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In her closing spiel for the news analysis segment of
News on Q on cable TV, the incisive and bubbly economics professor
fastidiously intones, “No issue is too big or too small to affect
you.” I’m sorry to say at the very outset that this statement is
bad English. The first time I heard it, in fact, I thought it was
merely a slip of the tongue, but I heard her say it in exactly the
same way when I watched the newscast twice this week. This convinced
me that the flawed English is actually in the script of the spiel
and that the well-respected economics professor is blithely unaware
of it.
But what’s wrong with “No
issue is too big or too small to affect you”? And why make a fuss
about it? Well, it’s for the simple reason that the wrong usage is
likely to be emulated by many English learners, so it’s best to
correct it now before it gets established for posterity. Indeed,
with that flawed English, the speaker is actually saying, “Well,
folks, no matter if the issue I’ve just discussed is too big or
too small, it won’t affect you anyway, so never mind what I
said.” From a semantic standpoint, that statement deems as
inconsequential the very issue she has taken all that trouble to
analyze.
Now don’t be so quick to say
that “No issue is too big or too small to affect you” is simply
a case of a double negative gone wrong. It isn’t. A double
negative is an outright grammar error involving the nonstandard
usage of two negatives in the same sentence so that they cancel each
other and create a positive, as in “I didn’t see nothing” and
“I hardly have none of those qualifications”—remarks that
would mark you as an uneducated speaker. (The correct usage is, of
course, “I didn’t see anything” and “I hardly have those
qualifications.”) In contrast, that economic analyst’s closing
spiel isn’t a double negative but an error in logic and semantics.
In English, there’s a figure of
speech known as litotes—a rhetorical form of emphasis in which a
statement is expressed by denying its opposite. A litotes is
actually an understatement whose meaning depends on cultural context
and the manner it’s said. For instance, depending on the
speaker’s tone of voice, the litotes “His prose isn’t bad”
could mean either “His prose is excellent” or “His prose is
mediocre.” In contrast, a suitor who says “There isn’t a
mountain that I wouldn’t cross for my beloved” is also speaking
in litotes, but shorn of its rhetorical flourish, the statement can
only mean “I would cross every mountain for my beloved.” In all
litotes, though, the first negative declaration must be denied by a
second negative declaration to produce a positive statement.
It should be clear by now
what’s wrong with that closing spiel on QTV. “No issue is too
big or too small to affect you” is litotes that’s unable to deny
its opposite; in short, it’s a failed litotes. To make sense, it
has to effect that negation by inserting a “not” before the
phrase “to affect you,” as follows: “No issue is too big or
too small not to affect you.” Only then will the intended meaning
emerge, which is that “No matter how small or big an issue is, it
will always affect you somehow.”
Let me say in closing that making
this public correction is something I would rather not have done,
knowing that economics professor to be one of the most astute,
articulate, and entertaining presences on local television, but I
believe that no faulty English usage on television is too small not
to be corrected publicly in the interest of people who look up to TV
anchors and commentators as role models for good English.
Visit Jose Carillo’s English
Forum now at http://josecarilloforum.com
j8carillo@yahoo.com
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