{"id":5873,"date":"2017-01-12T04:02:48","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T04:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/12\/journalists-please-proof-read-for-ambiguity\/"},"modified":"2017-01-12T04:02:48","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T04:02:48","slug":"journalists-please-proof-read-for-ambiguity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/12\/journalists-please-proof-read-for-ambiguity\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalists: Please Proof-Read for Ambiguity"},"content":{"rendered":"

David French is a good writer.  But the following is from his January 11th NRO column, Shame on Buzzfeed<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

So here\u2019s what responsible people say when confronted with claims like that: What\u2019s your evidence? If the answer is \u201can anonymously written and anonymously sourced series of memos that no one has yet been able to substantiate,\u201d then you either pass on the story or \u2014 if you have the time and resources \u2014 try to substantiate the claims. If you can\u2019t, then you pass. It\u2019s that simple. Any other action isn\u2019t \u201ctransparency.\u201d It\u2019s not \u201creporting.\u201d It\u2019s malice.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The intended meaning is clear, but only after two or more readings. The trouble is the ambiguous phrase 'pass on.'  <\/span><\/p>\n

In one sense of 'pass on,' to pass on a story is to tell it to one or more people, to publish or broadcast it. French's intended meaning is the opposite: to refuse to tell the story by 'taking a pass' on one's option of so doing.<\/span><\/p>\n

The careful writer is sensitive to ambiguity, both semantic, as in the above case, and syntactic.  We philoso-pedants call the latter amphiboly.  <\/span><\/p>\n

"The foolish fear that God is dead."  This sentence is amphibolous because its ambiguity does not have a semantic origin in the multiplicity of meaning of any constituent word, but derives from the ambiguous way the words are put together.  On one reading, the construction is a sentence: 'The foolish\/ fear that God is dead.'  On the other reading, it is not a sentence, does not express a compete thought, but is a sentence-fragment: ' The foolish fear\/that God is dead.'<\/span><\/p>\n

A good writer avoids ambiguity except when he intends it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I got my quarterly haircut the other day.  A neighbor remarked, "I see you got a haircut," to which I responded with the old joke, "I got 'em all<\/em> cut."  <\/span><\/p>\n

What about <\/span> 'pretty bad girls.' Are they pretty and bad, or pretty bad?  Is the ambiguity here both syntactic and semantic?  After all, if something is pretty bad, it is not pretty. <\/span><\/p>\n

Ain't English fun?  And why  is 'pretty' pronounced like 'pity' and not like 'petty'?  It is because of history, toward which we conservatives feel a sort of natural piety<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David French is a good writer.  But the following is from his January 11th NRO column, Shame on Buzzfeed: So here\u2019s what responsible people say when confronted with claims like that: What\u2019s your evidence? If the answer is \u201can anonymously written and anonymously sourced series of memos that no one has yet been able to … Continue reading “Journalists: Please Proof-Read for Ambiguity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5873","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=5873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}