When do we want to not have it?

[Mark Mandel]

ISTM that the call-&-response formula

 What do we want?
 ___!*
 When do we want it?
 Now!
    * [originally, or at least in my earliest experience, "Freedom!"]

is dominant here, overpowering any issues of grammar and logic.  As a
habitual amateur writer of lyrics, I'm familiar with the pressures and
counter-pressures of precision, idiom, register, scansion, and so on; and
this particular formula is extremely restrictive. Consider it an idiom.

And speaking of register, even apart from rhythm and formula I can't imagine
most people (let alone a crowd) asking "When do we want not to have it?" or
"When don't we want to have it?" The best I can think of in terms of grammar
and logic that might work in the formula is

 What don't we want?
 An incinerator!
 When don't we want it?
 EVER!

Drawbacks:

 1. It breaks the formula: "don't" for "do" (2x), "ever" for the climactic
"now"

 2. The call doesn't flow easily, which is essential for a high-volume
rhythmic solo call to a crowd. Compare

      "What do we want?" /'w^d at wiwant/ [...wan?]  or [...wa~(?)] (? =glottal
stop, ~ =nasalization) ; cf "Whaddyawant?"

    with

      "What don't we want?" /'w^tdontwiwant/

Crucial differences between "What do we want?" and "What don't we want?":

    a: there isn't any idiomatic parallel for simplifying the /td/  cluster
in "What don't", so it has to either stay [td] (vs. the original /td/ ->
[d]) or lose comprehensibility

    b.i:   /dontwi/ has a nasal and a for-(not)-cryin'-out-loud stop between
the first vowel and the /w/. Simplifying that cluster is not just
unidiomatic, it brings the line way too close to the original "When do we
want it?", reversing the meaning.

   b.ii:   That first vowel in /dontwi/ is /o/, which unlike the original's
/u/ is lower than /w/ and can't just merge with it

  b.iii:   As a result, the closest idiomatic simplification I can think of
for "don't we" is what's heard in a child's angry "Idowanna!" ("I don't want
to!")... which you really don't want to evoke here.

In other words,

 You don't tug on superman's cape
 You don't spit into the wind
 You don't pull the mask off that old lone ranger
 And don't mess with an idiom, da do da do...
     (with apologies to Jim Croce,
http://www.jimcroce.com/lyrics-youdontmessaroundwithjim.shtml)

m a m

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 9:51 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Excellent point! I would have expected,
>
> "When do we want not to have it?"
>
> or
>
> "When don't we want to have it?
>
> WTF? How in the world *do* you question a call-&-response like that?
>
> -Wilson
>
> On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 1:06 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
-----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: When do we want to not have it?
> >
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > At 12:35 PM -0400 6/2/10, Charles Doyle wrote:
> >>I'm passing this along from George Clay Bunch (ESOL professor at UC
> >>Santa Cruz--and my sister's kid).
> >>
> >>Charlie
> >>
> >>
> >>I heard the following on an audio clip on the radio, in a news story
> >>about a protest against building a biomass incinerator somewhere
> >>(can't remember where):
> >>
> >>Lead protestor rallying the group: "What do we want?"
> >>
> >>Group: "No incinerator!"
> >>
> >>Leader: "When do we want it?"
> >>
> >>Group: "Now!"
> >>
> > Hah.  I'd have thought "Ever!" in that last response would have been
> > more decisive, if not necessarily grammatical.

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