Friday, October 12, 2012

Enthymeme Alert

Some of you have joined me in tracking the wily enthemyme -- that hidden premise, without which a syllogism  does not go through:


In mathematical and scientific exposition, these are  of necessity rife, and generally used wisely.  You simply can’t spell out every step, for cognitive reasons.  But in political rhetoric, the hidden premise becomes the smuggled assumption.

So consider the current ad campaign, remarkable in its audacity:

Take the A train


The first statement contains no hidden assumptions, nor can it be false, for it is simply an imperative, like “Eat your vegetables” or “Don’t forget to floss”:

IN ANY WAR BETWEEN THE
CIVILIZED MAN AND THE SAVAGE,
SUPPORT THE CIVILIZED MAN

Now, you might find that sound advice, or not;  so far the logician, or the semanticist, has nothing to say.   But for the sake of the logical argument  -- for the modus ponens aut tollens -- let us take this recommendation -- call it “Proposition A” -- as sound. 
(Those constitutionally incapable of comprehending the role of counterfactuals, assumptions, deductions, and refutations, in logical argument, will scarcely follow me here, and may conclude that I am rattling the sabre of imperialism;  but these are not our audience:  to them we have nothing to say.)

The ad continues, in a surprising direction:

SUPPORT ISRAEL
DEFEAT JIHAD

Now, strictly grammatically, these are two further imperatives -- call them respectively Propositions B and C -- with no explicit connection to Propostion A.  Thus, in terms of mere syntax, the ad is semantically isomorphic to the following (which, indeed, by rights, should be posted in every bus and subway station):

EAT YOUR VEGETABLES
DON’T CUSS
DON’T FORGET TO FLOSS

Wise advice!  -- or rather:  Three separate, independent, and unrelated pieces of wise advice.

But the actual strategy -- the subterranean intent  (appropriate, that the ad appears in the NY subway) -- is quite otherwise, as every sociopolitically citizen will instinctually realize …

*     *     *
~ Commercial break ~
We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

For:  The null assumption, when propositions (here, A, B, and C) are thus juxtaposed in quick succession, that these relate, the one to the other.  This follows from what pragmaticists (? pragmaticians?  pragmatologists?? People With Pragmatophilia ???)  call a converstational implicature or Gricean maxim:  in this case, Be Relevant.
Now,  the structure of the ad as far as Propositions A and B, is:  Support X; (therefore -- by Grice) Support Y;  and by simple set-theory, it follows that Y needs to be a subset of X, or the syllogism does not go through.  (Likewise -- to take a simpler example, “Everyone in Florida is retarded;  therefore everyone in Boca Raton is retarded” is a valid inference only if Boca Raton is in Florida.)

Hence, observance of the Relevance maxim  here requires the enthymeme,

=> Israelis are (in general) civilized <=

And with this, surely, no-one can legitimately quarrel.  Though marred by occasional barbarous behavior in Gaza or Lebanon (or Damascus, or in international waters against the U.S.S. Liberty), as a nation they are -- like the Germans and the French, for all their historical Ausschweifungen and incartades -- undoubtedly civilized.  -- As are the English;  as are the Dutch.  As are many in Egypt and Morocco.  Indeed, even in the United States, you will find great numbers of civilized people, so long as you exclude places like Florida, Nevada, and Texas.   Indeed, whereas ten thousand years ago, pockets of civilization were hard to find (this assertion will be baffling to Texans, who maintain that the planet itself is not even that old), nowadays they are as plentiful as gooseberries.   I mean srsly, folks -- It’s getting so you can’t so much as swing a cat without hitting some opera-goer, or NPR-listener, or New Yorker-subscriber  (O where are the Pecos Bills of yesteryear?)   So why pick Israel, in particular, to illustrate this well-populated superset? 

