Precision of Language
On my drive home today while at a stoplight I noticed a bumpersticker on the car in front of me which read: "Just say NO to Negativity." It made me wonder, when the phrase was first coined did the originator crack a wry smile? Were they able to think past the end of their nose so as to see the irony? Perhaps they were having a bit of fun with those who would glom on to the phrase without thinking it through? I wonder if the driver understood that they were advertising the denial of negativity with the use of a capitalized negation? There are, of course, only two possibilities: either they fully understood the word play and employed it with ironic intentionality, or, perhaps more likely, they merely loved the idea of promoting positivity and so their use of a negative for negating negativity went unrecognized. If the phrase was used in ignorance we could join in with the cry, "Precision of language," a repeated phrase from the great young adults dystopian nov