Category: Language Matters

Does the Left Own Dissent?

Battles in the ‘culture war’ are often fought and sometimes won on linguistic ground. Linguistic hijacking is a tried-and-true tactic, one sometimes found on the Right, but more often on the Left: a term whose natural habitat is some neutral semantic space is hijacked and piloted toward a Left Coast semantic subspace.

An example is ‘dissent,' a word in which leftists fancy they have a proprietary interest.  It has two senses, one broad, the other narrow. In its broad usage, to dissent is to withhold assent, or else to differ in opinion. These are not the same, since if I withhold assent from your opinion about X, it does not follow that I hold a different opinion about X: I may suspend judgment by holding no opinion about X.

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Crude Conservatives and Harsh Language

It is no surprise to find crude liberals. After all, liberals are big on toleration, including toleration of every manner of bad behavior. Indeed, some of them are so tolerant that they tolerate those with no respect for the principle of toleration. This is part of the explanation of why they tend to be soft on terrorism. And, since their toleration extends to the toleration of illogical thinking, they cannot see that to tolerate everything is to tolerate the rejection of the principle of toleration.

It is more of a surprise to find crude conservatives. Tucker Carlson on C-Span a while back used the ‘F’ word. Using it, he detracted from an otherwise excellent presentation, cheapening it, but also removing some of the force from a word that ought to be reserved for very special occasions. One occasionally meets people who need to be blasted with the strongest language one can muster, just as there are some folks who need shootin’ — as a Clint Eastwood character might put it. But just as you should never shoot a man who doesn’t absolutely need shootin’, you should never verbally blast a man who doesn’t absolutely need blastin’. And just as you can’t properly shoot a man without the right caliber of ammo, you can’t properly deliver a proper verbal blast if formerly strong words have been weakened by overuse.

So there are two reasons to avoid the overuse of harsh language. One is that it demeans its users, cheapens debate, and makes the world uglier than it already is. The second reason is that the overuse of harsh language, while coarsening its users and polluting the social atmosphere, drains these words of the punch they need to do their job on the occasions when it is appropriate to use them.

Baby Talk and First Grade English

It is annoying when a senator says that such-and-such is a 'no-no.' 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'? 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. 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?) In a cognate rant, Issues and Problems, I take issue with 'issue' and its over- and misuse. I have a real 'issue' with that.   A longer piece, English for Boneheads: Some Torts on the Mother Tongue, may also be of interest or at least get your blood up.

 
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.
 

Of Black Holes and Political Correctness: If You Take Offense, Is That My Fault?

Suppose a white person uses the phrase 'black hole' in the presence of a black person either in its literal cosmological meaning or in some objectively inoffensive metaphorical sense, and the black person takes offense and complains that the phrase is 'racially insensitive.' Actual case here. Compare that with a case in which a white person uses 'nigger' in the presence of a black person.

I have just marked out two ends of a semantic spectrum. 'Black hole' used either literally or in some not-too-loose analogy to the literal meaning — as in 'black hole' used to refer to a windowless office — cannot be taken by any rational person as a racial slur. For 'black' in 'black hole' has nothing to do with race. But 'nigger' used by a white person is a racial slur.

Continue reading “Of Black Holes and Political Correctness: If You Take Offense, Is That My Fault?”

‘Islamophobia’

This is another one of those silly PeeCee expressions liberals love to use to obfuscate issues and slander their opponents. A phobia is an irrational fear. There is nothing phobic about opposition to radical or militant Islam. To fear it is entirely rational. Militant Islam and Islam are presumably distinct. I could be wrong, but I doubt that Islam as such is the problem. But militant or radical Islam — sometimes called Islamism — most assuredly is a threat to the West and its values.  Still, someone (Robert Spencer?) who thinks that Islam as such is the problem cannot be accused of suffering from any phobia. So when I heard the liberal Karen Armstrong use 'Islamophobia' or a cognate during a C-Span presentation, my estimation of her dropped several notches lower.

Someone who uses such words as 'homophobe' or 'Islamophobe' may as well just put a sign on his back declaring: I'm a dumbass PeeCee liberal!

An ‘Epidemic’ of Drunk Driving?

If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal. A while back I heard an otherwise intelligent C-Span presenter speak more than once of "an epidemic of drunk driving." But an epidemic, by definition, is an outbreak of a contagious disease in excess of what might normally be expected. To describe drunk driving as an epidemic, therefore, is to imply that it is a disease, which is precisely what it is not. Drunk driving is a freely chosen  act. Use of 'epidemic' in connection with drunk driving aids and abets the cockeyed liberal view of the world according to which well-nigh every type of negative behavior is a disease.

Words mean things. Language matters. Don't talk like a liberal unless you are one.

Amateur and Professional

Amod Lele e-mails: 

I've been enjoying your blog for some time now, and particularly appreciated your post Philosophy as Hobby, as Career, as Vocation. I recently mused on this topic at my own philosophy blog - http://loveofallwisdom.com/2009/06/neither-career-nor-hobby/ – and you might find my remarks there of some interest. I'm intrigued, though, by your distinction between professionals and amateurs, as distinct from those who get paid and those who don't. I suspect that by your definition I aspire to be a professional philosopher who doesn't get paid; but I'm not sure, because I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Would you care to spell this distinction out further?
 
Here is what I wrote:
 
While I'm on this topic, I may as well mention two other distinctions that are often confused. One is the distinction between professionals and amateurs, the other between people who make money from an activity and those who do not. These distinctions 'cut perpendicular' to one another, hence do not coincide. Spinoza was a professional philosopher even though he made no money from it. One can be a professional philosopher without being a paid professor of it, just as one can be an incompetent amateur and still be paid to teach by a college.
 
