Like is Out, Yeah is In.

 'Like' on the way out. 'Like: __' was often used, for example, as a device of indirect quotation, where the quoted material is first-person, and one acts out the speech expressing what one thought or felt on the occasion. "Like: 'What is this guy doing?'"; "Like: 'I was all woo-woo", you know?'. 

At around the same time, 'Yeah!' has come in, or rather has come to play a new role. In this usage, it is not a response to the interlocutor's statement or question, but occurs within one's overall speech, mostly but not entirely as a space-filler, between sentences. It is used among other things to announce a change of topic, or just to sustain a positive vibe while keeping the floor -- to decide either on the next topic, or to keep on with the present one. Often it signals that the next utterance will sum up the previous ones. 

While I'm at it, the use of the term 'obviously' -- in this role it has been around a while -- is interesting. I hear it as: 'What I'm about to say perhaps goes without saying, but nevertheless I say it just to be absolutely sure there is no misunderstanding, and it's worth saying for the sake of what I'm going to say after.'  

Invertebrate and Inveterate, Incredible and Incredulous

My diagnosis of (one aspect of) changes in language runs as follows. A relatively common word is in use (say 'outrageous', 'uninterested', or 'deny') and another relatively rare word that expresses a different, typically more complicated meaning, which often sounds similar to the first one (say 'egregious',  'disinterested', or 'refute'). Perhaps imagining a certain show of erudition, people begin to use the latter word for the former, not being aware that the latter does not mean the former. But then, if the virus spreads sufficiently, it does means the former. So to speak. (I've discussed those particular examples previously; the links are on the upper right). 

So two newish examples. The first fits the pattern to a T. I've heard it before, but here is a recent, public example from the teevee. Victoria MacDonald of Channel Four News used 'incredulous' for 'incredible' (or 'really incredible!').  But of course -- assuming the old meaning -- strictly speaking, that is ungrammatical nonsense:  You can say x finds y incredible, but not that x finds y incredulous. What does make sense is that x is incredulous at y. The incredible thing vs. the incredulous person (the agent and patient roles are reversed).  The second doesn't fit the pattern, but fits it as it were in reverse.  Twice now I have heard 'invertebrate' being used where surely what was meant was 'inveterate'. Now all people know the word 'invertebrate', and very few know the word 'inveterate'. My diagnosis is that person is vaguely aware that there is such word, but can't quite recall it. If anything 'inveterate' connotes strength where 'invertebrate' connotes lassitude, but there it is.

Generalisation, Holding Beliefs, Single Persons, and Winning

Another Dodge: The Particular to the General

This is another one which I'm surprised isn't recognized and called out by Nick Robinson and his R4 cohorts more often.  A presenter is interviewing some Tory bigwig, asking for a response to a EDL rally which descended into a fracas. 'Let me be clear: No violence should be tolerated', says the Tory. What's wrong with that? Who would deny it? The problem is that implicit in the initial line of questioning is that there is a particular problem with the EDL--that perhaps they should be disbanded or steps should taken against its leaders, or something, and one might think that the Tories in particular are likely to bear a certain responsibility. And of course many EDL members or sympathisers do vote Tory; the Tory is leery of offending them. The Tory responds to the question by generalising the issue, thereby diverting the questioner from a particular sore point. (It's a bit like 'What aboutism'.) In the cut-and-thrust atmosphere of a R4 interview, the necessary time and effort required to pursue that issue may be too great, as well the Tory knows. 

Holding Cognitive States

One has emotions. One has beliefs. But sometimes people speak of 'holding' emotions, of 'holding' beliefs. If find this a little strange. I can't help but think that implies that the action is more voluntary than it can possibly be, perhaps with a bit of irrationality mixed in. 'He holds the belief that she is faithful to him', as if the belief were like a dog whose leash one holds, or like a suspect one holds in a jail cell. What can be 'held' is perhaps a slogan, a form of words; one can decide stick to the words even if one has doubts. For emotions, is there an equivalent way of excuse? Maybe: maybe we can speak of a man as 'clinging' to his sadness, as 'holding on' to his sadness, when it is unhealthy to be sad for so long. We say: Snap out of it!  

Families

Keir Starmer, Rishi Sunak and others seldom speak of ordinary people and their financial struggles (with inflation, taxes, etc.), but rather they speak of the plight of 'families'.  What of the many people who live alone? There are I believe nine million such people. Nine million people who don't exist! Many of them not only pay taxes etc., but vote. 

Winning the t -- d 

We speak of 'winning the thread', when some commenter in social media or a chatroom makes an especially perceptive, and typically witty post, one that can't be topped. But all of a sudden, people now speak of 'winning the trend'. I can't help but think that this got started through mis-reading or mis-hearing the earlier 'winning the thread', and for some reason it caught on. If that's what happened, then the phenomenon is not so dire as what happened with 'refute' or 'disinterest', but still it is retrograde, for unlike the straightforward 'thread', it is a little hazy what 'trend' means here. 

