Step away from the words

Several months ago I was in heavy traffic when my brakes snapped. Rust had done its damage and when I pressed on the pedal for a not-so-hard brake I heard a snap and the car lurched forward freed of my rein. I smacked into the car in front of me. We both pulled over. The kids in the other car stepped out looking a bit dazed. I stepped out and asked if everyone in the car was OK. We walked to the bumper and saw that no damage was done. We weren't going that fast. I was still in a bit of shock and I looked up at the two kids standing there. The fact that I didn't know which of them was the driver or owner kept me silent for just long enough for them to shrug and say "Oh well." I too shrugged and got back into my car.

It was about a mile home. When I stepped into the living room I realized that I had never apologized. I felt like a cad. A jerk. A fool. An ass. I felt like flipping myself off. I still felt bad about it the next day (still do) so I told the story to everyone in the office and all my classes and I assured them that I knew I had been an idiot.

That was important: that I judge myself for the lapse -- accuse myself of behaviour that I do not approve of. I lost control of a vehicle and I had agreed to manage safely. I had then failed to apologize to a car full of people that I will probably never see again (they got on the highway and left town) so I apologized to another part of my community hoping to assure them that my second oversight was unintentional and uncharacteristic. And by assuring them that it was uncharacteristic I was promising to be more careful in the future.

My take on Hillary Clinton's statement of regret really doesn't add anything new or exciting to the analysis of public non-apologies.† As The Ridger says in her comment -- Clinton's is pretty standard.

In that post I asserted something that deserves explanation.

Tho I've given my understanding of her reason for using the example…I agree that an apology was necessary.

Why was it necessary? If you have seen Keith Olbermann's invective you've heard his reasons. I don't agree with all of them. He believes the mere use of the word assassination is unacceptable. He verges on chastising her for the mere reference or even utterance of the word. I don't. Otherwise I'd have to implicate him too.*

I do agree that Clinton doesn't need to have made a purposeful implication in order for an apology to be appropriate. The lines of responsibility in language get fuzzy while in other interactions they are managed with more resolution. If the brakes go out in my car I apologize if I rear-end you. I don't have to accelerate into your car with the intention of causing damage. Not just personal safety, but good manners and social grace keep me aware of the effect my vehicle can have and I accept responsibility for whatever happens even when it's something that I never intended to do. Even if it's something I was trying not to do. Even if I was being reasonably careful. Some situations call for extra care. And even if I'm being careful I might not realize just how much more careful I should be.

It's winter. I'm planning to make a turn. I slow down. I downshift. I brake lightly. I know the road is icy so I start this process early. But the road is more slippery than I thought and I slide through the intersection. I was trying not to do that. But I smash the side of your car. And I apologize because if I could go back I would make different choices. It doesn't matter that I didn't put the ice there. Or that I've never gotten a ticket before. I'm not apologizing for being a bad driver or mounting a malicious attack. I'm apologizing for something I would like to have done differently.

Language makes the line fuzzy partly because getting 'hit' isn't the same as being offended. I can't just realize 'Hey--I've been offended!' It's more like 'Hey--someone said something to which I take offense.' You can't be offended without consenting to it. This view doesn't blame the victim because it doesn't nix the responsibility of the offender. No one need apologize for being offended.

All candidates are in the middle of a volatile campaign. There are all sorts of connotations and landmines out there that people are being careful to avoid. Way back when Joe Biden described Obama as both black and "articulate" he was hammered by people who hate hearing those qualities mentioned together. This was even tho Biden used "articulate" in a non-restrictive clause (tho not everyone agrees he did).

It doesn't matter that articulate is a positive quality and it doesn't even matter that contrary to many opinions it's not a token compliment. People of all ethnicities and all cultures are praised for being articulate. For speaking well. For speaking forcefully and clearly. Why was Biden's comment a problem? Why should he have apologized? Because the public didn't like it. Because the statistics on how the adjective articulate is used are not as loaded as the opinions regarding its use.

Part of an apology is an assurance. And this assurance does well to acknowledge that learning has occurred. This is why I say Clinton's apology was necessary. She has used the timeline reminder before and now she has been told that it's not a pleasant rhetorical device. That's subjective yes. But a politician would do well to say that she cares about the things the voters care about. (Unless there's a principled reason to disagree with the voters. The best politicians know when to do that too.)

