Maybe I'm just hopelessly dense, or not getting some joke, but I don't see what the use/menion confusion in the quote is.
Here's the quote:
'Afraid to use "advertising" and "ROI" in the same sentence? Payless Shoe Source isn't.'
There's no confusion in that sentence, unless you thought that it was Payless Shoe Source that itself was responsible for the quote, so there's some cute self-referential thing going on, as in: 'Afraid to use "advertising" and "ROI" in the same sentence? We're not! See, we just DID use both of them in a sentence! Except, oh, wait, we mentioned them. Damn.'
But the quote isn't from Payless. It's from an ad agency or consulting firm or whatever. They're talking about Payless. So there's no use-mention confusion of that sort.
What I think is going on here is just a kind of semantic ascent--instead of saying "Afraid of talking about advertising and ROI at the same time? Payless isn't", the sign switches to talk about the words.
But that's not really a confusion--it's just an annoying rhetorical device.
I too was confounded by the apparent joke. I thought it was just my being dense. But now, with gattling-fenn's clarification, I have a sense of vindication.
5 Comments:
Mastery of use/mention takes all the fun out of life, e.g.: I can't remember the capital of Poland. How do you spell "it"?
True enuff.
Maybe I'm just hopelessly dense, or not getting some joke, but I don't see what the use/menion confusion in the quote is.
Here's the quote:
'Afraid to use "advertising" and "ROI" in the same sentence? Payless Shoe Source isn't.'
There's no confusion in that sentence, unless you thought that it was Payless Shoe Source that itself was responsible for the quote, so there's some cute self-referential thing going on, as in: 'Afraid to use "advertising" and "ROI" in the same sentence? We're not! See, we just DID use both of them in a sentence! Except, oh, wait, we mentioned them. Damn.'
But the quote isn't from Payless. It's from an ad agency or consulting firm or whatever. They're talking about Payless. So there's no use-mention confusion of that sort.
What I think is going on here is just a kind of semantic ascent--instead of saying "Afraid of talking about advertising and ROI at the same time? Payless isn't", the sign switches to talk about the words.
But that's not really a confusion--it's just an annoying rhetorical device.
I too was confounded by the apparent joke. I thought it was just my being dense. But now, with gattling-fenn's clarification, I have a sense of vindication.
i got the joke, thanks to the power of doobage.
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