Calvin Talk

A Tory politician spoke of some bit of mild malfeasance as an occasion when 'Learnings' were to be had. This the reverse of Calvin's Verbing Nouns: it's a case of Nouning Verbs. A somewhat related case. a somewhat odd case, comes from of all people Richie Sunak, who spoke of his policy giving the green light to oil extraction as being 'pragmaticker' in comparison with the alternative. This is a case of making a preposition out of an adjective, a relation out of a property. 

A Familiar Dodge

The tendency amongst the great & the powerful is very familiar -- but nonetheless maddening -- of reacting to having been caught in an act of serious impropriety with 'We got it wrong!', 'Mistakes were made! etc. The interviewee admits wrongdoing, but counts on the ambiguity created in the interviewer's mind -- an ambiguity between mere mistakes, like missing a three-inch putt in golf, and acts for the which criticism would be much graver, would be moral -- and hopes the conversation will move on. It almost always does. Is there a journalist who makes a habit of stopping the interviewee and asking if the wrongness were of ethics rather than mere skill? A fraudster who says 'I got it wrong!' is not genuinely admitting the nature of his crime. Perhaps Nick Robinson, Andrew Neil or James O'Brien, calls this out.

A recent example from the US of A: 

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reported three 2022 trips on the private jet of a Texas billionaire in a financial disclosure form released Thursday, and for the first time detailed the businessman’s purchase of three properties from the justice’s family years earlier,” the Washington Post reports.

Thomas also acknowledged 'mistakes' in past reports, involving bank accounts, a life insurance policy and the name of his wife’s real estate company.

This is related to the famous 'Non-apology apology'.  Not 'I'm sorry', but 'If you took offense then I'm sorry'. or 'I'm sorry for any offense I caused'; often with the tacit or implied sub-text, 'I didn't mean it'. One says 'sorry' only in the sense of being sorry at the situation in Afghanistan, not of acknowledging any personal responsibility. Indeed it is not an apology, but only a conditional apology, which in my book is not, not even where the condition is satisfied, an apology at all.  It often borders on 'victim blaming': [unspoken] 'If you looked upon my actions as racist/bullying/whatever, the fault lies with your perception, mate'. 

Over and Under

It is difficult to underplay the seriousness of the charges leveled at him. (Andrew Buncombe)

Ordinarily, to get mixed up when employing such forms of speech is eminently forgivable, but not when it's a journalist, for Pete's sake!  

This sort of thing is not far from saying 'I could care less', 'could of', or 'intensive purposes'. 

 

May and May Not. 

This has been around for a long time, or rather has been bothering me for a long time (I'm sensitive). When the speaker is a tiny bit nervous perhaps, they'll say something like: "The client may or may not choose the expensive option".  There is no reason to say "or may not". To say "The client may choose the expensive option" obviously (conversationally) implies that the client is not being forced to choose the expensive option.  In the example that I'm thinking of, she is at least subliminally aware of this; there was a little micro-pause between the first 'may' and the phrase 'or may not'; i.e.:  "The client may ... or may not .. choose the expensive option".  

Going Forward in Future

Two related things that have me scratching me head. 

(1) One is the use of 'going forward' to announce that the phrase about to be stated is to be understood as pertaining to the future.  But this is the job of the future tense! Which such people is such cases do use; they're not so grammatically benighted as to lose their sense of tense. It's another case of mere verbal clutter. If they dispensed with 'going forward', their message would no less clear. 

(2) In Britain it's common to speak of 'in future' rather than 'in the future'.  It seems not to be associated with class, age, or region. You hear it all over the place (north, south, east and west).  It isn't obligatory in British English; one hears plenty of 'in the future's.  But why 'in future'?  No one speaks of 'in past'. 

Politicians Speak 97

Four linguistic tricks/maneuvers that are popular amongst politicians, some of which you're no doubt familiar with. 

1. 'We injected a record x pounds ...'.  I'm surprised they aren't called out on this more often. It is rather easy to make such claims, as the population is always increasing and inflation is always happening (except in unusual circumstances).  So naturally this will in general be true, be it funds for water, for the railroads, for disabled kids, etc., even if the real spending per head inches down.   

2. Another one that seems to slip by unremarked, thus securing its effectiveness.  'We got that wrong'. said Dominic Raab on Partygate (the Morning Show, BBC 20/05/2022.) Compare this with 'We did something wrong'. The former implies no moral blame; it could just as well be said of an incorrect answer on The News Quiz, or a football substitution that didn't pan out. The latter suggests otherwise, suggests moral blameworthiness. But they are very similar, and Raab can reasonably hope that suspension between the two will occupy the listeners mind for just long enough for the conversation to move on. 