A better way to put it would be as follows.  'Professional' and 'amateur' each have two senses.  In one sense, a professional X-er is a person who makes a living from X-ing.  This sense of 'professional' contrasts with the sense of 'amateur' according to which an amateur is is an X-er who does not make a living from X-ing.  As the etymology of the word suggests, an amateur in this first sense is one who does what he does for love and not for money.  In a second sense, a professional X-er is a person whose X-ing meets a high standard of performance, while an amateur in the corresponding sense is one whose X-ing fails to meet a high standard of performance. Examples:
A. Tiger Woods is a professional in both senses and an amateur in neither. Kant is an example among the philosophers.
B. Spinoza and Schopenhauer were professionals in the second sense and amateurs in the first sense.
C. Ayn Rand was a professional in the first sense, but a rank amateur in the second.
D. The vast majority of chess players are amateurs in both senses: they neither make a living from chess, nor do they play at a high level.

 


‘I Don’t Mind Losing’

'I don't mind losing' illustrates the non-identity of sentence meaning and speaker's meaning. Anyone who understands English knows what the sentence in question means. Its meaning is fixed by the rules of the language system, English. But what the sentence means is what very few people mean when they produce a token of the sentence.

A gentleman came to our chess club but once. And this despite our showing him every hospitality. For he lost every game. He had played seriously as a youth but hadn't recently. I explained to him that we are a bunch of patzers and that soon enough he would be winning games. He replied, "I don't mind losing." But he never came back despite a follow-up call or two.

In the mouths of most if not all 'I don't mind losing' means: I mind losing and I mind admitting that I mind losing, which is why I pretend not to mind losing.

ADDENDUM: If you read the above carefully, you will have noticed that I enclosed the sentence under comment with single quotation marks on two occasions but double quotation marks in the middle paragraph. Why? In the middle paragraph I was quoting an actual person, whereas on the two other occasions I was not quoting, strictly speaking, but mentioning a sentence. You may want to take a gander at my post  Use and Mention. It's fun for the whole family. And from there you can get to my post On Hairsplitting.

Whence ‘Bosh’?

'Bosh,' meaning nonsense, derives from the Turkish 'boş,' which counts among its meanings: empty, hollow, vacant, futile, unfounded, ignorant and several others. I have known this Turkish word for over ten years, but didn't note the connection between 'boş' and 'bosh' until I happened across the entry for the latter in Robert Hendrickson, QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd ed., p. 96. According to Hendrickson, "The novelist James Morier introduced the word in a book about Turkish life published in 1834."

'Coffee,' 'kiosk,' and 'divan' are also on loan from Turkish corresponding as they do to kahve, köşk, and divan.

As interesting as facts like these are to me, it is more interesting that there are people who have no interest in them.

Whither and Whence

I had a teacher in the fifth grade who, when one of us inappropriately wandered off, would query, "Whither goest thou?" alluding, as I did not realize at the time, to the Gospel of John (13:36):

Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.

'Whither' means to where just as 'whence' mean from where. (Please avoid the pleonasm of 'from whence.') The distinction is obliterated by the promiscuous use of 'where' for both. That cannot be good from a logical point of view. It is therefore right and fitting and conducive unto clarity that my favorite antediluvian curmudgeon, the Laudator Temporis Acti, should complain:

The use of whither is withering away in English, alas, just like whence, although both words usefully distinguish notions that we now force where alone to bear, e.g. in the New International Version of John 13.36:

Simon Peter asked him, "Lord, where are you going?" Jesus replied, "Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later."

On ‘Male Chauvinist’ and ‘Relative Truth’

A reader comments:

I'm confused about a claim you make. You say: "Take 'male chauvinist.' As standardly used nowadays, this refers to a male who places an excessively high valuation on his sex vis-a-vis the opposite sex. So a male chauvinist is not a chauvinist, and 'male' functions as as an alienans adjective: it does not specify, but shifts, the sense of 'chauvinist.'"

I did a quick check at Merriam-Webster Online. It seems to me that when someone is called a male chauvinist, the second of the three senses of 'chauvinism' given by Webster's is meant, viz. 'undue partiality or attachment to a group or place to which one belongs or has belonged.' But if so, it seems that a male chauvinist is a chauvinist. Male chauvinism is one type of chauvinism. It is that type of 'undue partiality' shown to members of one's own sex.

Continue reading “On ‘Male Chauvinist’ and ‘Relative Truth’”

Concision at War with Redundancy

One of my faults as a writer is that I am prolix. I almost wrote ‘excessively prolix,’ which would have illustrated the fault in question. Piling ‘excessively’ onto ‘prolix’ would not only have been unnecessary, but would also have suggested that one can be prolix in moderation. But wordiness is a vice, and vices should be extirpated, not moderated.

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Linguistic Smuggling

Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchy, p. 72:

Only religious superstition or the folly of idealist metaphysics could encourage us to assume that nature will prove ultimately rational . . . .

Linguistic smuggling has all the advantages of theft over honest toil. The mere phrase 'religious superstition' smuggles in the proposition that all religion is superstition, while 'the folly of idealist metaphysics' insinuates the proposition that idealist metaphysics is foolish. Both propositions are false; but even if you disagree with me on that, you must agree that they cannot be assumed to be true.

A critical reader doesn't let himself be bullied by verbiage of the above sort. He unpacks the loaded phrases and tests their explosive power, if any.