[lit-ideas] The Air-Conditioned Tautology
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 13:59:25 EDT
In a message dated 9/21/2004 1:37:11 PM Eastern Standard Time,
atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
I've said it before and I'll say it again because some people don't seem to
be paying attention. "War is war." and "Women are women" are NOT
tautologies. "War is war" is a expression predicating something about war.
"War is war" means cruelty and brutality and mercilessness are to be
expected. It says that whatever happens is OK because all ethics are out
the window once war begins. That is not a tautology. Only the most
literal-minded, anal-retentive, analytical, biblical-inerrantcistic person
would call "war is war" a tautology. Likewise for "women are women".
That's an expression popular with men who shrink before the complex
emotional lives of women and seek shelter in idiocy. "Women are women"
means "I don't know what the hell she wants." Not a tautology.
Hoping to have settled this once and for all,
Mike Geary
Midtown.
Some say: Midtown is Memphis.
I say Midtown is Midtown. Memphis is Memphis.
No tautologies there either.
-----
Point taken. Grice (and the anal-retentives) would say that that's pretty
much what the, oops, tautology, expresses -- yet not _says_. The whole point of
the conversational-implicature manoeuvre is that while some things say
little, they _implicate_ not little (i.e. much).
Geary's diagnosis may be tested via the 'cancellability' test:
"War is war -- but I don't mean to imply it's brutish -- or even brutal
-- thing. Just that it's war.'
The problem with 'Women are women' is the plural. I prefer "Woman is woman",
which, if less idiomatic, is more logically correct. Again, that thing about
emotionality is pretty cancellable:
"Women is women -- I don't mean emotional, just a woman'.
And, to answer Erin's point, "That's that" _is_ a tautology, providing you
keep pointing at the _same_ thing while you say the first 'that' and the second
'that'. Otherwise it's a contradiction.
Cheers,
JL
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