Category: Language Matters

Auto-Antonyms

An auto-antonym is a word that has two meanings, one the opposite of the other.  'Fearful' is an example.  According to Michael Gilleland, who inspired this copy-cat post,

The Oxford English Dictionary defines fearful as both "causing fear; inspiring terror, reverence, or awe; dreadful, terrible, awful" and "frightened, timorous, timid, apprehensive."

There is much more on this topic at Dr. Gilleland's site. 

There must be some philosophical terms that exhibit the auto-antonymic property.  How about 'objective reality'?  Suppose someone were to start talking about the objective reality of the God-idea. You would naturally take him to be raising the question whether there exists anything corresponding to this idea.  But if a Descartes scholar were to speak of the objective reality (realitas objectiva) of the God-idea he would mean something nearly the opposite:  he would be speaking of the representative content of the idea itself,  a content that is what it is whether or not anything corresponds to the idea.

Pseudo-Oxymorons

Some are puzzled by 'civil war.' How can a war be civil? A drummer of a band I was in stumbled over 'monopoly.' How can many be one? Exercise: find more examples of pseudo-oxymorons, and explain why they  only appear to be oxymorons. Don't confuse a pseudo-oxymoron with such  attempts at humor as 'postal service' and 'President Obama.'

Some consider 'jumbo shrimp' to be an oxymoron, but why? Can't there be big shrimp? I would classify 'jumbo shrimp' as a pseudo-oxymoron. Someone who considers this an oxymoron perhaps does not grasp that a big F can be a small G, just as a small H can be a big G. (A big shrimp is a small animal, while a small elephant is a big animal.)

Now if I were serious about this post, I would essay a definition of 'oxymoron.' But I think I'll take a nap instead.

‘Broken’ and Other Examples of First-Grade English

It is annoying when a senator says that such-and-such is a 'no-no.' Baby talk!   Closely related is the phenomenon of what might be called 'first grade English.' George Bush and others have spoken of  'growing the economy.' One grows tomatoes, not economies. But perhaps I am being peevish and pedantic.

What about the current overuse of 'broken'?  Are you as sick of it as I am?  The El Lay Times  (20 December 2010) opines that California Isn't Broken.  No?  One hears that the Social Security admininstration and the Immigration and Nauralization Service are 'broken.' One breaks things like guitar strings, bicycle chains, and glasses. That which is broken no longer functions as it was intended to. A broken X is not a suboptimally functioning X but a nonfunctioning X.  Social Security checks are mailed to millions of recipients reliably month after month.Clearly, neither the SSA nor the INS are 'broken' strictly speaking. They just don't function very well and are in dire need of reform.

So why call them 'broken'? Is your vocabulary so impoverished that no better word comes to mind?

 
 "President Obama has said plainly that America's health care system is broken." That from Peter Singer in "Why We Must Ration Health Care" (NYT Magazine, July 19, 2009, p. 40.)  I guess that is why Canadians and others come to the USA for medical treatment they cannot get under a socialized system.

Why are people such linguistic lemmings? If some clown uses 'broken' inappropriately, why ape him? One has to be quite a lemming to ape a clown. (How's that for a triple mixed metaphor?) 

 
People who employ baby talk and first grade English in contexts that demand careful thought demonstrate their thoughtlessness and unseriousness.  Precision in the use of language may not be sufficient for clear and productive thinking, but it is necessary. 
 
Language matters.

Again on “Muslims Attacked Us on 9/11”

This just over the transom in response to a post from yesterday.

Your terminology is technically correct, but what is incorrect with the statement "Muslim extremists attacked us on 911"?

One does not have to be ‘politically correct’ to have a desire not to invite misunderstanding of a statement (that it equals: " Muslims-as-a-group attacked us" ) or to desire to avoid a perceived implication that there is something about the ‘essence’ of ‘Islam’ that is responsible for 911.

Nothing is wrong with 'Muslim extremists attacked us on 9/11.'  But there is also nothing wrong with O'Reilly's statement, "Muslims attacked us on 9/11."  After all, the first entails the second.  No one maintains that every Muslim attacked us on 9/11 or that Muslims as a group attacked us on that day.