What about a reasonable misunderstanding? This goes beyond the scope of any linguistics that I know how to do. There's a miraculous amount of weighing and balancing and negotiating and maneuvering of a complexity that I won't attempt to describe or understand. One one side of the field is a reasonable reaction and on the other is an unreasonable reaction. And the centerline is dotted and moving. It's hard to tell where and if it's been crossed.

How do we guard the edges of our ambiguous language?

If I say 'Get the funk out of here' and you are horrified thinking I said 'Get the fuck out of here' I should probably apologize for using the word that I knew could easily be confused. If I say 'Get the firetruck out of here' and you didn't hear the '-iretr-' I don't need to apologize. I might apologize for not speaking more clearly -- but that'd be charitable of me. If I say 'Hello' and you think I said 'fuck you' then you should probably apologize for such a ridiculous accusation.

Then why am I so sure that Clinton should apologize? How do I know that those who were offended by her comment are being reasonable? I don't. Maybe I don't have to know.

An apology isn't necessary for Clinton to be a good person. For that it's neither necessary nor sufficient. She's a politician and an apology may be necessary for her to seem like a good person. (And no: I don't use seeming to preclude being.) But I have no say over- and little understanding of- the impression politicians make on the public. I'm often baffled by the things that ruin a political career and I'm more often angered by the things that don't.

The truth is that she will help voters to move on whether she apologizes or not because politicians are good at fooling a lot of people. A slick misdirection and some sleight of mouth and it becomes apparent that a hefty mass of the population is stuck in Piaget's sensorimotor stage. A clever politician knows to push aside forgiveness and ask for amnesia instead. Clinton doesn't have to convince her critics that they shouldn't have been offended. She just needs to convince them that they never were.

---

†The blending that leaves Clinton sentence nonstandard gets brief mention in Mark Liberman's post. He sees it as a blend of an I regret that- and an I'm sorry if- sentence. It's true that 'I'm sorry if-' is much more common (and natural to my ear) than 'I regret if-'. So he sees if as a complementizer. Read his post for more discussion and several links to helpful analyses of apologies.


*In his bit Olbermann asks disbelievingly: You actually use the word assassination? Well...no. She didn't. She used the word assassinated. Of course his argument doesn't rely on this distinction.

Being a jerk doesn't quite capture it

The other day in our friendly office the topic of decimate came up. I think I must have brought up in the middle of one of my rolling-eye-rants about the LSSU list.

One person in the room had never heard that decimate meant (a long time ago) to destroy one tenth. Everyone else had heard that but didn't care. Everyone agreed that as the word is used now it is understood to mean the destruction of almost all and some had assumed it meant more specifically all but one tenth.

I made the point that almost no one uses it today to mean the destruction of one tenth. And if they did mean it that way who would understand them? (There was an on-and-on-and-ongoing ADS-L thread about evidence that anyone uses it to mean 'destroy one tenth' anymore.)

Well some people clearly do. But only because they want to prove that they know the etymology. But that's being an ass. It's obfuscation in the guise of appearing smart. It's showing that you know enough about an etymology to use an original term but not enough about communication (and people) to realize that others expect that you speak with the intention of being understood. This is similar to insisting on using the word niggardly and holding firm to the meaning of cheap or miserly. Yes it does mean that. But it's clear that it will be misunderstood by many. Many.

So the suggestion arose -- and I like it:

We need a word for the act of using a word in order to prove that you know what it has meant in some contexts -- even tho or more likely because you know that people will misunderstand or take offense.

Any suggestions?

Got change for that?

I love language change. Several years ago when I was a young and rabid prescriptivist I had some idea in my head that language could not achieve beauty if it didn't sit still long enough to be crafted by the lingual artisans. I really believed that.

Now I get all flustered and excited when I notice a new trend or a construction that doesn't work "logically" but starts taking over speech. I start hoping for quicker change. For new developments. For the same reason that geneticists rely on the mayfly for its short lifespan I yearn to see new generations of language spreading on the petri dish of.../abandoned metaphor/

Explaining change is one of the lovely theoretical areas I hope I can eventually contribute to. There is a wonderful paradox that both Labov and J Milroy examine: If language is a tool developed solely for the sake of communication it would logically follow that stability would be one of the fundamental characteristics. But language constantly changes. What's the free radical? Speakers.

