the stolid word about  engulphing all their delicate idiosyncracies in its monotonous sound.

-- William James, “On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology” (in Mind, 1884)

[Update, 24 January 2013]   This morning, NPR interviewed a woman who was trying to get gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered  covered under the Violence Against Women Act.  Her concluding statement:

"This is not about identity politics; this is about where the unmet needs remain."

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~ Commercial break ~

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

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[Update later that evening]  You needn't listen long to NPR, before being exposed to yet more semantically vacuous tricks of syntax.  Just now, with reference to the Newtown shootings:

"It's the commission's job

to allow victims to be victims."

This echoes the brain-damaged slogan of the '80's, "Let Reagan be Reagan."   It's not a question of weasel words, since any word can be used in this structure, which we dub "Triumphalist Tautalogy".  It's weasel syntax.  Other examples:  "Business is business" (used by someone screwing you); "Boys will be boys" (excusing bad behavior), "War is war" (excusing even worse behavior).

[Meta-update]  I have pondered deeply a wealth of examples of such Sappy Syntax,  and extracted this pearl of wisdom from its oystershell grip:

~  The Meaning of Life  ~

~  is to live  ~

~  a life full of Meaning … ~

Fun with Pronouns

In Massachusetts, a guy killed his wife, went to jail.  Then he thought to himself:  Hmm, how nice it would be if I could slice off my dick.  Nicer still, if someone else would pay for it.  So he sued.

What happened next is somewhat obscure.  It would appear that a chimp escaped from the zoo, scrambled up behind the bench and, playing dress-up in the judicial robes that had been left on the seat, gibbered something that probably related to bananas  but which the recording secretary took to be a decision ordering the taxpayers of Massachusetts to pay for the dick-lopping operation.  (The chimp has since been euthanized.)    An amusing misunderstanding, save that, right now in the Bay State, that is the law of the land.

But none of that concerns us here.    With supernal calm, we contemplate the infinite, pausing only now and again to cast a saddened glance at the slowly rotating blue-green globe below.   No passions stir our breast as we (our own lease on life perhaps nearing its term, and not subject to sublunary renewal) behold the human comedy, interspersed with tragedy and farce.  Yet as a licensed linguist (I always carry my linguist’s license with me, in case a cop pulls me over), I cannot but comment upon a bit of pronominal legerdemain, committed by the Los AngelesTimes as it reported on the story:

Robert Kosilek strangled his wife in Mansfield, Mass., in 1990. He appeared several times during the trial dressed as a woman.

So far so good -- a bit of self-expression so dear to the deconstructionists (Louis Althusser, one of the French heroes of “the deconstruction of the subject”, likewise strangled his wife).  But suddenly:

Kosilek sued the state Department of Correction in 2000, arguing that her constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment had been violated when the state refused to pay for the sex-change operation.

A nodding acquaintance with biology suffices to remind us that the sinister farce of “reassignment surgery” in no wise creates any daughter of Eve, nor sister of the Madonna, or of La Pucelle:  but simply, a eunuch with misapplied chemicals in his veins.  Yet here, even before the offending member has been whacked off and tossed into the garbage (or -- Recycle!  Think green! --  served up for an appetizer at a gala dinner for the fashionably degenerate, as happened here:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/05/japanese-artist-cooks-serves-own-genitals-at-banquet.html) -- even before he can prance around, pretending to be what he is not -- even before some surgeon has sodomized the Hippocratic oath with a scalpel  and perpetrated the sordid outrage -- already the lapdog media (panting, its tongue hanging out, on its little legs) is awarding this murderous pervert  the feminine pronoun.   Merely as a grammarian, I must frown.

Ladies, it’s up to you;  but you might consider demanding that pronoun  back.

~

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, some pushback:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2012/11/19/01016-20121119ARTFIG00619-mariage-gay-la-prefecture-sous-estime-la-mobilisation.php?m_i=jGkjTiB4IOBbdT6WFvS9202IysRmxUEX8jpayJt2Szj4sfnjC

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2012/11/18/01016-20121118ARTFIG00150-incidents-a-paris-lors-d-un-defile-contre-le-mariage-gay.php?m_i=LmMLg%2BpcrRdqAt5fJFLKJknJvPaRO0HtZx00oRZHbSkjY6LfR

[Update, 22 November 2012]  The French left denounces ‘freedom of conscience’:

