radio

[Jonathan Lighter]

Actually it sounds like a nifty save of the intended sentence,
*"Don't you dare to differ with me!"

JL



On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 10:04 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: radio
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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