[lit-ideas] Re: "The Day After Yesterday"

 
 
In a message dated 1/31/2005 1:41:55 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
J.L.  wrote:
"it is  _analytically_ *true* that 'the day after yesterday'  _is_ 'today'."
Really?  I would have thought that this phrase is a  classic example of those
bits of language that escape _analytic_  analysis.  For example, to what does
'yesterday' refer  to?
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far  away


----
 
Nothing escapes analytic analysis -- to Nietzsche!
 
One problem is that 'the day after yesterday' is _modelled_ (or 'modeled'  as 
the Americans spell it) after the phrase, I was thinking, 'the day after  
tomorrow'. 
 
Now, I don't know about Anglo-Saxon (Old English), but one has to admit  that 
the phrase 'the day after tomorrow' is a paraphrasis. In other languages,  
there is a shorter expression ('pasado-manhana', in Spanish). (How's that in  
Arabic, Mirembe?). 
 
In a language like Spanish, then, the pun in _Sideways_ gets lost in  
translation. Since there is a shorter way of saying 'the day after tomorrow',  
the 
phrase 'the day after yesterday' sounds doubly artificial.
 
Maya may be meaning that if 'today' is a _shorter_ way of saying 'the day  
after yesterday', why not use, a la Grice, the briefer expression (recall his  
conversational maxim, enjoining 'perspicuity', 'be brief').
 
I'm not sure what McCartney meant by 'Yesterday'. Literally, of course, we  
_know_. We may doubt as to what he may have 'implicated'. The phrase, "Now I  
long for yesterday" is particularly _ironic_ I find, but not _really_  
contradictory ('analytically false'), is it?
 
In Sideways, I have found online, it has been suggested that the novel is  
_obtusely_ titled "The day after yesterday", and in the film, it is _not_  
obvious that Miles finds Maya's synonym-replacement altogether happy. 
 
Thanks for your comments,
 
Cheers,
 
JL
 
 
 
 
 


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