September 5, 2008
Why Can't We All Just Get Along Conjugate Properly?
At first, we attributed the proliferation of spelling and grammar errors on the nation's bumpers to the rise of the make-your-own-bumper-sticker industry (e.g. Zazzle, where users can immortalize their mistakes on everything from postage stamps to sneakers). But we're beginning to think different about this issue.
First, in matters of spelling and grammar, we all live in glass houses: who among us has never made a mistake? Not long ago, Lynne Truss's best-selling book Eats, Shoots & Leaves decried the proliferation of punctuation mistakes; in deliciously nit-picking his review of the book, Louis Menand observed that "the first punctuation mistake in [Truss's book] appears in the dedication."
Second, perhaps this example is not an error at all, but rather a poetic deviation from standard diction in order to enhance the impact of the claim -- a trick known as enallage. In his 1908 magnum pompous Grammar as a Science, B.F. Sisk defines enallage as
a substitution, as one part of speech for another, of one person, number, gender, case, tense, mode, or voice, of the same word, for another.
That are an excellent definition! Best grammar alibi ever. More on enallage here.
Third: just because someone can't write right doesn't mean they're wrong. Take this example: we agree! The sticker is right! Ignorance are bad foreign policy! And arrogance two!
This fine print on the sticker directs us to www.democracymeansyou.com. Perhaps we may order one for ourselves.
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You do a fine job of illustrating your glass house statement in the following sentence:
"But we're beginning to think different about this issue."
Thanks!
Is this really a mistake? It would be, for instance, totally correct to say "The combination of ignorance and arrogance is bad foreign policy." Couldn't such a structure be implied by the statement?
So where y'all from?
To quote Winston Churchill: "This is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."
Shazwozzle -- you're right. That bumper sticker does not contain a grammatical error. Alternatively, it could say, "Ignorance and arrogance ARE bad foreign policIES" -- but as it stands, it's correct. Sorry, SFist.
Exactly. It's not necessarily ungrammatical, and it's not "non-standard".
Compare:
with:
^^^ this^^^^^
and we "think differently" only bad ad writers think different.
Macaroni and Cheese is a proper noun.
Bumper stickers are bad foreign policy.
This is not a blogsite that should be laughing at other people's bad grammar and spelling. Glass houses, stones, you get the idea.
Brothers and sisters, remember what the good book tells us. In matters of grammar, "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23).
Am I the only one seeing a play on Bushisms ("Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?") and the Bush Doctrine (preemptive war)?
Seems pretty obvious to me: an indictment of simple, unnuanced thinking.
But I guess if you have to explain the joke ...
That said, gkanapathy, with regard to the macaroni and cheese analogy, we refer to the honorable pedant H.K. Fowler:
Thanks, Generic!
the coupling of the subjects is satisfactorily (if not obviously) implied by the context of the statement, making the grammar, in fact, correct.
Not.
No no no! So many of you are wrong!! "Ignorance" and "arrogance" are two separate items. Yes, it would be correct to say "the combination [of two things] is..." but that's because the subject, the word "combination," is singular, and "arrogance and ignorance" in the latter case are merely objects of the preposition.
(And for the record, the reason we say "macaroni and cheese is..." is because it refers to a single dish. If you had them separately, you would then conjugate for the plural.)
And while we're on the subject, I'd like to address something that's been pissing me off for quite some time--and something that pops up in A LOT of posts: it's vs. its. Its is a possessive (such as my, mine, your, her, hers, etc.). It's is a contraction of it is.
If I catch any of your posters making this mistake again, I will hunt you down, I will find you, and I will make you write the rule out 100 times!
Sorry to point out mamcart, "ignorance and arrogance" TOGETHER are the foreign policy. It's just like saying "'shock and awe' is the way to start an ill conceived war."
To say "are" would suggest that each, alone, can be the foreign policy. To say "is" suggests that the two are a single unit of foreign policy.
No! The fact that they are combined here does not change the conjugation of the verb. There is a plural subject, necessitating the use of the 3rd person plural verb form. If you actually wanted to suggest that each, alone, is bad foreign policy you would say: "Ignorance or arrogance is bad foreign policy." You'd be giving an alternative--and showing that only one of these attitudes is necessary to constitute bad foreign policy. (And for the record, "shock and awe" should use the 3rd pers. plural form of the verb: I know popular usage has collapsed its concept into one thing, but technically it's two stages: shock and then awe...)
Geez, didn't any of you people have to diagram sentences in school?
"Ignorance and arrogance" is here an example of the rhetorical figure hendiadys (as Jonathan points out above), in which two separate objects joined by "and" function as one single grammatical unit. Although hendiadys is much more infrequent in English than in other languages (especially classical languages), it remains a rhetorical strategy. "Macaroni and cheese" is not a proper noun; it is a good example of hendiadys in English (as is, say, "the sound and the fury").
Here "Ignorance and arrogance" is working as a single unit to represent a single foreign policy that is characterized both by ignorance and arrogance. The speaker of this bumper sticker presumably wants to underline the close collusion of ignorance and arrogance, the way they support each other and reinforce a single policy of which they are two parts. "Sunshine and showers," however, is a poor candidate for hendiadys as its two elements do not work together to suggest a coherent whole; on the other hand, one could easily imagine a grammatical, albeit stylistically flamboyant, weather forecaster proclaiming that "sleet and snow is to be expected today," as "sleet and snow" could work as a single unit, painting a unified and unpleasant picture, that would justify his bending of grammar.
To conclude: this bumper sticker is indeed agrammatical. However, style and syntax occupy a plane above that of grammar. One could argue about whether this bumper sticker is making good or poor use of stylistic convention; however to worry about its grammaticality is to misunderstand the multiple facets of language.
This is the best series of comments ever seen on SFist.
Oh shit.
MUNI SUX!
(THE) 101!
SIEBEL!
CRITICAL MASS!
DALY!
ED JEW!
HIPSTERZ!
There. That should fix it.