Day: April 5, 2012

Caveat: Cretan

Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable

ImagesThis is incredibly funny. I must quote it at length.

Rush Limbaugh, modern Epimenides?

Wikipedia tells me that Limbaugh lives in West Palm Beach, FL. Yet for years now he has been telling listeners something different:

    Now, look, folks, as I’ve told you countless times, I live in Literalville.    [Transcript, 10.9.2010]

It’s an outright lie, and I know this because Rush doesn’t do metaphor. In fact, that’s what he means by claiming Literalville residency:

    If you tell me something, I take it literally. I believe that you mean it. I don’t dance around edges trying to figure out what you really meant. If you say it, I believe it. I live in Literalville […].    [Transcript, 10.9.2010]

There are only two possibilities here:

1.    Limbaugh literally lives in Literalville, FL.
2.   Limbaugh metaphorically inhabits a place devoid of metaphorical meaning or implication, which he describes figuratively as Literalville.

The first possibility is empirically false. There is no Literalville in FL, or in any other state. I checked (and no, Google, I did not mean Littleville, AL).

The second possibility can only be true if it is false. You can only live in Literalville in the metaphorical sense if you move away for a time (the time it takes to say, figuratively, that you live in Literalville), during which time you’re not a Literalville resident. It’s a neat version of the Cretan paradox: the Cretan says, ‘all Cretans are liars’. Neat, because it shares the element of local belonging as a logical class, but also because it shifts the dichotomy from Truth-Lie to Literal-Figurative. And because that shift, equating Truth to Literal and Lie to Figurative, is one that only makes sense if you live in Literalville. Note that this isn’t the same as the use of vacuous ‘literally‘ as a sort of intensifier in a metaphorical context (‘I was literally going to explode’) though maybe it’s related. Limbaugh is actually using figurative language to deny that he understands figurative language.

Caveat: 너무 분하다

Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

In my Phonics class (lowest level, 1st or 2nd graders) I have a second-grader named Yedam. Yedam is pretty smart, but she doesn't deal well with stress – so when we have a spelling test, she loses her cool, and never does very well. And then, almost inevitably, after the quiz is over, and she sees her low score, she cries. I try to just help her to understand it's not such a big deal – when it's not a test, she often does just fine.

Yesterday, she didn't cry at the end of the test. Instead, she wrote, boldly, across the top of her quiz paper, "너무 분하다." My coworkers all told me it means she's angry, and seemed alarmed: "Why is she angry?" But the dictionary conveys a more subtle meaning, that I think is closer to what she intended: 분하다 can mean "chagrined" or "vexed." So what she meant, I think, is "I am very chagrined."

I took a picture of her test paper.

Scene 004

Ultimately, despite her score of "2," I viewed it as a sign of huge progress that instead of crying, she expressed her feelings verbally. Note that the word "alligator" is always the last word on a "Jared quiz." – so everyone knows it despite its multisyllabicity.

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