I could care less about McCain agreeing more...I mean less

These pundits need to learn when to simply say Ehhh. It happens. (You only need to watch if you haven't yet seen or heard McCain's "I couldn't agree with them more" flub. The relevant part starts around 3:20.)



So now we've all seen the video of John McCain's stumble. Memorize it. Practice it. Impress your friends with your inability to move forward from old news stories.

I think you may have noticed that Senator Obama's supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately. And you know, I couldn't agree with them more. I couldn't disagree with you. I couldn't agree with you more than the fact that Western Pennsylvania is the most patriotic, most [eh] G-d loving most…most patriotic part of America... this is a great part of the country. My friends: I could not ag— I could not disagree with those critics more.

Keith Olbermann wonders if it's fatigue, panic or a Freudian slip, and Chris Cillizza prudently suggests it's just fatigue. While fatigue is just the type of factor that makes these mistakes more likely, it's an unnecessary analysis. The phrase gets tripped up more by negation than anything else. Cillizza adds that he tries not to ridicule in such cases because he's probably going to make just such a mistake someday. Bravo Chris. Leave the carping to us silly bloggers.

What was McCain trying to say? Probably I couldn't disagree more. But that simple 4 word phrase is very easy to mis-negate (We'll use that word for any overnegation or undernegation that results in an incorrect negation.)

correct negations

I disagree

I couldn't/can't agree

I couldn't/can't disagree more

incorrect negations

I agree

I couldn't/can't disagree

I couldn't/can't agree more

While we tend to process language word by word when we hear it (input)—that's what makes some garden-path sentences so difficult—when we produce language (output) we tend to plan ahead. And even tho we have a sense of where we're going we sometimes forget where we've been.^†

So let's track McCain as his plans of saying I couldn't disagree more gang a-gley

[They're] saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately. And you know, —_{Say it's wrong John they're wrong which means I don't agree with them}— I couldn't agree with them —_{that's right. I couldn't. No. Wait. Can't. No it's cool. The line starts with couldn't. Now how does it end?}—more. —_{CRAP! Change it quick!}—I couldn't disagree with you…—_{Stop! Don't say 'more.' So it's still OK, right?}— I couldn't agree with you more —_{What? They didn't say anything. Ah hell just finish it somehow. What comes after 'more'? ... 'more than' OK.}— than the fact that Western Pennsylvania is the most patriotic, most [eh]&mdash_{What did they tell me about these 'most' lines?}— G-d loving, most—_{Wait, that's the line that's been getting us in trouble. Don't say it!}—most patriotic part of America...—_SHIT!— this is a great part of the country. —_{That's fine. Let's wrap this up.}—My friends: I could not ag—_{MOTHERFUCKER!!}— I could not disagree with those critics more. —_sweeeeet—

We've all done something like this. Obama's done this. Olbermann's done this. Such mangled utterances are too common to be very telling. But they're certainly inopportune.

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† I'm convinced this is what accounts for some double-prepositional construction such as for whom are you waiting for? or with whom are you speaking with?

Political etymology

From John McCain's interview with Bob Shieffer on Face the Nation.



About 75 seconds in McCain says with some emphasis

But we need to prove to Americans that this is the party of Abraham Lincoln, [pause] Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. We're the party of Abraham Lincoln.

Notice the stress he puts on Lincoln's name. That's where the primary stress would normally go but he definitely increases the emphasis. Notice also the stress on we're in the next sentence. That one is typical of contrastive stress. It's the type of stress that you put on a word only when you're trying to emphasize that another word is not the right one. He uses a contraction but he's certainly stressing we instead of are. If he was stressing are he wouldn't contract it. What's the word he's trying to negate? Well they of course. And who are they? I doubt he's thinking of the Green or Libertarian parties.

So he gives Lincoln a stress to indicated a semantic loading. Like the stress you give when someone asks 'Is she smart?' and you say 'She went to college' as if only one conclusion can follow. Not the stress that leaves the issue open 'Well she went to college, so...' But the stress that says 'Of course! You know what college means!' Note that the same word is stressed in both phrases. But in the emphatic stress the pitch starts higher and falls more clearly.

