I recently stared paying attention to the people-speak expressing the opposite of what is being said. Just now watching A Serous Man again, there is a colleague who tells Larry Gopnik he has “nothing to worry about the tenure”, naturally this means his tenure is in big trouble. Similarly “never again” means get ready, “soon when messiah comes” means never, “remember I am your friend” means don’t bother me again, “I am in love” means I am consumed by the conflicted hate, “Monotheism” means superstitious worship of men and objects, “the land of milk and honey” means the barren land of the financial hardship, “you are now free to do what you like” means you are trapped by the cards dealt to you, “it’s simple” means it’s a complicated concept, “frankly” means prepare for a lie, “government for the people” means an elite extracting maximum value from the masses, “consumer is our highest priority” means we are constantly looking for better ways to screw you, ” we are fortunate to have such a beautiful community” means you are on your own. This list is endless. There might be s switch somewhere in the brain that makes it so easy for people to verbalize the opposite of what they really trying to say.
The Art of the Opposite
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If “A person means the opposite of what he said” were generally true, then we should infer that you believe what is being asserted by “Never again” is that the Holocaust will not be repeated; and so on for all your other examples. It is the old Minsk-Pinsk joke cited by Freud.
I think following Donald Davidson that we can’t begin to communicate unless we translate most sentences so that they turn out true in our own conceptual world. If we start assuming whenever someone says “I like meat” he really dislikes meat and so on for the rest of the discourse, we might as well go back to our separate caves, because the social use of language is doomed to fail. Maybe that is the point of the post.
I don’t mean a round trip of meaning. I mean just what I wrote, people are not telling the truth.
ben, check out erich fromm’s escape from freedom where he describes what’s really going on when Martin Luther comes along and professes all his love to his creator and what reallly is going on in his character structure/psyche etc. ayen sham
I refuse to be referenced to yet another book without a reader being able to paraphrase an idea in a paragraph. Especially the pop psychology variety.