Instances, Incidents, Incidences

This phenomenon has slowly snowballed over many years.  It doesn't involve any notable conceptual confusion other than the milder ignorance of the relevant words, but it has further dimensions which I'll get to.  People will say, in place of (the correct) 'past instances' of some kind of event, 'past incidences' of the kind of event. 

A doctor is conferring with the family of a stroke victim under fifty:

He's a young man. He shouldn't be having such incidences! (Dark Water, Netflix)

I've heard people anxiously garble the somewhat difficult to enunciate 'in-ci-den-ces', or even to begin saying 'instances' only to 'correct' themselves with 'incidences'.  Aside from the impropriety of usage, why think the more tortuous word is the one to use, when the easier one would do, which everyone understands?  No doubt people know the term 'incidents', which denote a certain sub-class of instances.  Is this mistaken use of 'incidences' a mere mispronunciation of 'incidents', or a graver sort of mistake?  To speak properly of the incidence of a kind of event is not to speak of a particular case of the event, but to speak of its frequency, the rate at which it happens.  

It could be because I'm getting examples mostly via Radio 4, but it may have to do with the fact that it often happens when a person is trying to sound more intellectual or more official, if not more officious, than is their wont; perhaps they have some dim association of incidences with graphs, even with inflection points.  

Again, the case follows the usual pattern:  An ordinary word - 'instance' - is phonetically close to a more exotic word that is it least in the same semantic ballpark - 'incidence'.  Some person, unaware of the difference in meaning, uses the second for the first, and for some inscrutable reason, the virus proves to be catching.  

They Sadly Died

Of late, whenever a newscaster announces deaths--a car crash, coronavirus, terrorist bomb etc.--they say that people sadly died. You might think this is a courteous show of feeling, but of course since 'sadly' has become de rigueur, it is nothing of the sort; it is only a cluttering of speech.  The devil in me wants to ask, after the newscaster says thus-and-so many people sadly died of coronavirus, how many additional victims went out defiantly, angrily, or even jubilantly?  Another devil in me wants to know, exactly whose sadness are you speaking of?  The dead person's?   The deceased person's friends and family? Seems presumptuous. Your own?  Or is it impersonal, as in the 'sad fact of their dying'?  

Written journalism has also caught the bug.  Today I read: 

When officers arrived they found two infants inside the vehicle, and they were sadly pronounced dead at the scene by emergency paramedics. 

 

Entitlement

One used to say such things as 'She has a sense of entitlement'; 'She thinks that she is entitled to walk in without an appointment'; 'Yes, she is entitled to be paid that sum'; 'All members of the club are entitled to two drinks at the bar'. It is always entitlement-for, a transitive expression:  In the first example, the object is tacit, but it is understood that the subject believes she entitled to something or other, normally if not inevitably something desirable.  And, most important for the point I'm about to make, entitlement is something granted by others--by social or legal contract, or by those unspoken agreements that exist between us. 

But now people say 'She's entitled!', an apparently intransitive phenomenon, a one-place predicate, meaning a property, not a relation (for a whole book about it, see Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, by Kate Manne). What they mean, on the older way of speaking, is 'She has a sense of entitlement', or 'She assumes she is entitled (to something)'.  In fact it is possible to be entitled in the new sense without actually being entitled the old sense.  To say one is entitled in the new sense is primarily a remark about one's own state of mind.  Entitlement in the old sense, by contrast, was an achievement, a 'title' one had to earn, or be granted as a matter of one's social or legal standing.  Not only is one's state of mind not sufficient for entitlement in the old sense, no particular state of mind is necessary: one can perfectly well be entitled to something, in the old sense, without being aware of it, or indeed while believing that one is not entitled to it.  Now, contrariwise, to say 'She's entitled' is more often than not taken to mean, precisely, that she lacks the standing she thinks she has, that, in the old sense of the word, she is not entitled.  