And he gives we're stress to indicate contrast. As if he's trying to reclaim an identity that has been denied his party. Trying to wrest it from the party that has taken it from him.

This argument is familiar. It's a lot like those arguments that use an etymology to argue the true meaning of a word. Even when all current evidence is contrary to that history. You can argue for instance that girl originally meant any child, male or female. But that history doesn't say anything meaningful about the way the word is used now.

McCain: comedy killer

Grice's maxims focus on the pragmatics and semantics of an utterance. Some people believe that the potential for humor can be semantically mapped. So can we apply Grice's maxim of relation to the following exchange?

Leno: For one million dollars: how many houses do you [have]?

McCain: {laughs} You know I di… Could I just mention to you Jay that um-- at a moment of seriousness --I spent five and a half years in a prison cell without … I di… not a … I didn't have a house. I didn't have a kitchen table. I didn't have a table. I didn't have a chair. And I spent those five and a half years … uh … because … not because I wanted to get a house when I got out.

[A few readers might have access to the video on YouTube. Copyright issues have disabled embedding.]

Jay Leno has clearly established a context of facetious interaction. And there's sometimes a point in an interview where either party can introduce a change in tone. But that works best when there is a reasonable break in the topic. An elegant segue is both smooth and well-placed. The joke has to be over.

But this is of course not a true non-sequitur. McCain does laugh. And there is a conversational implicature. Leno has introduced a joke regarding McCain's inability to remember how many houses he owns. This lapse in memory has been used by some critics as evidence that McCain lives a privileged life. This then implicates the claim that he cannot understand the experience of many Americans. This is then used as a parallel contradiction of McCain's claims that he is not the type elitist he believes Barack Obama to be.

McCain's response to Leno's joke has processed that line of implicature and it introduces a new implication. He would rather talk about the time when he was a prisoner of war. During which time his concerns about a comfortable residence were irrelevant. Further implicature is hazy. Does his experience counter any claims that he is as much an elitist as Obama? Is he simply trying to remind us of his suffering because it made him the type of man that could be wealthy while staying in touch with those who are not?

Is it just an attempt to change the subject without saying something offensive to Jay Leno? Well it's not a real change of subject because he purposefully connects his new topic to the topic of houses and living quarters.

It's conversationally inelegant. And it sounds like a canned response. He was just waiting for a chance to respond to this topic wasn't he? Look at the "I di..." disfluencies. Was he was planning on the "I didn't have a___" lines early on? By the beginning of his statement it sounds like he's champing at the bit to get to his money shot. I have no political commentary because that's neither my task nor my skill. But this does remind me of a line from Seinfeld.

Priest: And this offends you as a Jewish person?

Jerry: No. It offends me as a comedian!

McCain is too tense

John McCain has used some shameless sleight of word to get his claims past the lie detector. But a May 28 statement didn't get past Steven Pinker who passed it on to Geoff Pullum who then quotes foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann's promise: If you're going to start fact-checking verb tenses, we're going to make sure we start monitoring verb tenses a lot more closely than we have in this campaign.

Less than two months later and it's like McCain is playing with a new toy: verb tenses. He's just throwing them around as if trying to cover every possible span of time.

Of course Jon Stewart has to get in a jab.

Stewart: Ultimately through his frustration McCain insisted that he had the correct Iraq policies no matter which verb tense you use.

McCain (on video): We will succeed. We have succeeded and we will win the war in Iraq.

And we are winning!

Stewart: And then we will have won! Having been winning we will have had to win! My friends we will would have.

Watch the full episode here.

Did you mean to vote for...

One of the nice features of Google™ is the spelling suggestion given when a search term looks like a likely misspelling. Above the search results a helpful line in red letters alerts you to a more common spelling for what your search term appears to be.