My correspondent is missing the point, which is that inappropriate offense was taken by Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg when they stomped off the set in protest.  That inappropriate offense taken  at an objectively inoffensive remark is what shows that political correctness is at work.

This is just one more example among hundreds.  Remember the man who was fired from his job for using the perfectly innocuous English word 'niggardly'?  And then there was the case of some fool taking umbrage at the use of 'black hole.'  See Of Black Holes and Political Correctness and Of Black Holes and Black Hos.

And then there was the recent case of Dr. Laura who pointed out the obvious truth that some blacks apply 'nigger' to other blacks.  This got her in trouble, but it ought not have.  After all, what she said is true!  And let's recall that she had a reason for bringing up this truth: her remark was not unmotivated or inspired by nastiness.

Please note that I am talking about the word 'nigger,' not using it.  This is the use-mention distinction familiar to (analytic) philosophers.  Is Boston disyllabic?  Obviously not: no city consists of syllables, let alone two syllables.  Is 'Boston' disyllabic?  Yes indeed.  Confusing words and their referents is the mark of a primitive mind. In the following sentence

'Nigger' has nothing semantically or etymologically to do with 'niggardly'

I am mentioning both words but using neither.  "But what if someone is offended by your mere mention of 'nigger'?"  Too bad.  That's his problem. He is in need of therapy not refutation.

Armor Against Superlatives

Howard Fast, Being Red: A Memoir (Houghton Mifflin, 1990), pp.  98-99:

As we circled over Casablanca for landing, I saw below an enormous
swimming pool or reservoir. I turned to the man sitting next to me,
a grizzled old army colonel, and said to him, "That has to be the
biggest swimming pool in the world."

"The second biggest," he said.

"And where's the biggest?"

"Sonny," he said to me, "whatever it is, wherever it is, there's
something bigger or something better."

That stayed with me — one of several observations that cut into me
and stayed — and I passed it on to my children as armor against
superlatives.

On ‘Spirituality’

Word of the Day: ‘Nychthemeron’

You may have noticed that 'day' is ambiguous: it can refer to a 24  hour period or to the non-nocturnal portion of a 24 hour period. The ambiguity spreads to the Latin injunction, Carpe diem! Does it include Carpe noctem! or exclude it? Or perhaps neither: to seize the day is to make good use of the present, whatever its duration, whether it be an hour, a day, a week.

A nychthemeron, from the Greek nyktos (night) and hemera (day) is a  period of 24 hours, a night and a day. Sleep researchers distinguish the nychthemeral from the circadian. According to Michael Quinion, "Circadian refers to daily cycles that are driven by an internal body clock, while nychthemeral rhythms are imposed by the external environment."

The use of the word is illustrated in this magnificent sentence from  "The Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" by the great American philosopher, C. S. Peirce:

The dawn and the gloaming most invite one to Musement; but I have
found no watch of the nychthemeron that has not its own advantages
for the pursuit.

'Gloaming' is another one of those beautiful old poetic words that we conservatives must not allow to fall into desuetude. Use it or lose   it. It means twilight.

Of ‘Of’

As useful as it is to the poet, the punster, and the demagogue, the ambiguity of ordinary language is intolerable to the philosopher.  Disambiguate we must.  One type of ambiguity is well illustrated by the Old Testament verse, Timor domini initium sapientiae, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."  'Of' functions differently in 'fear of the Lord' and 'beginning of wisdom.'

Clearly, in 'fear of the Lord' the Lord is the object, not the subject of fear: the Lord is the one feared, not the one who fears.  In 'beginning of wisdom,' however, wisdom is the subject of beginning, that which begins; it is not the  object of beginning — whatever that would mean. Thus we could write, "The fear of the Lord is wisdom's beginning," but not, "The Lord's fear is wisdom's beginning."

The foregoing is an example of subject/object ambiguity.  Here is an example of what I will call objective/appositive ambiguity: 'As a young man, I was enamored of the city of Boston.'  The thought here is that the city, Boston, was an object of my love.  Clearly, 'of' is being used in two totally different ways in the sample sentence.