Is any confusion generated by the potential ambiguity between the two senses?  I said above that, unlike the old sense, to say one is entitled in the new sense is primarily a remark about one's own state of mind.  Is it merely such a remark?  A bit of field work perhaps is necessary; ask subjects whether it is possible for one to be mistaken in thinking one is entitled.  I suspect results would not be uniform, a sign that echoes of the old sense are still present. 

Redundancy of 'Mights'

Redundancy of 'Mights'

Today a person in government said (of Boris J) that they're "going to conduct an inquiry to find out whether there is any evidence that malfeasance might have been committed". No, this makes me cringe a little.  That is like saying "It's possible that it's possible".  Deniers of S4 aside (and setting aside Two-Dimensionalism), that is just an overly wordy way, that is a redundant way, of saying "It's possible," or, in today's case, that they're "going to conduct an inquiry to find out whether there is any evidence that malfeasance was committed" (or - thanks DL - that they're "going to conduct an inquiry to find out whether there is any evidence of  malfeasance").  That there is evidence that something happened does not prove, of course, that the thing happened. It is just evidence. 

Why do people speak this way?  Possibly it's just a shaky grasp of grammar; one can well-imagine the speaker, her or his eyes going vacant when speaking the sentence.  But it might also be a certain humility; one can imagine the inner dialogue: "This thing is possible; that's all I want to say and don't want anyone thinking I'm saying more than that.  Better put in 'might' or 'possible' wherever I can, just to make sure".  Or maybe both are at work. 

Qualitative and Quantitative

Qualitative and Quantitative

In 1971 the UK changed its coinage system, from a system where twelve pennies make a shilling, and twenty shillings make a pound (I know very little about it, but they tell me also of tanners - not tenners - ha'pennies, half-crowns, farthings, thrupenny bit, and more), to a more sensible decimal system, like the US system, which has always been decimal (and of course the Euro).  Just as one hundred cents make a dollar, one hundred pence make a pound, and the shilling was retired. 

The people were not invariably pleased, I hear.  Among other things, this has always struck me as symptomatic of a more general phenomenon of people disliking brute numbers as a means of thinking, especially when evaluating things.  One prefers to have a remnant of barter, where your units were a pound of apples, a healthy cow at 2 years age, and so on.  As if you don't really know how much you're getting until translated into things of real value--apples, cows, or indeed, somewhat ironically, gold or silver (and this is in a sense true).  Not only does it seem colder to speak of 100 units rather than twelve or twenty etc., it's as if a pound just happened to be equivalent to twenty schillings, but it is not equal to twenty schillings, it's not the same thing; maybe tomorrow it will be worth twenty-one!

The same thing happened with the shift from the Imperial system of weights and measures--stones, pounds, inches, feet, miles--to the more orderly Metric System; fourteen pounds make a stone; twelve inches make a foot, 5280 feet make a mile, and things get very complicated when speaking of ounces, pints, quarts, gallons, etc., a complexity which is exacerbated with differences between US vs UK systems.  Although for some purposes (such as the distances on road signs), people still use the old system (in any event I don't see that there is anything psychological going on here).

In music, the British speak of semibreves, minims, crotchets, quavers, and semi-quavers.  In the US, it's a more rational, and easier to learn and memorize 'decimal' system, with whole notes, half-notes, quarter-notes, and eighth-notes (and sixteenth-notes and so on).  Again, it's as if the crotchet has an intrinsic quality that is not to be compared with that of the quaver.    

This is somehow similar to weather forecasting terminology in Britain as opposed to the US.  In the US, the forecasts convey the predictions in a scientific style; they'll speak dryly of  'an 80% chance of precipitation', 'humidity over 90%', 'Low temperature overnight of 40 degrees' (although in the relatively folksy degrees Fahrenheit).  In the UK it is more subjective and homespun in style: they'll say 'It's going to be wet out there! Galoshes all round! Rain, or even snow very likely!'; the 'Beast from the East!'; 'It will feel cold; a chilling wind lies in store for us!'; 'The sun is trying come out but I don't think it'll succeed!'; 'Bit and bobs of mist are still hanging round!' 'We're in for a stiff dose of the wet stuff!'. 'And that's your weather, Helen!'. (I could go on). 