Type in 'winndows' and you get Did you mean: windows

Type in 'johnny carsen' and you're asked Did you mean: johnny carson

Type in 'conen o'brian' and you see Did you mean: conan o'brian (tho his last name is spelled O'Brien...and misspelling only his last name doesn't offer the correct spelling.)

Note that the misspelled word gets the italic emphasis. That's nicely intuitive.

You've probably also noticed the Sponsored Links in the peach shaded box above search results when the search terms scream I might spend money! Search for 'books' and Amazon jumps up begging for attention. Type in 'stereos' and Circuit City elbows its way in. But these are sponsored and not necessary suggested by Google™.

I recently did an image search for Christopher Dodd and Google™ saw it fit to make the following suggestion

Also try: john edwards

At first I thought the search engine was just throwing out the names of other candidates -- an equal time thing. So I did image searches for all the candidates I could think of.

barack obama -- no suggestion

john mccain -- no suggestion

hillary clinton -- no suggestion

mitt romney -- no suggestion

rudy giuliani -- no suggestion

fred thompson -- no suggestion

bill richardson -- no suggestion

john edwards -- no suggestion

tom tancredo -- no suggestion

ron paul -- no suggestion

sam brownback -- no suggestion

dennis kucinich -- Also try: dennis kucinich wife elizabeth kucinich

Much as the spelling suggestion italicizes the respelled word, the additional or changed term gets bolded in these suggestions.

These "Also try" offerings only work in the image search. I can imagine that most searchers would appreciate images of Elizabeth Kucinich more than images of her husband Dennis. And I can imagine that searches for images of Elizabeth are more common than searches for images of Dennis. But what's going on with Dodd→Edwards?

Is politics really all about the hair?

The McCain mutiny [updated]

Bill Poser at Language Log tips his hat to John McCain for his reasonable stand regarding English as the official language of the United states.

In the Republican debate (6/5/07) Wolf Blitzer posed the following invitation:

If there's someone here who doesn't believe English should be the official language of the United States please speak up right now.

In this debate McCain is the only one out of ten that takes the stance. Blitzer notes that in the Democratic debate only one of the eight candidates thought that English should be the official language.

I'm not sure how to read the chuckling at this prompt. Perhaps the candidates see it as simple baiting. Perhaps they're nervous because they know how controversial the issue is. McCain offers the following.

I think it's fine.

I would like to remind you that we made treaties with Native Americans such as the Navajos in my state, where we respect their sovereignty. And they use their native language in their deliberations. It's not a big deal. But Native Americans are important to me in my state.

Everybody knows that English has to be learned if anyone ever wants to move up the economic ladder. That is obvious. And part of our legislation by the way is a requirement to learn English.

McCain's opening line is ambiguous. What is fine? Not making English the official language? This is one of those yes/no negative 'solicitations' that can make the yes/no answer confusing. But his answer give some assurance that he sees no need to make an official statement about official languages. He seems to understand that language issues will often take care of themselves as organized cultures learn to function harmoniously.

I appreciate that Blitzer does not open the floor to the eager opposing views. Not because the debate should never be allowed--but because the debate isn't part of the topic. Nice way to stick with the interests of the premise.

Relevant comments begin around 3:30 into the video (or around -6:30 in the countdown).



[Update:
Responding to the ambiguity in McCain's opening, Bill poser writes:

Hmm, that's true. I think that I may have interpreted McCain's first sentence as meaning something like "I think things are fine as they are." but it isn't clear whether that is really what he meant.

He directed me to this site where Matt Welch disputes the claim in the Washington Post that all ten candidates "endorsed English as the nation's official language."

Welch adds

Wolf Blitzer then asked "Is there anyone else who stands with Senator McCain specifically on that question?" Later, McCain pointed out that in Arizona, "Spanish was spoken before English was."

McCain in fact has been an outspoken opponent to English-as-official-language for decades; I have in my possession letters back and forth between him and Barry Goldwater where he defends his position from the old man's strong desire to codify federally our one national tongue....

]