I wonder if all uses of 'of' can be crammed into the following little schema:

A. Subjective Uses of 'Of.'  'The presidency of  Bill Clinton was rocked by scandal.'  'The redness of her face betrayed her embarrasment.'   'She cited the lateness of the hour as her reason for leaving.'  The presidency of Bill Clinton is Bill Clinton's presidency.  And similarly in the other two examples.

Here 'of' expresses possession or belonging.  The sharpness of the knife is the knife's sharpness.  The wife of Tom is Tom's wife.  The uncle of the monkey is the monkey's uncle.  The ace of spades is the ace belonging to the spade suit.  A jack of all trades is all trades' jack.  Of course, if you want to be understood in English you cannot say, 'Marvin is all trades' jack.'  But that's irrelevant.

The set of natural numbers is the natural numbers' set.  The set of all sets is all sets' set. 

'Several are the senses of "of."'   The 'of' which is used — as opposed to mentioned — functions subjectively inasmuch as the thought could be put as follows: '"Of"'s senses are several.'

The square root of -1 is -1's square root.

B. Objective Uses of 'Of.'  'When I first met Mary, thoughts of her occupied my mind from morning until night.' Obviously, her thoughts could not occupy my mind; 'thoughts of her' can only mean my thoughts about her. Note that 'Mary's thoughts' could be construed in three ways: Mary's thoughts; thoughts about Mary; Mary's thoughts about herself.

Pictures of Lily are pictures that depict (are about) Lily.

'What was once called the Department of War is now called the Department of Defense.'  It would not be idiomatic to refer to the Department of Defense as the department about defense, but this is presumably the thought: the DOD is the department concerned with defense.

'The study of logic will profit only those of a certain cast of mind.'    This sentence features first the objective, then the subjective use of  'of.'  The thought is: The study which takes logic as its object will profit only those whose mind's cast is such-and-such.

'The Sage of the Superstitions is a man of leisure.'  This sentence features first the subjective, then the objective use of 'of.'  The thought is: The Superstition Mountains' sage is about (is devoted to) leisure.

'Of all Ponzi schemes, that of Bernie Madoff was the most successful.'  The first 'of' is objective, the second subjective.  The thought is:  Concerning (with respect to) all Ponzi schemes, Bernie Madoff's scheme was the most successful.

C. Dual Uses of 'Of.'  'Thoughts of Mary filled Mary's mind.' In this example, Mary is both the subject and the object of her thoughts, assuming that 'Mary' refers to the same person in all occurrences.  So in 'thoughts of Mary,' 'of' functions both subjectively and objectively.

D. Appositive Uses of 'Of.'  'The train they call The City of New Orleans will go five hundred miles before the day is done.' 'Former NYC mayor Ed Koch referred to the city of Boston as Podunk.' Clearly, 'city of Boston' is not a genitive construction, logically speaking. We could just as well write, 'the city, Boston.' So I call the 'of'  in 'city of Boston' the 'of' of apposition. If the grammarians don't call it that, then they ought to.

The House of the Rising Sun is not the rising sun's house — the sun, rising or setting,  'don't need no stinkin' house' — or the house devoted to the study of the rising sun, but the house, The Rising Sun. 

The kingdom of Heaven is the kingdom, Heaven.

ADDENDUM:  A little more thought reveals that my quick little schema is inadequate.  Where would these examples fit:  'He drank a glass of wine.'  'She purchased ten gallons of gasoline.'  'Boots of Spanish leather are all I'm wishin' to be ownin'." (Bob Dylan)  'He is a man of the cloth.'

'Glass of wine' expresses a relation between a container and what it contains, and that does not seem to fit any of the four heads above.  And note that 'a gallon of gasoline' is unlike 'a glass of wine.'  A gallon is a unit of measure whereas a glass, though it could be a unit of measure, is a receptacle.  A gallon is not a receptacle.  'Hand me that gallon' makes no sense.  'Hand me that gallon can' does.

Purveyor/Proprietor

Bill O'Reilly of the Fox News O'Reilly Factor has been introducing Dick Morris as the "purveyor" of dickmorris.com.  That should offend your linguistic sensibilities — assuming you have some.  The word he wants is 'proprietor.'  In plain Anglo-Saxon, a proprietor is an owner.  A purveyor is someone who supplies provisions such as food. 

