radio

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:21 AM -0500 2/6/11, Neal Whitman wrote:
>Or maybe it was a question: "don't you differentiate...?"
>
>Neal

That certainly makes sense in principle (an instance of "Don't you
X?" = 'you should X'), but in the context of the false start ("Don't
you dare..."), I took this to be an imperative ("Don't you X!" = 'you
shouldn't X'), as the exclamation point in Victor's transcription
suggests.

LH

>
>On Feb 6, 2011, at 10:04 AM, 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: 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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>
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