{"id":10078,"date":"2011-12-15T12:56:49","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T12:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/12\/15\/it-depends-on-who-you-talk-to\/"},"modified":"2011-12-15T12:56:49","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T12:56:49","slug":"it-depends-on-who-you-talk-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/12\/15\/it-depends-on-who-you-talk-to\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It Depends on Who You Talk To’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Really?  Suppose some question is posed, some question concerning which there is an objective answer, regardless of how difficult it is to ascertain the answer.  For instance, Is the Social Security system  currently taking in more in payroll taxes than it is paying out in benefits? People have a knee-jerk tendency to say, 'It depends on who you talk to.'<\/span><\/p>\n

But of course it doesn't.  What depends on who you talk to is the opinion of the one doing the talking. The answer to the question precisely does not<\/em> depend on who you talk to.  It depends on the way the world is.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you want to say that different people have different opinions on a certain (objective) question, then say that.  But don't say that it depends on who you talk to.  The latter is a phrase that thoughtful people ought to beware of. Don't let your sloppiness of speech aid and abet a sophomoric relativism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Language matters<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Addendum 12\/16<\/strong>.  A reader complains that the second sentence of the second paragraph should read, 'What depends on whom<\/em> you talk to is  the opinion of the one doing the talking.'  That's right, except that,  for stylistic reasons, I was paralleling the street idiom on which I was commenting.  The problem with the street idiom is not the grammatical peccadillo it contains, but the conceptual confusion it embodies.<\/span><\/p>\n

One ground of my dislike of editors is that the typical editor is a Besserwisser<\/em>.  He knows better what you really want to say, or ought to say.  But he lacks the subtlety to realize that there are stylistic questions which may require the flouting of a grammatical rule.  <\/span><\/p>\n

You may enjoy The Paltry Mentality of the Copy Editor<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I insist that language matters, I am not insisting on the satisfaction of the grammatical punctilios of schoolmarms, but on avoiding expressions that impede clear thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Really?  Suppose some question is posed, some question concerning which there is an objective answer, regardless of how difficult it is to ascertain the answer.  For instance, Is the Social Security system  currently taking in more in payroll taxes than it is paying out in benefits? People have a knee-jerk tendency to say, 'It depends on … Continue reading “‘It Depends on Who You Talk To’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}