Suppose you own the Glass Crutch bar and grill.  Is it that eating and drinking establishment that you provide to the public for consumption?  No, you provide food and drink at that place.  So you are the proprietor of the Glass Crutch, not its purveyor.  It is the same with Dick Morris.  He doesn't purvey his site; his site is the place where he purveys his political commentary.

Whether you have the audience of Bill O. or of Bill V. you have the responsibility to honor and protect the English language, our alma mater (nourishing mother), the enabler, if not the source,  of our thoughts.

Companion post:  What is Language? Tool, Enabler, Dominatrix?

Hodges Weighs in on ‘Suicide Bomber’

Dear Bill,

Interesting discussion on 'suicide' bombers. I prefer the expression "suicide bomber" to "homicide bomber." I think that the term "bomber" implies that the individual is aiming not solely at suicide but at other killing or destruction, too. I also like the fact that Islamists object to the term "suicide" since suicide is forbidden in Islam, so the insult is useful.

Yours,

Jeffery

See Dr. Hodges' Islamism: Radicalism at the Core of Islam?  Follow the links and use the search function to locate other of Hodges' Islam(ism) posts.  And now I note that he just posted on Christopher Hitchens' take on the Ground Zero mosque.  By the way, those who complain about this moniker, objecting that the provocation in question will not be located precisely at Ground Zero, need to be reminded that (i) there is no way that it could be located precisely there, and that (ii) debris from one of the trade towers hit the building whose demolition is to make way for the GZM.

More on ‘Suicide Bomber’/’Homicide Bomber’

I have been receiving e-mail about my earlier post on this topic.  Here is one letter:

I fear you may have been a little harsh on Bill Keller in your recent post about the virtues of calling suicide bombers 'homicide bombers'. Whilst I accept the conceptual and definitional analysis of the terms, surely the simple point is that ANY bomber who kills other humans is a homicide bomber, but it is only the suicide bomber who kills himself/herself and other humans. The term 'suicide bomber', in my opinion, is perfectly apt as it emphasises that this individual was prepared to kill himself/herself in the pursuit of killing others (rather than planting a bomb and detonating it remotely, for example). It may not be conceptually neat, but it's a worthy distinction to make, and one that is obscured by the term 'homicide bomber'.

Since the point I have just made is so simple and luminous, it is reasonable to conjecture that you were blinded to its alethic luminosity by your right-wing bias, a bias that is reinforced on a quotidian basis by the crowd you run with.

I really enjoy reading the blog.

Very clever.  I see your point, but let's think about it a bit more.  There are three cases: (1) the bomber who kills himself while killing others; (2) the bomber who kills himself without killing others; (3) the bomber who kills others without killing himself.  In all three cases the bomber is a homicide bomber.  In the first two cases, the bomber is a suicide bomber.  Because 'suicide bomber' applies in both the first and the second cases, the term 'suicide bomber' does not distinguish between them.  To that extent 'suicide bomber' is not sufficiently precise. 

You write, ". . . it is only the suicide bomber who kills himself/herself and other humans."  Not so: you are ignoring case (2).  Case (2) splits into two subcases: (2a) the bomber intends to blow only himself up and succeeds; (2b) the bomber intends to blow himself and others up, but succeeds only in blowing himself up.

Consider an example.  A Palestinian Arab walks into a Tel Aviv pizza parlor and detonates his explosive belt killing himself and 100 Israelis.  It would be misleading to say that this man has committed suicide even though he assuredly has, given that suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life. It is misleading because he hasn't merely killed himself, he has killed himself in order to commit mass murder.

As a conservative, I detect left-wing bias in the use of 'suicide bomber' in a case like this.  It is biased because it plays down the element of mass murder of others. It puts the emphasis on the poor terrorist — a product of oppressive circumstances we will be told — instead of where it belongs, on the slaughter of civilians.  So from my conservative point of view, 'homicide bomber' seems more apt.  This is reinforced by the linguistic fact that when one hears 'suicide' one does not usually think of homicide even though suicide is a form of homicide.  The word 'homicide' in ordinary English carries the connotation of the killing of others.  If a man commits suicide we typically do not say that he committed homicide, and if a man commits homicide we do not normally think of the case in which he commits homicide by committing suicide.

