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[Laurence Horn]

At 3:02 AM -0500 2/6/11, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>
>Somewhat later--likely on a Hannity re-broadcast--two people were
>"debating" the relative merits of Islamic law. After one speaker
>suggested that his opponent was "angry", the other produced an angry
>tirade in response. "Don't you dare to diff... Don't you differentiate
>between anger and passion! I'm passionate about things that I am talking
>about!" Notwithstanding the tautology in the last sentence, the one
>before it contains an interesting use of "differentiate" that means
>exactly the opposite of what it normally means. [A considerable period
>of time passed since I heard the clip before
>I committed it to writing, so it may vary slightly in the false start
>and in the last bit, but the middle sentence is reported accurately.
>There was a false start and the last bit is substantially accurate, but
>I can't vouch for the exactness of those parts of the statement.]
>
At first blush, this is reminiscent of "arguing/quibbling over
semantics", where the meaning of semantics is something like 'stuff
that doesn't really affect the meaning'. But on closer examination I
think this is a one-off involving the frequent (and frequently
discussed) problem with losing track of one's negations, in this
leading to hyponegation rather than hypernegation.  The speaker
probably intended "Don't you (dare) not differentiate between anger
and passion".  Crucially, "differentiate" is a negative in the
relevant sense, which increases the processing difficulty.

LH

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