Nouvelle marche-arrière de François Hollande. Le président a décidé de «retirer» l'expression «liberté de conscience» qu'il avait utilisé mardi devant les maires de France pour leur laisser le droit de refuser de célébrer des mariages homosexuels, a indiqué son entourage. Sa déclaration avait provoqué un véritable tollé à gauche, du PS aux Verts, en passant par le Parti de gauche de Jean-Luc Mélenchon et le Parti communiste.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/2012/11/21/01002-20121121ARTFIG00472-mariage-gay-hollande-provoque-un-tolle-a-gauche.php?m_i=2F12rp6s1KrA3xWo8Ab4Vt95iyufoLaddpe33e67odp0UlE2w

*

Si cela vous parle,

savourez la série noire

en argot authentique d’Amérique :

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justiceexcerptdivorce.html

*

Enthymeme Alert

Some of you have joined me in tracking the wily enthemyme -- that hidden premise, without which a syllogism  does not go through:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/02/tahrir-and-badger-logical-excursus.html

In mathematical and scientific exposition, these are  of necessity rife, and generally used wisely.  You simply can’t spell out every step, for cognitive reasons.  But in political rhetoric, the hidden premise becomes the smuggled assumption.

So consider the current ad campaign, remarkable in its audacity:

Take the A train

The first statement contains no hidden assumptions, nor can it be false, for it is simply an imperative, like “Eat your vegetables” or “Don’t forget to floss”:

IN ANY WAR BETWEEN THE

CIVILIZED MAN AND THE SAVAGE,

SUPPORT THE CIVILIZED MAN

Now, you might find that sound advice, or not;  so far the logician, or the semanticist, has nothing to say.   But for the sake of the logical argument  -- for the modus ponens aut tollens -- let us take this recommendation -- call it “Proposition A” -- as sound. 

(Those constitutionally incapable of comprehending the role of counterfactuals, assumptions, deductions, and refutations, in logical argument, will scarcely follow me here, and may conclude that I am rattling the sabre of imperialism;  but these are not our audience:  to them we have nothing to say.)

The ad continues, in a surprising direction:

SUPPORT ISRAEL

DEFEAT JIHAD

Now, strictly grammatically, these are two further imperatives -- call them respectively Propositions B and C -- with no explicit connection to Propostion A.  Thus, in terms of mere syntax, the ad is semantically isomorphic to the following (which, indeed, by rights, should be posted in every bus and subway station):

EAT YOUR VEGETABLES

DON’T CUSS

DON’T FORGET TO FLOSS

Wise advice!  -- or rather:  Three separate, independent, and unrelated pieces of wise advice.

But the actual strategy -- the subterranean intent  (appropriate, that the ad appears in the NY subway) -- is quite otherwise, as every sociopolitically citizen will instinctually realize …

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

For:  The null assumption, when propositions (here, A, B, and C) are thus juxtaposed in quick succession, that these relate, the one to the other.  This follows from what pragmaticists (? pragmaticians?  pragmatologists?? People With Pragmatophilia ???)  call a converstational implicature or Gricean maxim:  in this case, Be Relevant.

Now,  the structure of the ad as far as Propositions A and B, is:  Support X; (therefore -- by Grice) Support Y;  and by simple set-theory, it follows that Y needs to be a subset of X, or the syllogism does not go through.  (Likewise -- to take a simpler example, “Everyone in Florida is retarded;  therefore everyone in Boca Raton is retarded” is a valid inference only if Boca Raton is in Florida.)

Hence, observance of the Relevance maxim  here requires the enthymeme,

=> Israelis are (in general) civilized <=

And with this, surely, no-one can legitimately quarrel.  Though marred by occasional barbarous behavior in Gaza or Lebanon (or Damascus, or in international waters against the U.S.S. Liberty), as a nation they are -- like the Germans and the French, for all their historical Ausschweifungen and incartades -- undoubtedly civilized.  -- As are the English;  as are the Dutch.  As are many in Egypt and Morocco.  Indeed, even in the United States, you will find great numbers of civilized people, so long as you exclude places like Florida, Nevada, and Texas.   Indeed, whereas ten thousand years ago, pockets of civilization were hard to find (this assertion will be baffling to Texans, who maintain that the planet itself is not even that old), nowadays they are as plentiful as gooseberries.   I mean srsly, folks -- It’s getting so you can’t so much as swing a cat without hitting some opera-goer, or NPR-listener, or New Yorker-subscriber  (O where are the Pecos Bills of yesteryear?)   So why pick Israel, in particular, to illustrate this well-populated superset? 

