海角大神

Have you noticed that sometimes articles in the news media invite your attention to a trend that you in fact 丑补惫别苍鈥檛 苍辞迟颈肠别诲?听

And that even when informed about it, you have trouble believing the alleged trend is an actual trend, or even any kind of perceptible phenomenon at all, except perhaps in the mind of the author or talking head who is promoting it?

Me, too.聽

鈥淗mm,鈥� I mused the other day as I was in the kitchen, with one ear cocked to the radio, 鈥渢his one was probably taped before the holidays, so they鈥檇 have it in the can for the lull around New Year鈥檚.鈥� And with that I refocused on the mushrooms I was chopping.聽

Some recent reading, though, has given me some new terminology for considering what鈥檚 going on in a case like this.

The concept here is known as an embedded presupposition. One of the best-known examples, often used in coaching politicians to work with the news media, is 鈥淲hen did you stop beating your wife?鈥�

And you鈥檝e probably noticed that I embedded a presupposition in my first sentence. I framed it as a question: 鈥淗ave you noticed...?鈥� But I鈥檝e introduced as fact an idea that isn鈥檛 necessarily your idea: 鈥淪ometimes articles in the news media invite your attention to a trend that you in fact 丑补惫别苍鈥檛 苍辞迟颈肠别诲.鈥�

I鈥檝e used noticed as what linguists call a 鈥渇active verb.鈥� Factive is an old-fashioned adjective 鈥� even Noah Webster, in 1828, noted it was 鈥渘ot used.鈥� It meant 鈥渕aking,鈥� or 鈥渉aving the power to make,鈥� presumably in a Captain Picard 鈥淢ake it so鈥� sense.

But the adjective lives on in the field of linguistics. Here鈥檚 the Oxford Dictionaries definition of the word in this sense: 鈥淒enoting a verb that assigns the status of an established fact to its object (normally a clausal object), e.g., know, regret, resent.鈥澛�

You can plant a suggestion with just a phrase: 鈥淗ave you noticed a trend toward...?鈥� But a complete clause does a better job. A clausal object is typically a 鈥渢hat鈥� clause: I know that you have the background for this position. I regret that you won鈥檛 be joining us. She resents that he passed her over for promotion. All these subordinate clauses are just constructs of substantives and verbs. But what factives do, as the dictionary explains, is to assign them 鈥渢he status of an established fact.鈥�

But not necessarily so. In fact, 鈥測ou鈥� may not 鈥渉ave the background鈥� for the position, 鈥測ou鈥� may be joining 鈥渦s鈥� after all, and 鈥渉e鈥� may have passed 鈥渉er鈥� over for promotion only in the sense of giving one job to someone else because 鈥渉e鈥� knows that something even better suited to 鈥渉er鈥� talents is about to become available.

As the old saw has it, it鈥檚 not what people don鈥檛 know that gets them into trouble; it鈥檚 what they do know that ain鈥檛 so.

And so careful readers and listeners need to be alert to how discourse can be manipulated 鈥� if only by journalists seeking a 鈥渢rend鈥� on a slow news day.