3. 'I'm not going to get into hypotheticals'.  Of course ... you know.  Maddening. Why don't journalists call them out more often? 'So you're not getting into "hypotheticals" ... so you would refuse to answer: "If the Queen were assaulted with a knife, would you intervene?"'.  'Ah, so you would answer? So it's not the case that you refuse to answer conditionals. So again I ask you ... ?'. Indeed the logician in me wants to say: 'Are all monkeys mammals? Yes? So you would agree that if something is a monkey, it is a mammal, right? So have we not got into hypotheticals, as you put it?'.

4.  'That's why we're ... '.  This is very common. A representative of the government is interviewed (Sunak, Rabb, Truss etc.).  It is put to them that such-and-such is a big problem, voters are worried, and why haven't you ... To which the answer is 'That's why we're (whatever action or money spent can plausibly be portrayed as directed to the problem; and there always is). That is, the government is already on top of it; it's got your back. They are mildly irritated that you should suppose otherwise. 'That's why ... why don't you journalists see?'. 

1. Nonsense vs. a nonsense. 

'Nonsense', in the first instance, pertains to the meaning of a phrase or a sentence; either it has sense (it makes sense), or it's nonsense (it makes no sense).  Either it is semantically, lexicographically and grammatically in order, or something is semantically, lexicographically or grammatically very wrong; it fails to express a coherent thought. 

'Nonsense' is an adjective, but one occasionally finds the use of the term as a noun, ie 'a nonsense' (I've come across this use even by Frank Ramsey!). 'A nonsense' implies that one can count nonsenses, which one might well resist.  Is it connected with the senses? I see an image of a blind man groping - that he can't find his way; that to say 'It's a nonsense' is roughly to say 'I see nothing with it', or 'One cannot use it to see anything'.  

There is also a use where what has been said succeeds in expressing a thought, but where the thought is egregiously false. Perhaps this use is connected with the first, in that if we have an example of nonsense (of this second variety), then no coherent case can be made for it. 

2. Paradoxes of Relativism. 

The central paradox being that it is self-defeating to proclaim that all is relative. Is it relative to say that all is relative? If it is not, then not all is relative; but if one proclaims that it is, one adopts a point of view from which it is not (there is one thing that one can say that is not relative, namely that all is relative). It is not actually a paradox, but it seems necessarily false.     

Frequently the 'paradox' is met with in lower grades, ones that are not in themselves self-contradictory.  Once in while it emerges with special poignancy. Boris Johnson recently announced a relaxation of the Covid-era rule that social isolation is mandatory if you have a positive test: It will no longer be enforced.

An interviewer:

What do you think of Boris's announcement? 

Interviewee: 

Well, for me, I'd say you should isolate. 

Does he mean 'I should isolate'? No. Something stronger.  Does he mean 'Everyone should isolate'? He would say he didn't mean that, either. The interviewee is struggling.

What is going on? Maybe people do believe that matters of morality are not, at all events, relative, but that it's uncool to say it.  It's uncool to play the preacher-man; one doesn't like the responsibility that the institution of morality demands. 

I connect the phenomenon with the newish habit, in writing, of ending certain declarative sentences with a question mark. People are hesitant to make assertions, to use outright declarative sentences, on certain topics. 

3. Possible Miswordings that might take off 

[Cancelled! I was WRONG! I'll leave up as penance]

 'Defenestration'

The word means removal of windows, especially if the removal is violent (notorious with the Protestant thugs of the 16th century). Dylan Byers obtained a recording of a CNN staff meeting with WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, to explain the network’s sudden dismissal of Jeff Zucker:

It did not go well. The meeting, which I obtained a recording of last night, highlights the profound sense of loyalty that CNN’s on-air talent have toward their longtime leader, despite his violation of company policy, and the anger they feel regarding the circumstances of his sudden defenestration.

No comment. 

b. 'It's incredulous!' 

Though not often but I venture increasingly, the word is sometimes used for incredible, for a phenomenon (not a person, as is required by 'incredulous'). I've also heard of 'contemptuous' being said for 'contemptible'.  An example from an advertisement for a kitchen utensil: 

The Original Milk Frother has a $17 price tag, which isn’t bad at all considering it makes the most delicious foam and is far from Starbs’ incredulous prices for a simple cup of joe.

This is an attempt to compensate for being lexicographically ill-informed by making up new uses of words, that, though only to their fellow linguistic deficients at most, will seem learned, rather than as further confirmation of their deficiency. 

3 Minor Matters

1: So

A familiar part of English speech is the locution ' .. so .. that ...', as illustrated by

He was driving so fast that he had no chance to make that corner.

