
An Interactive Guide to Ambiguous Grammar - colinprince
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-interactive-guide-to-ambiguous-grammar
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doomrobo
Wow, that was somehow one of the hardest-hitting articles I've read in a
while. It's like constructing a huge lemma and then using it in a one-liner
proof of a completely unrelated theorem.

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ryandamm
I think you're all missing the point. For a lengthy elaboration, please read
this classic from 1946:

[http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...](http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/)

The choice of language isn't accidental, it's political. Think of the role of
language in Orwell's 1984.

Now apply the principle: go make your PR/marketing people read both of these
essays, and make your communications vivid and effective.

Unless you're dealing with a hot-button political issue, and wish to CYA with
bland, indirect, and vague sayings. But then again, that's not actually
communicating, is it?

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vezzy-fnord
This is actually quite creative because it leaves a lot open to ideological
interpretation. The author is progressively making a sentence more ambiguous
in an attempt to deconstruct propaganda, but with the last two images ends on
a blatant example of propaganda of their own doing! The difference being many
consider the latter to be morally righteous. As such, what is and isn't loaded
is in the eye of the beholder.

I don't think that was his intention. He likely believed his conclusion was
sincere. But that's how I read it, and it becomes even greater for it.

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HCIdivision17
Reading this, I was struck by how it reminded me of a talk that slowly warped
and wrapped a statement to build up the Y-combinator. The process takes a
self-referential function and slowly works the self out of it.

Honestly, I'm not at all sure turning a function anonymous is actually similar
to making a sentence passive, but maybe re-watching that video now I'll have
that je ne sais quoi that'll let me actually grok the process.

[0]
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FITJMJjASUs](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FITJMJjASUs)

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agumonkey
I think that 'je ne sais quoi' was just Jim Weirich, he was very very good at
teaching.

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Amorymeltzer
I am reminded of the great George Carlin speaking on a similar thread, on
language is used to mask truth, in particular the example of PTSD:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAj6cXHrWdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAj6cXHrWdQ)

Even when we recognize that something is intentionally sterile or vague, it's
impressive how much we just move on.

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isani
"A fox was brown" is a perfectly ordinary sentence in the active voice. "Speed
was involved in an incident" can also be parsed as active, if "involved" is an
adjective. If the sentence is passive, then the active equivalent is "An
incident involved speed", which is hardly any better.

That "ultimate in passive voice" is certainly convoluted, but it has very
little if anything to do with passive voice.

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saulrh
Affirming the consequent. Jumping to conclusions. Appeal to emotion.

Also, there's a reason they use language like this. Namely, say they wrote the
sentence you arrived at; what do you think the reaction would be? Riots,
right? Violent, righteous riots. Sounds good - up until the mob gets to the
hospital and finds the involved officer's partner there being fixed up after
getting shot three times in the chest. Feels silly, right? You don't do major
things when you don't know what happened. And that's why they use this
language: they don't know what happened either, and until they do they're not
going to say what happened.

Don't jump to conclusions.

Finally: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-
rage/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/)

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moosemilkie
If you click the "source" link at the bottom of the piece, you'll find that
this is not a hypothetical situation. That's an actual statement put out the
police themselves, who know exactly what happened.

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saulrh
I am aware. How does this affect my point? The essay here would have been just
as correctly concluded by disambiguating the police statement into "A black
person shot a police officer."

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moosemilkie
If you're aware, then why lie, and say they didn't know what happened? Why
make up a fairy tale about "violent, righteous riots" and an injured police
officer? I can't tell you how it affects your point because I apparently don't
understand what your point was supposed to be.

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saulrh
I think I'd just woken up and didn't realize that I could have insulted your
argument more strongly and directly. I apologize for that. Ignore that comment
in favor of "The article could have concluded more correctly by disambiguating
the statement into 'A black person shot a police officer.'".

And, honestly, I should have realized this argument was more or less
pointless. The original article is strongly ideologically motivated and you
can't argue someone out of a position they didn't argue themselves into.

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moosemilkie
I merely wanted to let you know that your assumption that their example was
hypothetical was wrong, since you filled it out with some fictitious details
instead of the truth. Which you're still doing, in claiming that anybody shot
a police officer - no officer was injured in the incident. This would make
your suggestion less correct, rather than more correct, since it is false.

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kenko
"We have finally fully arrived at the ultimate in passive voice:"

No, the ultimate in the passive voice had already been attained [nb, passive
voice omg] with "the lazy dog was jumped over by the quick brown fox". The
passive voice is not an obfuscatory technique, and the further obfuscations
have nothing to do with grammatical passivity. Indeed, "Speed was involved in
a jumping‑related incident with a lazy dog while a fox was brown" does not
contain a single instance of the passive voice. In fact, as soon as we get to
the "was involved" parts of the article, we no longer have the passive voice
around.