I also hear some echo of the difference, with respect to the qualitative-quantitative distinction, in the sale of medicines.  In the US, names (and the character of the packaging) encourage you to think that you're trusting science, the latest hi-tech; in the UK, to think of your auntie, your tried and trusted home remedies.  'Corocidin', 'Nyquil' , 'Mucinex' vs 'Lemsip', 'Night Nurse' or 'Beecham's'.  The difference is however lessening, I believe.

Hypotheses?  I don't think it's that the people in the UK more likely to cling to primitive ways of thinking, or let alone that they're not mathematically as advanced as the Yanks. The 1950's and especially the 1960's made science -- the realm of mathematics -- very much the thing in the US.  Americans got very puffed up about the atom bomb, B-52s and Doomsday, lasers, scanners, sonar, radar, going to the the Moon, transistors, computers.  All, at least one was led to believe, American inventions.  It was partly genuine American pride which survived from the end of Second World War until it began to fizzle out in say the 1980's, that perhaps explains the points about Medicines and the Weather.  And the other points can perhaps be explained independently, perhaps just as accidents of history.  But maybe one needs to remark the forest here, not just the trees.  Taken together, maybe these do suggest a difference between the British and the American Character. 

Prosecute/Persecute; Invidious 

The difference between the verbs to prosecute and to persecute is showing signs of being lost.  A recent story about none other than Donald Trump, speaking of the riots in Washington DC, 6th of January 2021: 

Trump also complained that law enforcement was now “persecuting” the Capitol rioters, hundreds of whom have been arrested, while “nothing happens” to left-wing protesters.

I predict that the adjective 'invidious'--so very good in suitable spots, expressing a complicated meaning, of a distinction which will cause undue division -- will go the way of 'begging the question' or 'refute'.  It will come to mean, when said of a person such as Trump, 'too individual' or 'unduly selfish'.  Just you watch.   

In Future, Exponential

 In Future, and Exponential

I've long thought that speaking of 'in future', rather than 'in the future', was a mark -- in Britain -- of not quite having had the best education (or not benefiting from it).  I mean goodness, no one speaks of 'in past', rather than 'in the past' (do they?).  But lo and behold, Robin Collingwood, in his Intellectual Autobiography, speaks in that way--'in future'.  Collingwood was no slouch. 

In another case of fine distinctions being lost -- this can be laid at the door of the Coronavirus pandemic, I mean if correlation is causation (:  -- 'exponential', which has traditionally had its precise mathematical meaning, is, if recent speech is a sign, in danger of meaning 'rapid and scary!'.  

The Ethics of Use and Mention

Most everyone recognises the difference between using words--as when I began this sentence by using 'Everyone'--and mentioning words, as when that word appears the second time in this sentence, enclosed by quotation marks.  I use the word 'fat' when I say 'Boris is fat'; I mention the word 'fat' when I say "Keir said 'Boris is fat'". 

It might seem persnickety to bring the point up, but this distinction is sometimes important--Frege, Godel and Quine took Russell to task on the distinction--and sometimes it is ethically important.  Vitally so. It takes front and centre when the words are slur-words, especially racial ones. To wit: 

A BBC journalist used the N-word in a TV news report

By Amy Woodyatt, CNN Business

(Updated 1558 GMT (2358 HKT) July 29, 2020)

As Lamdin described how a healthcare worker was hit by a car, she warned viewers that they were about to hear "highly offensive language." She then said assailants had called the healthcare worker "a n***er."

 Bristol-based Social Affairs Correspondent Fiona Lamdin did not use the N-word, as in the headline.  She mentioned it.  It does not completely erase the slurriness of the word--this is evinced by the practice of writing 'n***er'--but Lamdin should not be charged with using the word, and indeed there is nothing newsworthy in Woodyatt's story, as far as I can see.  Especially not when Lamdin issued a warning of the coming mention of the word.