[Ads-l] But-ing in: is it just me?

[Spanbock/Svoboda-Spanbock]

Isn't it in opposition to their running for office? Sort of like, "I ran for the bus, but the driver didn't see me." ??


On Oct 31, 2014, at 10:31 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      But-ing in: is it just me?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> This is a paragraph from an article on a social-psychologi site. My problem
> is that use of _but_. _But_ is used when what precedes that conjunction is
> *contradicted*, in some sense, by what follows, right? Am I confused in
> thinking that nothing in the final sentence contradicts, in any way,
> anything in the preceding paragraph? I wouldn't bother anyone here with
> this, except that I see it more and more often. It's as though the language
> were undergoing a semantic shift that I'm unable to grasp. Am I getting
> senile? Seriously!
> 
> In one experiment, the researchers asked random white people on the street
> to look at a video containing photos of various white and black inmates,
> and then asked them their opinions about prison policy. The researchers
> manipulated the proportions of white to black faces throughout, but
> typically included a higher proportion of black faces than are actually
> represented in California=E2=80=99s prisons, where the experiment was condu=
> cted.
> They asked everyone to guess the percentage of black inmates in the prison
> population, and everyone guessed higher than the proportion of black faces
> they saw, and higher than the proportion actually is in real life.
> _But_,
> the researchers also found, the more black faces they showed the
> participants, the more likely the participants were to sign a petition in
> support of the state=E2=80=99s strict =E2=80=9Cthree-strikes=E2=80=9D law.
> 
> Jelani Cobb, despite being a native-born, black American himself, writes
> (edited) in the New Yorker, that
> 
> Voters don't necessarily form neat blocs according to their race. In 2006,
> Lynn Swann, Ken Blackwell, and Michael Steele--three black Republicans--ran
> for statewide office in, respectively, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Maryland,
> _but_
> none of them garnered more than a quarter of the black vote.
> 
> "But"?! What "but"? As Cobb points out himself, "three black
> *Republicans*"! That Republicans, regardless of race, didn't get black
> votes is precisely the expected outcome. His assertion, "don't
> necessarily," isn't supported by his supposed "evidence."
> 
> IMO, no conjunction at all, let alone the adversative, is required, in
> either case.
> 
> Or maybe I'm completely missing the point.
> 
> Youneverknow.
> --=20
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
> 
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