Reversed "avowal"

[George Thompson]

VS: "Question to GAT: when you refer to "letter counters", do you mean
literals
or missives? Put another way: characters or mailed messages?"

It's my impression that no one actually reads the letters that constituents
send to congressmen, &c. -- unless perhaps there is a large check enclosed.
 I believe that the emails are looked at by a staffer, whose assignment is
to report to the boss that there were 47 letters regarding whatever, and
that 34 of them were in favor and 13 opposed.  These do-gooding
organizations want me to write my congressman and urge me to write my own
letter instead of using their form letter, but since I suppose that whatever
argument I might present, however cogent, will not be read, let alone
absorbed and heeded, I am content just to send the form email.

GAT


On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 3:43 AM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Wouldn't that be a "disavowal"?
>
> Question to GAT: when you refer to "letter counters", do you mean literals
> or missives? Put another way: characters or mailed messages?
>
> VS-)
>
> PS: Yes, that was a rhetorical question (the second, not the first).
>
> On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 9:17 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu
> >wrote:
>
> >
> > On Aug 17, 2011, at 9:12 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
> >
> > > I am finding this thread very confusing. When Nixon said, "I am not a
> > > crook", was that an avowal?
> >
> > I'd say so.  He avowed (asserted, claimed, declared) that he was not a
> > crook.  So it was an avowal, a claim, and a declaration.  On the other
> hand,
> > I'm not sure I'd call it an assertion, partly because "denial" is such a
> > handy way of characterizing assertions with negative content. YMMV.
> >
> > LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org