One very creative use of language

One of my greatest joys is listening to conversations on the radio.  It gives me the opportunity to concentrate on the creative language people use without the visual distractions of other media.

Recently, a live interview with a local artist about his career produced a creative use of language that made me laugh out loud because it was so delightful.  Here is an approximation of part of the conversation.

Interviewer:  How did you develop a relationship with your mentor?

Artist:  Well, I had known him for a long time, but I didn't know know him until we worked together.

Did he say "know know"?  Yes, he did!  I'm guessing the artist was expressing the idea that the verb "to know" has several layers of meaning.  We can be familiar with someone's name, in which case we generally say, "I know of him."  We can have a mutual relationship with another person.  "I know Professor Smith; he was my instructor."  Or we can know someone on a deeper level, which this artist chose to express by "know know."   

After a little googling, I discovered that the doubling of a word to create a new meaning is described in the field of Linguistics as "contrastive reduplication"  (those linguists love esoteric labels!). And an interesting note is that the emphasis is always placed on the first word of the pair, KNOW know. Contrastive reduplication is usually found in informal spoken language, because emphasis is an important part of the expression.

I found a Facebook Community page entitled "Doubling up your words to add extra emphasis." Unfortunately, all it yielded was this one great cartoon.

So hunger comes in degrees. from being peckish, as I believe the British say, to being hungry enough to eat a bear, which would be more used in the American Southwest.

And I found this Zits cartoon of my favorite teenager.

"Up up" would be a great phrase to use when a friend in another time zone calls you at 5:00 am and asks if you are up yet.  You may be up enough to answer to phone but not up putting the coffee on yet.  

Here are a few other examples of contrastive reduplication:

"Do you like him or like like him?"

"Is it an e-book or a book book?'

"I can't go to the movies.  I have work to do."  "Housework or work work?"  (This is a conversation my husband and I often had when I was teaching.)

Other world languages use reduplication for other purposes, such as making the plural form of a word, describing a repeated action, or indicating that something is smaller or cuter.

But I like our American English use of doubled words to express a nuanced meaning of a common word. IKEA must have liked the idea as well, because they recently advertised an IKEA book book, with no new technology involved.   IKEA Advertisement 

What? The English language isn't perfect?

For those of you who lie awake at night wondering if you used the correct pronoun in a sentence you wrote or spoke recently (yes, I know you are out there), this blog post is written especially for you.

"No student wishing to take the exam will be admitted without ____ voucher."

Which possessive pronoun would you choose to fill in the blank?

Most of us, especially if we are speaking informally, would probably insert "their" in the blank.  "No student wishing to take the exam will be admitted without their voucher."  This sentence is comprehensible to any native English speaker.  Agreed?  But does it set off any grammar alarms in your head? What if you are writing that sentence to include in an official student manual for your school?

Here is the grammar difficulty that may be putting you between a rock and a hard place (as we say in West Texas).  If you insert "his" in the blank, what about the exam takers who are female? Should you hedge your bets by using two pronouns, "his or her," in the blank?  You may get points for political correctness, but probably not for style (it's awkward, especially if you are speaking). Okay, how about "one"?  It's gender-free.  "No student wishing to take the exam will be admitted with one's voucher."  Doesn't work and sounds strange.

So yes, the English language is not perfect.  The choice of a pronoun to use in order to include both genders is not obvious.  In contrast, I would like to point out that the Spanish language does not embroil its speakers in a quandary in similar situations.  In Spanish, "su comprobante " can mean either "his voucher" or "her voucher." Problem solved.

Now you can see why "their" had a good ring to it when inserted in the blank.  "Their" is gender free. The controversy arises because "their" is usually thought of as a plural word, and its antecedent (what is refers to) is singular in the sentence we have been discussing.  Singular antecedents ("no student") and plural pronouns ("their") run up red flags for many usage experts. The observation that such illustrious writers as William Shakespeare and Jane Austen used "their" in a singular sense does not quiet the opponents of "their" for our sentence.

Steven Pinker, in The Sense of Style:  the Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, writes that changing the original sentence so that it has a plural subject is one solution to this grammar conundrum.  "No students wishing to take the exam will be admitted without their vouchers."  That works.  Pinker also suggests changing the sentence to read, "No student wishing to take the exam will be admitted without a voucher," although a clever student might insist on taking the exam using someone else's voucher, since "a" is non-specific.

My decision is made.  If I am speaking or writing informally, I am going to use "their" (and other words like "they" and "themselves") as both a singular and a plural form.  But if I am writing a formal document, I will take the coward's way out and reword the sentence so that I don't lie awake nights fearing that someone (heaven forbid!) will criticize my English grammar usage!