I will concede to you, though, that since 'homicide bomber' covers all three cases, it fails to convey the notion that the terrorist killed himself in order to kill others.  So we may have a stand-off here: neither of us can compellingly show that the other's usage is incorrect or to avoided.

Chutzpah

A delightful word of Yiddish, 'chutzpah' is in the semantic vicinity of 'insolence,' 'effrontery,' 'impudence,' 'gall.'  An excellent contemporary example of chutzpah: building a mosque and huge Islamic center a couple of blocks from where nearly three thousand Americans were slaughtered in the name of Islam.   As we say in the Southwest, that takes cojones!

‘Suicide Bomber’ or ‘Homicide Bomber’?

Bill Keller is the Executive Editor of the New York Times. I saw him on C-Span 1 on the morning of 1 September 2004. In response to a caller who brought up the issue of liberal bias in the NYT, Keller rightly pointed out that political opponents often try to seize control of the terminology in which debates are couched in order to gain an advantage over their adversaries. As one might expect, the examples he chose favored his liberal tilt. Thus he mentioned the Republican use of 'death tax' to refer to what is more commonly known as the estate tax, as well as the fairly recent tendency of Republicans and conservatives generally to use 'Democrat Party' instead of the more traditional 'Democratic Party.' I'll return to these examples in a moment; it is Keller's third example, however, that inspired this post. 

Keller took exception to the practice of some conservatives who label what are more commonly known as suicide bombers as 'homicide bombers,' claiming that 'suicide bombers' is the correct term. Keller claimed in effect that a person who blows himself up is a suicide bomber, not a homicide bomber.

This is a clear example of muddled thinking. Note first that anyone who commits suicide ipso facto commits homicide.* If memory serves, St. Augustine somewhere argues against suicide using this very point. The argument goes something like this: (1) Homicide is wrong; (2) Suicide is a case of homicide; ergo, (3) Suicide is wrong. One can easily see from this that every suicide bomber is a homicide bomber. Indeed, this is an analytic proposition, and so necessarily true.

More importantly, the suicide bombers with whom we are primarily concerned murder not only themselves but other people as well. As a matter of fact, almost every suicide bomber is a homicide bomber not just in the sense that he kills himself, but also in the sense that he kills others. There are two points here. As a matter of conceptual necessity, every suicide bomber is a homicide bomber. And as a matter of contingent fact, every suicide bomber, with the exception of a few solitary individuals, is a homicide bomber.

Keller missed both of these points. Had he seen them, he would have appreciated that 'homicide bomber' is a perfectly accurate expression free of ideological taint. He would have seen that every suicide bomber is a homicide bomber, though not conversely. He would have grasped that suicide bombers are a proper subset of homicide bombers. (S is a proper subset of T iff S is a subset of T but S is not identical to T.)

Since the points I have just made are so simple and luminous, it is reasonable to conjecture that Keller was blinded to their alethic luminosity by his liberal bias, a bias that is reinforced on a quotidian basis by the crowd he runs with. As to the other two examples, I am willing to concede that 'death tax' is inaccurate. It is not the event of dying that is being taxed, but the transfer of wealth that occurs on the occasion of dying when the wealth is greater than a certain amount. But calling the Democrat Party the Democrat Party is as accurate as can be. For it makes it clear that 'Democrat Party' is a proper name as opposed to a description. 'Democratic Party,' however, suggests that there is a description satisfaction of which is necessary for 'Democratic Party' to have a referent – which is false. 'Democratic Party' refers to what it refers to even if the referent fails to be democratic.  They are a pack of elitists, scarcely democratic.  Dropping the '___ic' makes this clear.

_________________

*Since the reference class for the sake of this discussion is human beings, we needn't consider such counterexamples as that of the nonhuman extraterrestrial who commits suicide, or the terrestrial nonhuman (a dolphin perhaps) who does so. If Star Trek's Mr. Spock or Dolly the Dolphin commit suicide, they do not thereby commit homicide.