If I've said something offensive, I'm sorry.
I've been sitting on the sidelines the past few days watching as the political side of the blogosphere has been buzzing about Ann Coulter's most recent controversial comments. Here is how the UPI reported it.
Ann Coulter calls John Edwards 'faggot'
WASHINGTON, March 2 (UPI) — Best-selling right-wing author Ann Coulter, speaking to a conservative audience in Washington Friday, called former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., a "faggot."
Coulter was a featured speaker at the 34th annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Following her prepared remarks, televised on C-Span, Coulter was asked to talk about Edwards.
“It turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I'm kind of at an impasse — I can't really talk about Edwards,” she said.
Now, the first thing to note here, as observed by linguist Geoffrey Pullum here, and by Time Magazine's John Cloud here, is that Coulter did not “call John Edwards [a] 'faggot'”. She constructed her remarks in such a way that the listener draws an inference linking Edwards to homosexuality. This is called conversational implicature. Notice that it would not be logically inconsistent for her to continue her remarks by saying "…but Edwards is not a faggot." In other words, an entirely plausible interpretation given the text is that she made the assertion that the use of certain charged words ('faggot', for example) in public discourse can lead to severe repercussions and she cannot speak of Edwards without using some such word. So, those who are claiming that she called Edwards a 'faggot' are (either ignorantly or intentionally) stretching the truth of the matter. For better or for worse, UPI is remaining consistent on this:
Companies pull ads from Coulter site
NEW YORK, March 6 (UPI) — Three companies say they will pull ads from the Web site of New York political commentator Ann Coulter who called a prominent Democrat a "faggot."
Editor & Publisher, on the other hand, gets it right:
Editor Explains Why Paper Dropped Coulter Column
By Dave AstorNEW YORK At least one newspaper has canceled Ann Coulter's column after she implied that Democratic politician John Edwards is a "faggot."
I will grant, however, that communication is more than just the text. There is the context to be considered as well. Those who know her, know that she is likely to say controversial things and that she has said controversial things regarding homosexuality before; furthermore, she was addressing an audience unlikely to be offended by use of the term 'faggot'. In this context, the implication that Edwards is a faggot may not be the only plausible interpretation, but it sure seems to be the most likely interpretation. I have little doubt that as an experienced writer and speaker, she knows this and uses it for presentational effect. Nonetheless, I still want to insist that we get right exactly what she has said and has not said.
Coulter's comments are offensive (I'll argue this in my next post) whether one claims that she called Edwards a 'faggot' or merely implicated it. Yet there certainly are cases where the distinction between actually asserting something and conversationally implicating it is crucially important. For instance, the title of this post is a great (and commonly-used) example of this: "If I've said something offensive, I'm sorry." This is what has been referred to as a non-apology apology. While it may sound apologetic, the apology is only conversationally implicated. But again, note that it is not logically inconsistent to continue, "…but I haven't said anything offensive, so screw you." It's interesting to note that CPAC released a press statement on March 5th regarding the Coulter affair which suggests they know quite a lot about how useful conversational implicature may be.
"Ann Coulter is known for comments that can be both provocative and outrageous. That was certainly the case in her 2007 CPAC appearance and previous ones as well. But as a point of clarification, let me make it clear that ACU and CPAC do not condone or endorse the use of hate speech," said David A. Keene, ACU Chairman. [full text here]
At first glance, this might sound like they are condemning her comments. But that is, at best, only conversational implicature. If they do not believe that her speech constitutes 'hate speech', then their statement fails to condemn her comments: It's a non-condemning condemnation.