Again applying the Maxim of Relevance, we seek the solution in Proposition C …


*     *     *
~ Commercial break ~
We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

By now old-hands at unearthing enthymemes, our readers will instantly identify the next one, necessary to the pragmatic coherence of the ad:

=>  Jihadis are savages <=

Now -- here things do get a bit sticky.   Not because the very word “savage” is now taboo -- the term is perfectly well defined and exemplified in history, along with troglodyte, hunter-gatherer, subsistence-farmer  and Tory and Whig and Jacobite and what-have-you;  nor do we reck such taboos a half-whit.  Rather the problem is the simple descriptive adequacy of the term, given the historical facts concerning savages, and the empirical affordances of jihadists today.  For -- historically --  Savages don’t proselytize, nor cross major geopolitical boundaries.    The Koran-quoting, djellaba- or burka-clad religious fanatics now pulullating in Pakistan, or Azawad, call up all all sorts of negative images, if you wish, but hardly that of naked cannibals with bones through their noses, chowing down around the missionary-pot.  It simply doesn’t fit.  Indeed,  for a closer analogy, you would turn, not to pre-Colonial Africa, but to, say, Israel: to the Torah-spouting, payess-sporting, shtreimel-topped Haredim zealots who call for nuking the Aswan high dam.  Like the takfiri terrorists in Islam, the Haredim zealots and settlers are a sort of fungus-infection in their larger (largely liberal) society, claiming every sort of special privilege, while withholding military service to their own country, and religious recognition of anyone else.

(For the CT connoisseur, we add the following:  al-Zarqawi, and Hassan Ghul, could fairly be described as barbarians -- not “savages”, really, but halfway there -- whereas UBL and AAZ  -- nay, al-`Awlaqi and Abu-Basir -- however you might disagree with them, decidedly not.  They -- like Mephistopheles -- are quite civilized; they have simply taken a wrong turn.)

Indeed, this right-wing attempt to establish (or rather, smuggle-in via presupposition) an equation “jihadi = savage”, recalls the rhetoric immediately post-9/11, where the right wing bizarrely called the hijackers “cowards”, one thing they most certainly were not, and … savaged any commentator who denied the equation.

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

For a book-length semantic investigation,
in Arabic and the European languages,
click here

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

[Note **] And indeed, predictably, many readers cannot even follow the argument politically, let alone logically -- they instantly foam at the mouth at the sight of the forbidden badword “savage”, and get no farther.  Thus, a reader comments:

A truly civilized attitude rejects the racism behind the term "savage." That was merely the rationalization for the wars of colonization that Europeans waged on Asians and Africans, and for the wars that the US waged on Indians. Those acts of slaughter for land and natural resources were the real savagery.

And another replies:

Which race was identified in the ad? Your utter ignorance of the meaning of the word belies your inattention to the facts. Europeans and Americans are hardly the only groups that have waged wars and colonized other lands. Asians and Africans, and yes even Native Americans, waged their own wars against one another and against "foreigners." The existence of the country of Turkey is the result of the invasion of what was once Greek lands by Central Asian marauders.

All of which is well and good -- but quite irrelevant to the whole point of the ad, which is to smuggle in support for Israel.

[Please notice that the observation in the previous sentence has nothing whatever to do with politics per se;  it is a matter of logico-linguistic hygiene, nothing more.
Aargh -- plus!  The English-teacher in me  cannot refrain from saying:
the second poster misused belies;  he meant betrays.]

~

Still.  The point of this exercise in semantic analysis  was to burnish your sociopolitical acuity -- not to beat up on poor Israel, which has enough problems of her own.    And to prove our lack of malice, we hereby offer a couple of new advertisements in support of that plucky nation -- offered free of charge, reproducible without permission, suitable for framing or for mounting on the subway walls:

WHEN CHOOSING  WHETHER TO EAT
WHOLESOME VEGETALBES
OR ICKY TREYF,
THE WISE MAN WILL EAT HIS VEGETABLES.

SUPPORT ISRAEL
SHUN CHEESE-DOODLES, BACON-CHEESEBURGERS, TWINKIES, AND SPAM

~

GIVEN ANY TALK-RADIO RANT
CLAIMING THAT ELVIS IS ALIVE,
OR OBAMA IS A MUSLIM, BORN IN AFRICA,
OR THAT SPACE ALIENS ARE INTERESTED IN YOUR ANUS,
OR THAT ADAM AND EVE RODE DINOSAURS TO THE WAL-MART,

THE DISCERNING LISTENER WILL TURN OFF THE SET

SUPPORT LIECHTENSTEIN (ALSO ISRAEL),
WHERE THE FACTS OF SCIENCE ARE RECOGNIZED;

DEFEAT TEXAS, TRUMP,
AND THE TEA-BAGGERS,
WHERE THEY ARE NOT



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