Frajectives

Zebulon, NC

We all lament the poor quality of today’s public discourse.  Whether
in Congress, in the media, in political campaigns, on the Internet, or
simply in conversation, the prevalence of vitriol over rationality is
discouraging.  I blame our misuse of language for at least part of the
problem.

What I have in mind are adjectives and phrases that indefinitely
describe fractions.  Specifically, I mean fractions between all and
none, percentages between 1 and 99.  I’ll coin the word frajective for
this specific meaning.

All means 100%, none means 0%.  Those words are not frajectives, yet
90% of the time they are not heard in public debate.  We know that for
every human rule there is an exception somewhere.  Therefore, using
“all”, “none”, or “everyone” in public debate is just an invitation to
contradiction and being proven wrong.   It seems smarter to use the
frajective “some”.

Objectively, “some” seems pretty unambiguous.  “Some” means more than
none, less than all, 1-99%.  In the phrase, “some do, some don’t,” we
have two uses of “some” with indefinite meaning but which must add up
to 100%.  But in real life debate, “some” can be polarizing.  Suppose
Bob says, “Some welfare recipients are cheats.”  Alice says, “Some
welfare recipients richly deserve public investment.”  Objectively,
there is no disagreement in these statements, but in the arena of
public debate they are miles apart.  On a radio talk show, Bob would
soon be challenged by a caller who says, “I know someone who is not a
cheat,” thus proving Bob wrong.   Even though Bob said ”some,”
listeners heard “all” or “none” because only “all” or “none”
assertions can be proved false by a counter example.

"Many" is a word that we think means more than "some".  “Very many”
should mean even more than “many”.   If Bob says “There are many
people on my left and very many people on my right," clearly he means
there are more people on his right than on his left.   But if Tom says
exactly the same thing can we compare Tom’s meaning with Bob’s?  No.
When Tom says “very many” he could mean than Bob’s meaning of “few.”
In English, there are hundreds of frajectives to choose from, all with
overlapping meanings.  In the context of public debate, with many
unknown speakers, all frajectives are effectively synonyms to “some.”
Using frajectives is caustic to the quality of discourse.

How can we correct our language?  I recommend using numbers in place
of frajectives wherever possible in public debate.   It is far more
honest to say what you really think, such as “20 percent of people are
… whatever,” rather than hiding behind an indefinite phrase like “many
people.”   Even if you have no factual basis for choosing the number
20, "20" is better than “some.”  If you say 20, then people who
disagree may be stimulated to counter, “No. It is 40% not 20%,” and we
have a factual dispute.  If you say “many” opponents are likely to
respond “you are wrong, it is not many it is few,” thus contributing
only heat but no information and inviting ad holmium attacks.

I do not call for us to expunge those words from our vocabulary
entirely, but only to stop using them as frajectives in public
discourse.

If you have no actual data or facts, I recommend the 80-20 rule as the
default.   Choose either 80 or 20 as your best guess and say what you
mean.  Opponents can respond in kind, and the quality of the public
dialog will be improved.

Even with numbers, we must be careful of selection bias.  The phrase
“80% of people” should never be allowed without specifying the
selection group.  Too often speakers like to extrapolate “all people I
know” to “all people.”

I further call upon copy editors and public critics, to join with us
and to refrain from the use of indefinite words to conceal lack of
foundation.  If a journalist uses a number such as 80%, a traditional
editor may demand a foundation for use of such a definite number.  But
if inadequate foundation exists, it is not an improvement to
substitute “some” or “many” for 80.  Ambiguous words may help conceal
the lack of foundation, but at the expense of obscuring the meaning.
After all, saying what we mean as clearly as possible should be the
ultimate goal of all public speakers