radio

[Neal Whitman]

Or maybe it was a question: "don't you differentiate...?"

Neal

On 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
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>
> 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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