Or: 

She was so good at chess that no one wanted to play her.

The construct is something like: [Noun phrase] [be] so [adjectival phrase][relative clause].  This use of 'so' has it as a somewhat complicated adverb, intensifying the following adjective but also requiring a clause following the adjective ('that no one wanted to play her'). 

But now the word 'so' is often used simply as an adverb in its own right, like 'very'.  'She was so good!', etc.  It's like a comparative that has lost its object. [JL points out that this is actually very old; nevertheless I think that its popularity has increased manifold]. 

I have often indulged in it.  I feel its power.  But I fear its effectiveness will be temporary. The effect it now has depends on listeners being aware of the comparative, that they will join me in half expecting it but being indulgent if it does not in fact come. They don't really care what in particular should take the place of the comparative clause marked by 'that', as it is intimated that some comparative could be articulated, and that is enough.  Like an ellipsis.  But that awareness, that expectation, will go.  It'll just be like 'very'. 

2: Really 

(Yorkshire, Lancashire, ...?). When you've said that p—'The defendant was guilty'— but somehow not with the emphasis or panache you'd have liked, you can tack on 'really'.  As in 'p, really'.  'The defendant was guilty, really'.  Now if I'm not mistaken (a pretty big 'if', I grant), this is not just a vacuous phrase, but serves to express the speaker's being not quite at ease in speaking as they have just done.  The word literally says 'Yes, that is the right word!', but what the speaker conveys is a certain dissatisfaction, as if the speaker did not quite succeed in expressing the meaning satisfactorily. It may be compared with '... you know what I mean?'.  Or, it is as if one's turn to speak has ended too soon. I thought there was something more! ('Is that all there is? ... If that's all there is my friend..then lets keep dancing; let's break out the booze, and have a ball').

3: Rising Intonation

This is not strictly a matter of lexicography and not even strictly of grammar, but it is so distinctive and has appeared so suddenly that it's worth commenting on (to use 'so' in the old way). I reckon it's been with us for about twenty years or so in the speech of the young but it has become rampant in the general population for only about five years (correct me if I'm wrong). This is the practice of using a rising intonation—typically reserved for questions asked with the declarative form, as in 'You want the menu?'—for a genuine statement, an assertion, where the signal conveyed is normally (though not always) that the speaker is not done speaking; what follows is another declarative statement, or another declarative conjunct or disjunct preceded by 'and' or 'or'. Typically but not always again, the speaker will do this at the beginning of their turn, with the rest of their statements or clauses following the old conventional downward-tending pattern. 

In writing it happens too, that a statement is made using the normal declarative, but a question-mark is added all the same. I assume as before that the speech-act remains that of making a statement, even if the assertoric force conveyed is thereby dialed back. Unlike examples discussed in the previous paragraph, it occurs typically not at the beginning of the piece of writing, but near the end. Often it will have the modal adverb 'maybe' (or equivalent) governing the main verb.  For example the closing sentence of a comment in a thread might be, 'Maybe we ought to relax?'.  I take it that that speech-act would be of the same category if the question mark were removed. 

Another sort of example in writing:

He passed his hand over his forehead, a little wild-looking, as if he himself had suffered only a narrow escape. "I think about it every single day. I still see her face, you know, getting into that cab? Waving goodbye, so happy." (Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, p. 215)

Of course Tartt was not writing an academic paper or piece of journalism.  It's a case of the author being realistic in her reported speech, accurate to her imaginary protagonists—who in this case are young people in the US I think around 2010 (the speaker is Goldie, a Latino working at a parking garage).    

Why has this phenomenon come about? As far as I can see, it serves two purposes.  

The first, as in the example from Donna Tartt, is the benign one that it serves as a sort of conversational check-in: I imagine the speaker simultaneously looking up at into his listener's eyes, looking for recognition at an especially fraught or emotional moment of his speech. 'You with me?', or 'You feel me?'. It encourages intimacy, connection. 

The second is somewhat more disturbing.  Again the signal is to check in, but not normally with a look that beseeches intimacy.  It signals a rather lack of confidence in what one is saying, either lexically or factually. It is not accidental that the tone is normally reserved for one of questioning. I can't help but take this development as a sign that it holds of mankind in general, or at any rate of a certain culture of English-speakers: it signals, across the age, a loss of confidence, of certainty. It's almost as if the very practice of assertion is slowly being chipped away in a minor Orwellian nightmare: Here are some words; I am not asserting them, I'm not saying they're true, I just raise them for consideration, ok? They came to mind. I'll take them back if you don't like them. 

I would say that we have here the birth of a new variety of speech-act, of force, but we already have such devices as 'Perhaps ...', or 'I suggest that ...', and so on.