Language Log

HuffPo has a post today entitled "Michele Bachmann: 'I Haven't Had a Gaffe'", in which they take Bachmann to task for what she said to Greta van Susteren in a recent Fox News interview. This is easy bait for those of us who are appalled at the prospect of Candidate Bachmann and who have delighted at the many gaffes that she has managed to have in the course of her presidential campaign. But note the context from which the 'I haven't had a gaffe' quote was pulled:

As people are looking at the candidate that is the most conservative and the most consistent candidate, I've been that candidate. I haven't had a gaffe or something that I've done that has caused me to fall in the polls. People see in me someone who's genuinely a social conservative, a fiscal conservative, a national security conservative and a Tea Partier. I'm the whole package.

The latest lesson from Surviving the World:

There's been a certain amount of discussion recently about a grammatical aspect of Rick Perry's recent TV ad, which starts with a clip of President Obama saying "We've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades", and continues with Governor Perry commenting

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Do you believe that?
That's what our president thinks wrong with America?
That Americans are lazy?

My embarrassing failure with respect to tiramisu was one of failing to analyse the internal structure of a word and thus see what its origin and literal meaning must be. It is also possible to overanalyse, and see inside a word structure that isn't there, and similarly miss the etymology and the meaning. The latter happened to my colleague Bob Ladd, though no one knows about it, because no occasion ever arose that would cause him to reveal it. Basically, his mistake was of the eggcorn variety, though with sound and writing reversed in their roles. If an occasion for his unmasking had ever come up, he would have revealed his linguistic foolishness through a ridiculous mispronunciation of a word he knew only from writing, to general mirth. Because it never happened, nobody was ever privy to his secret shame.

Until now, that is. He committed the inexplicable blunder of sharing his shameful phonological secret with a staff member of the one linguistic blog site that knows no mercy, the News of the World of the language sciences, the one-stop-shopping linguistic revelation site that is . . . Language Log. How could he be so foolish as to tell a linguistic journalist without saying "This is off the record" first? I have no idea. This is Language Log, not Needless Self-Humiliation Log. Language Log's duty is to its readers. Read on!

Benjamin Cusack, "Sex Quiz Cricket Ace in Hotel Suicide Leap", The Sun, 11/14/2011.

Last month, in the post "'Words for snow' watch," I reported that Kate Bush's new album (out Nov. 21) is called 50 Words for Snow. I wrote, "It's unclear at this point exactly how Eskimos will figure into Bush's songwriting, but it's safe to say they'll be in there somewhere." Today, thanks to NPR's stream of the album, I've listened to the ethereal title track, and the Eskimos are indeed in there, but perhaps not in the way you'd expect.

Not long ago I went out to see Cockney comedian Micky Flanagan perform at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh. (One man alone on stage with one microphone. His two-hour mission: to seek out new laughs and new ways to mock civilization; to boldly zing where no man has zinged before. Standup is the bravest of all the performing arts that don't involve a high wire.) Hearing that East London dialect again (I grew up in the London area) was like slipping into a comfortable old pair of shoes.

Flanagan says he was in a posh Italian restaurant in London and ordered the bruschetta for a starter, and the waiter had the nerve to correct his pronunciation. He had said -sh- for the -sch- part, and of course there were glottal stops where the geminate [t] should have been: [bɹʊˈʃɛʔɐ] is how he said it.

"Bruschetta, said the waiter; "Not broo-SHET-a: [bru&#x02C8sketta]. In our-a language, is pronounced, [bru&#x02C8sketta]."

And in a flash Flanagan retorted: "Yeah? Well in our language it's pronounced 'tomatoes on toast'."

Martin Robinson, "Piles of ancient rubbish could prove incredible temple that's 6,500 years older than Stonehenge was actually a house", Daily Mail 10/19/2011:

It has long been considered the world's oldest temple and even thought by some to be the site of the Garden of Eden.

But a scientist has claimed that the Gobekli Tepe stones in Turkey, built in 9,000 BC and 6,500 years older than Stonehenge, could instead be a giant home 'built for men not gods'.

Ted Banning, a professor at the University of Toronto, has branded it 'one of the world's biggest garbage dumps,' with piles of animal bones, tools and charcoal found there proving that it was an ancient home rather than a religious site. […]

The incredible site was put up long before humans mastered language or skills like pottery or metal work, making it one of the true wonders of the world pre-dating any previously discovered religious site by 1,000 years. [emphasis added]

The Prologue of Martin Dugard and Bill O'Reilly's new book (Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever) begins like this:

The man with six weeks to live is anxious.

He furls his brow, as he does countless times each day, and walks out of the Capitol Building, which is nearing completion. He is exhausted, almost numb.

Mike Paluska, "Investigator: Herman Cain innocent of sexual advances", CBS Atlanta, 11/10/2011:

Private investigator TJ Ward said presidential hopeful Herman Cain was not lying at a news conference on Tuesday in Phoenix.

Cain denied making any sexual actions towards Sharon Bialek and vowed to take a polygraph test if necessary to prove his innocence.

Cain has not taken a polygraph but Ward said he does have software that does something better.

Ward said the $15,000 software can detect lies in people's voices.

This amazingly breathless and credulous report doesn't even bother to tell us what the brand name of the software is, and certainly doesn't give us anything but Mr. Ward's unsupported (and in my opinion almost certainly false) assertion about how well it works:

Ward said the technology is a scientific measure that law enforcement use as a tool to tell when someone is lying and that it has a 95 percent success rate.

Gene Buckley was surprised to learn that the U.N. is projecting a grade of A- for Iran's bomb work:

Adam Kilgore and Juan Forero, "Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos kidnapped in Venezuela", Washington Post 11/9/20111:

Wilson Ramos, one of the Washington Nationals’ most promising young baseball players, was kidnapped at gunpoint Wednesday night from his family’s home in Venezuela, leaving the team in a state of shock and raising questions about the safety of playing in a country ravaged in recent years by kidnappings and street crime. […]

In a crime and safety report this year, the U.S. Department of State described kidnappings in Venezuela as “a growing industry.” In 2009, according to an estimate in the crime and safety report, “there was an alarming 9.2 incidents of kidnapping per 100,000 inhabitants in Venezuela.” […]

Many of the kidnappings that take place in the country are so-called “express” kidnappings, in which armed men drive a victim around and take money from him before releasing him. The Department of State crime and safety report stated that “groups that specialize in these types of crimes operate with impunity or fear of incarceration.” [emphasis added]

As you know, I undertake the arduous task of covering the vast universe of movies for Language Log. (This at least is the way I write up the paperwork that gets all my cinematic entertainment charged to the Language Log corporate expense account on a fully IRS-defensible basis.) The film I saw today, one of the best political dramas in ten or twenty years, has a humbling lesson for linguists, in a sort of zen way.