Again applying the Maxim of Relevance, we seek the solution in Proposition C …

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TWpcZGE_q4

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

By now old-hands at unearthing enthymemes, our readers will instantly identify the next one, necessary to the pragmatic coherence of the ad:

=>  Jihadis are savages <=

Now -- here things do get a bit sticky.   Not because the very word “savage” is now taboo -- the term is perfectly well defined and exemplified in history, along with troglodyte, hunter-gatherer, subsistence-farmer …  and Tory and Whig and Jacobite and what-have-you;  nor do we reck such taboos a half-whit.  Rather the problem is the simple descriptive adequacy of the term, given the historical facts concerning savages, and the empirical affordances of jihadists today.  For -- historically --  Savages don’t proselytize, nor cross major geopolitical boundaries.    The Koran-quoting, djellaba- or burka-clad religious fanatics now pulullating in Pakistan, or Azawad, call up all all sorts of negative images, if you wish, but hardly that of naked cannibals with bones through their noses, chowing down around the missionary-pot.  It simply doesn’t fit.  Indeed,  for a closer analogy, you would turn, not to pre-Colonial Africa, but to, say, Israel: to the Torah-spouting, payess-sporting, shtreimel-topped Haredim zealots who call for nuking the Aswan high dam.  Like the takfiri terrorists in Islam, the Haredim zealots and settlers are a sort of fungus-infection in their larger (largely liberal) society, claiming every sort of special privilege, while withholding military service to their own country, and religious recognition of anyone else.

(For the CT connoisseur, we add the following:  al-Zarqawi, and Hassan Ghul, could fairly be described as barbarians -- not “savages”, really, but halfway there -- whereas UBL and AAZ  -- nay, al-`Awlaqi and Abu-Basir -- however you might disagree with them, decidedly not.  They -- like Mephistopheles -- are quite civilized; they have simply taken a wrong turn.)

Indeed, this right-wing attempt to establish (or rather, smuggle-in via presupposition) an equation “jihadi = savage”, recalls the rhetoric immediately post-9/11, where the right wing bizarrely called the hijackers “cowards”, one thing they most certainly were not, and … savaged any commentator who denied the equation.

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

For a book-length semantic investigation,

in Arabic and the European languages,

click here

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

[Note **] And indeed, predictably, many readers cannot even follow the argument politically, let alone logically -- they instantly foam at the mouth at the sight of the forbidden badword “savage”, and get no farther.  Thus, a reader comments:

A truly civilized attitude rejects the racism behind the term "savage." That was merely the rationalization for the wars of colonization that Europeans waged on Asians and Africans, and for the wars that the US waged on Indians. Those acts of slaughter for land and natural resources were the real savagery.

And another replies:

Which race was identified in the ad? Your utter ignorance of the meaning of the word belies your inattention to the facts. Europeans and Americans are hardly the only groups that have waged wars and colonized other lands. Asians and Africans, and yes even Native Americans, waged their own wars against one another and against "foreigners." The existence of the country of Turkey is the result of the invasion of what was once Greek lands by Central Asian marauders.

All of which is well and good -- but quite irrelevant to the whole point of the ad, which is to smuggle in support for Israel.

[Please notice that the observation in the previous sentence has nothing whatever to do with politics per se;  it is a matter of logico-linguistic hygiene, nothing more.
Aargh -- plus!  The English-teacher in me  cannot refrain from saying:
the second poster misused belies;  he meant betrays.]

~

Still.  The point of this exercise in semantic analysis  was to burnish your sociopolitical acuity -- not to beat up on poor Israel, which has enough problems of her own.    And to prove our lack of malice, we hereby offer a couple of new advertisements in support of that plucky nation -- offered free of charge, reproducible without permission, suitable for framing or for mounting on the subway walls:

WHEN CHOOSING  WHETHER TO EAT

WHOLESOME VEGETALBES

OR ICKY TREYF,

THE WISE MAN WILL EAT HIS VEGETABLES.

SUPPORT ISRAEL

SHUN CHEESE-DOODLES, BACON-CHEESEBURGERS, TWINKIES, AND SPAM

~

GIVEN ANY TALK-RADIO RANT

CLAIMING THAT ELVIS IS ALIVE,

OR OBAMA IS A MUSLIM, BORN IN AFRICA,

OR THAT SPACE ALIENS ARE INTERESTED IN YOUR ANUS,

OR THAT ADAM AND EVE RODE DINOSAURS TO THE WAL-MART,

THE DISCERNING LISTENER WILL TURN OFF THE SET

SUPPORT LIECHTENSTEIN (ALSO ISRAEL),

WHERE THE FACTS OF SCIENCE ARE RECOGNIZED;

DEFEAT TEXAS, TRUMP,

AND THE TEA-BAGGERS,

WHERE THEY ARE NOT