Begging for Questions
5Here’s a topic not likely to gain any traction, but I’m going to post it anyway – because what else is this forum for?
It seems like I’m hearing the phrase “begs the question” a lot lately, used in a way to introduce a question. (Instead of just asking the question without preamble.)
But when I hear it, I think of the logical fallacy definition. (as described by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question.)
Am I the only one? Maybe it bothers me more than it should?
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I fixed your link for you.
While I’ve not experienced this recently, I tend to assume that most of what follows the phrase is meant to get you to question something you may not have considered in your original understanding, rather than forcing a conclusion on you.
“begs the question…who stands to profit from this change?” This wording doesn’t assume a conclusion but does push for further investigation on that topic.
Maybe I’m just not hearing the use-case in the same way you are though.
Do you have any example in which the phrase has come up and was used to push an agenda or ignore an established conclusion?
@ExtraMedium
Demands inquiry
Logic fallacy name sucks
So change that instead
@ExtraMedium Like in your example, it’s used as a transition – I think intending to add some weight to the question it precedes. Which is fine, but… it’s just a very specific phrase that I think people would not have invented/would not have caught on if it didn’t already exist (in it’s other usage as an identification of a type of fallacy).
The background image – which i didn’t pick – says it better than my poor explanation.
@replicacobra It’s not a very good phrase for either usage.
I’m old and irritable, so a lot of the current misuse of terms bothers me. This is just one of them. I would say: “leads to the question” instead of " begs the question"
There are so many others, like using “decimate” where they really mean “devastate”, unaware that when something is “decimated” it is still 90% there. I could go on (and on) but it’s pointless. Language changes over time.
@rockblossom That begs the question do I really understand the meaning of the word “decimated”? From my feeble understanding of math and meaning of the root word, I’ve always taken it to mean shifting the decimal point left, thereby reducing by 90%. If you decimated an opposing force of 100, then only 10 are left.
KuoH
@kuoh It comes from old Latin (“decima” means “one-tenth”) and the Roman Army. The punishment for any act of defiance was to randomly select one in every ten soldiers and execute them in front of their Century, leaving 90 of the 100. For info, Julius Caesar saw the boneheaded nature of this kind of punishment, so in his one-and-only insurrection, he “decimated” his Legion (of about 5000) by pulling out the ringleaders and their closest companions and executing them instead.
@kuoh @rockblossom
Roman victory
Get the losers in a line
Kill every tenth guy
@rockblossom That may be the reason for the confusion. Guess I’m too simple and understood it to mean 1/10th of something, just not which something. We usually just don’t know or dig that far and correlate it to a historical event. I’ve always simply taken the word in context (too lazy to look it up) and made an assumption that it’s bad, really bad. When the news reports that in some conflict one side was decimated, I’ve always thought oh they’re screwed! Not eh, that’s just a flesh wound.
KuoH
Oh, and - I hate when people use the word “literally” when they mean something figuratively rather than actually. That leaves us with no good word to describe something when we literally mean something literally. When someone says: “I literally died when I read that!” makes me think I am seeing a ghost that is talking, which “begs the question” of how something with no lungs, tongue, or lips can talk.
@kuoh @rockblossom
Demoralizing
Your squadmates cut down by chance
Then you’re made a slave
@rockblossom
A book’s text has words
It cries out for all to hear
Listen with your eyes
@rockblossom YES - “literally” - that’s one of my most hated; I was going to mention it but you beat me to it!
@Kyeh But I didn’t literally beat you to it because I can’t run that fast anymore.
The “proper” usage of “begging the question” has been so completely lost in time as a result of multiple things that there really isn’t a popular understanding of just what the heck it originally did mean. And I have seen logical analyses that hold that the original supposed definition is a misunderstanding. In any event, as the maintainers of the Oxford English dictionary will cheerfully state if asked, English is a language that does not actually have formally defined rules as such. There is no guardian body akin to the Alliance Francaise to rigorously defend its purity and decry its misuse. It changes. And the OED people do not prescribe it, they just describe it.
@werehatrack True, but changing the meaning of literally by ignorance or laziness is just wrong - it’s a necessary word and if you degrade it to where it has no meaning, then what do you use instead?
@Kyeh
Literally? Whatever you must, in order to be clearly understood.
Misuse of “literally” was already common when I was in high school. It has been a long time since one could safely assume that it would be understood in the manner that the classic definition assume it would.
@werehatrack Yeah, but it’s more ubiquitous now, probably because of social media.
I know - it probably bothers us more than it should …
@Kyeh @werehatrack the word “gentleman”, which used to mean “a member of the gentry” has now been degraded to mean “a guy with good manners”
@rinrinrin @werehatrack
OMG - what really aggravates me is that people actually refer to criminals or miscreants as gentlemen, like with this comment from Nextdoor:
What is interesting is that ESOL classes often teach “rules” of English that native speakers are often completely unawares.
Which begs the question, WTF are they teaching in English classes? Or, as they call them now, “Language Arts”, since apparently “English” was too colonialist and oppressive for modern sensibilities.
As an example, there is actually an order to cumulative adjectives.
The order of cumulative adjectives is as follows: quantity, opinion, size, age, color, shape, origin, material and purpose.
@mike808
No native speaker
Says “kindly do the needful”
Teachers are lying