So explaining language change must turn to the people who unwittingly allow such change. And what do such changes reveal about the system?

A late chapter in Lyle Campbell's Historical Linguistics text offers up some of the early theories for language change. The ideas are hilarious. And yet I can imagine some language prudes even today offering up suggestions like these.

Climatic or geographical determinism

In 1900 Harry Sweet wrote that the change from [a:] to [o] in northern European languages (such as Old English) was "doubtless the result of unwillingness to open the mouth widely in the chilly and foggy air of the North."

Nevermind that in England it was the Northumbrian dialect that resisted the rounding of [a:].

'Racial' and anatomical determination

There were unsubstantiated claims that Grimm's Law (*p>f *t>θ *k>h *b>p *d>t *g>k etc) was a result of wax plugging the ears of the Germanic tribes.

"Hey I told you each to pillage and prepare the garrottes"
"Oh we thought you said eat our fill of the free fare and carrots"

Barbarians indeed

Etiquette, social conventions and cultural traits

Wilhelm Wundt claimed that in Iroquoian etiquette is was rude to close ones mouth while speaking. He then used that fact to explain why Iroquoian languages have no labial consonants. What was his evidence that it was rude? Well the absence of labials in the languages of course.

Indolence

Young people don't care enough and are ruining our beautiful language! They're lazy lazy speakers.

Thank goodness such silly ideas are no longer thrown around so glibly.

What is expected

I was surprised to read that when one does not hear a word or phrase the proper response is "What?" and not "Pardon?" This is according to the Los Angeles Times. Staff writer Kim Murphy explains that "'What?' is more posh." If posh is defined as conforming to the standards of royal etiquette.

I remember when my grade school classmate was reprimanded by a substitute teacher for asking "what?" when he didn't understand her. The substitute told him the proper response is "pardon?" or "excuse me?" At the time I thought "what?" made more sense. Why should the student ask forgiveness or excusing? He wanted to know what she said. So "what" made sense to me.

When his name was called and he responded with "what?" he was again lectured. "The proper response is "yes?" I could see "yes" making sense there. It's affirmation that you have heard the call. But I already had the impression that this substitute was too interested in silly manners. She said "about" with the Canadian [ʌʊ] (or perhaps [əʊ]) diphthong ("aboot" in most orthographic representations) so to my 8 year old ears the exotic difference meant that perhaps she belonged to a stodgy and inflexible class. She was after all trusted with the distinctive honour of driving the school bus too. Anyone who could teach and chauffeur the youth of America must be of exalted lineage.

"Thanks Lovely"--"Ask Lovely"

Is that how we would translate "Danke schön" "Bitte schön"?

On a web log I visit regularly someone left a comment regarding the amount of power produced by West Virginia coal, oil, and natural gas. She ended with "So America, you're welcome for the energy!"

For? When did you're welcome change its syntactic properties? On another day I might not have noticed this preposition. But something caused me to pause and think "which would I have said, for or to?"

Once I paused to think about it my literal side cried out "to! It's to! But there's a part of me that hears 'for' as appropriate. I wonder how I would respond if someone said "you're welcome" and I didn't know why. I'd probably ask "for what?" just as easily as "why?" But does that transfer to hearing it as "you're welcome for X"?

In that structure I find a literal paraphrase only in "I support your entitlement: I say so in reference to X." But that's an unlikely intention.

"You're welcome" has now become a parallel directive to "thank you"--both of them taking the same preposition.

I wonder if this has something to do with the tendency of people to respond to a "thank you" by repeating a "thank you" instead of offering the assurance "you're welcome."

"Thank you."
"Thank you."

So the speech act is separated from the context or subjuct of the speech act--and the relative role of the locutor/hearer to that context. What used to be I thank your for your offering and You are welcome to my offering has now become You are thanked /(regarding/for this interaction) and the simply restated You are welcomed /(regarding/for this interaction).

The new meaning of this exchange is then "I_recipient approve of this event" and "I_agent approve of this event."