Language Log

Readers of yesterday's discussion of lucking out may wonder what Jack Reacher, a somewhat eccentric man of action, would think of an extended discussion of his lexical choices.  For a clue, if not an answer, we can turn to a passage in the same novel where he learns some crucial information from an old MP colleague named Stan Lowrey. Reacher had earlier asked Lowrey to make unofficial inquiries about a woman named Audrey Shaw, whose fingerprints were found in the house of one of the women murdered in The Affair.

Bert Vaux posted this on his Facebook wall, "From Ed Pulford's recent trip to Silk Road towns in Southern Xinjiang":

In Lee Child's recent novel The Affair, Jack Reacher visits the home of Shawna Lindsey, one of three beautiful young women who have been brutally murdered, and meets the victim's younger brother. Reacher's interior monologue goes like this:

From the AP wire…

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP)—So what that the Texas Rangers won their only game this season against Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander.

This sentence tripped me up in a couple of different ways. First, I initially had trouble parsing the subordinate clause, "the Texas Rangers won their only game this season against Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander." Now, obviously it doesn't mean that the only game this season that the Rangers won was against Verlander. For a little while, I thought it was a muddled way to say that the only game this season that the Rangers won against the Tigers was against Verlander. Eventually, I got it: the only game in which the Rangers faced Verlander this season was a game that the Rangers won. In other words, it's:

the Texas Rangers [won [their only game this season against Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander]]

not:

the Texas Rangers [won [their only game this season] [against Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander]]

Now that's settled. But what about the introductory "So what that…"? Shouldn't it be "So what if…"?

FDR had his weekly "Fireside chats", and in 1982 Ronald Reagan began the modern tradition of weekly presidential addresses, which U.S. presidents since then have maintained. I don't think that very many people actually listen to these things — no one that I've asked has ever admitted to regular consumption. But I've been collecting them since 2004, and listening to most of them, and a few days ago I noticed something.

Larry Horn posted this to the American Dialect Society's mailing list a couple of days ago:

One of the bêtes noires of the prescriptivists is "miss not Xing" in the sense of 'miss Xing'.  Here, for example, is Lederer:

Let's look at a number of familiar English words and phrases that turn out to mean the opposite or something very different from what we think they mean: […]

I really miss not seeing you. Whenever people say this to me, I feel like responding, “All right, I'll leave!” Here speakers throw in a gratuitous negative, not, even though I really miss seeing you is what they want to say.

During the Arab Spring earlier this year, we noticed some demonstrators holding signs in Chinese that were not always idiomatic or were written incorrectly ("Maybe Mubarak understands Chinese", 2/10/2011; "Chinese sign in Benghazi", 3/21/2011; "Roll out of here, Mubarak", 4/3/2011). In the recent "Occupy Wall Street" actions, one marcher was likewise seen with a Chinese sign of dubious credentials:

Non-linguists frequently ask me whether I am avidly watching "Fry's Planet Word", the new five-part BBC television series on language written and presented by Stephen Fry. (A bit of googling will probably find it for those outside the UK who can't access the BBC iPlayer; there are various illicit copies around, including some on YouTube.) The answer is no; I simply cannot bear Fry on the topic of language. Such a fine actor (the quintessential Jeeves); such an insufferable twit on linguistic topics. So I know barely anything of this series except that even the radio trailers for it make my teeth itch. However, Edinburgh syntactician Manuela Rocchi is made of sterner stuff, and has watched some. She kindly contributes this guest post to inform you (and me) about it.

Yesterday in the New York Times, Dwight Garner took on two revisions of classic books of advice (by Dale Carnegie and Emily Post) — updated for the digital age. "Classic Advice: Please, Leave Well Enough Alone" starts by placing the Carnegie book in its cultural context:

Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” which turns 75 this year, has sold more than 30 million copies and continues to be a best seller. The book, a paean to integrity, good humor and warmth in the name of amicable capitalism, is as wholesome as a Norman Rockwell painting. It exists alongside Dr. Spock’s child-rearing guide, Strunk and White’s volume on literary style and Fannie Farmer’s cookbook as a classic expression of the American impulse toward self-improvement and reinvention.

Yes, Strunk & White, which comes up here with some regularity, and not in a good way.

Today's Non Sequitur:

We've had a bumper crop of recent electoral events where I live, and given that I write a good deal about language and persuasion, at regular intervals I get asked to advise on political campaigns. I always decline.

I have no trouble advocating publicly and with feeling for my own political beliefs. I also have no trouble accepting money from commercial entities (well, not usually, anyway) who want to hire me to consult on the technical aspects of their persuasion strategies. But I do get squeamish when it comes to drawing on my knowledge of language and psychology in order to tinker directly with the machinery of political messaging. It basically comes down to the fact that, in order to do so effectively, I would inevitably have to recommend—at least some of the time—the use of techniques that I would ultimately prefer not to play a prominent role in our political discourse. If you read much about political psychology and persuasion, it's hard to miss the growing pile of studies that reveal the various levers and buttons that reside in the less deliberative rooms of our minds and that can set in motion behaviors and choices all while leaving the persuadee convinced that it's his rational, thoughtful self that's been at the control panel all along. Call me old-fashioned, but I still think that the wholesale exploitation of shallow cognitive processes for political ends accomplishes no good thing for the overall health of civic life, and that thoughtful deliberation and evaluation of candidates and their ideas should drive our democratic impulses.

A cool demo video from the MAGE pHTS project:

MAGE/pHTS, a real-time speech synthesis library from NUMEDIART on Vimeo.

"It's a mare's nest of vipers," said a colleague of mine today, hopelessly entangling two nest-related idioms (intentionally, for the humor, I think). But it was no higher in rank than number 2 in the contest for worst idiom entanglement of the day, because this morning I heard on the radio a Conservative Party politician saying perfectly seriously that "the dénouement is about to hit the fan". (At least, it was either an idiom entanglement or the strangest excremental euphemism I ever heard. And yet I realize, even as I write this, that almost immediately I have begun to think it's rather cute, and I might adopt it: "I had to use the plunger this morning — had a dénouement that wouldn't go down.")