The Comma: A Dog Whistle

One blog I check every day is Language Log. It's just about language, theories of language, weird ways people butcher their languages, strange interesting facts about language. I'm sure it's not for everybody, but it's something I have an interest in.

OK, back up. Yesterday President Bush said the most bizarre thing in an interview. He said that when the history books are written, the war in Iraq -- which, in case you missed it, is a total failure and a terrible disaster -- will "look just like a comma."

Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in this "comma." A country lies in ruins. America's security is endangered and our international reputation is sunk. So some people, like ... me, for instance ... thought this was a very strange way to put it.

Turns out, as Language Log notes, The comma was really a dog whistle.

That's the theory of Ian Welch at The Agonist. According to him, when President Bush said that the Iraq war would "look just like a comma" to future historians, he wasn't using a creative and unexpected metaphor-- he was evoking a well-known proverb that urges steadfastness, "Never put a period where God has put a comma."

This being Language Log, of course we're going to check the numbers. And there are 440,000 Google hits for {period God comma}, mostly indeed variants of this expression:

Don't put a period where God has put a comma.
Never place a period where God has placed a comma.
If we stop there we are placing a period where God has placed a comma.
Never put a period, where God has put a comma.
Don't put a period where God puts a comma.
Don't put a period where God put a comma.
Don't place a period where God intended a comma.
God’s period is what allows our lives to have commas.
...we must be alert to the caution Gracie Allen left us not to put periods where God has put commas.
Today’s Bible stories are both about God putting a commas where humans might be tempted to put periods

See, you and I wouldn't have known to look for this.

A "dog whistle." It's a concept we've been seeing mentioned more and more. A real dog whistle is something that you blow on and only dogs can hear it. These days it refers to a secret code-phrase that used by a member of a group, especially a particular clique of religous fanatics, to signal secretly to one another in public.

Language Log goes on to quote entire sermons based on this metaphor. They continue:

Anyhow, Ian Welch is obviously right about the source of President Bush's comma, and Ken Layne was wrong. It was religion, not drugs.

But why is this allusion a "dog whistle"? Welch argues that President Bush

is constantly littering his speeches with code words and phrases meant for the religious right. Other people don't hear them, but they do, and most of the time it allows Bush both to say what those who aren't evangelical or born again want to hear, while still reassuring the religious right wants to hear.

For example, one of the most famous episodes of this was Bush's reference in the 2004 debates to the Dred Scott decision. Most people couldn't figure out what the heck he was talking about - it seemed like a non-sequitur. But, as Paperwight pointed out at the time, anti-abortion activists see themselves as similar to anti-slavery activists. And they take heart that eventually Dred Scott v. Sandford was overthrown. [...]

The other name for this is dog whistle politics. When you blow a dog whistle humans can't hear it, but the dogs sure can. It's a pitch higher than humans can hear. When you speak in code like this, most of the time the only people who hear and understand what you just said are the intended group, who have an understanding of the world and a use of words that is not shared by the majority of the population. So it allows you to send out two messages at once - one pitched for the majority of Americans, the other pitched for a subgroup. This goes on all the time, and usually it isn't caught - most people don't hear it, and the media is made up of people who can't make the connections because they don't belong to these subgroups. So they can't point out the subtext either.

It's very effective, and it's one reason why Bush still has his hard core of support - he's constantly reassuring them, at a pitch the rest of us can't hear.

Sometimes politicians say things that us ordinary folks really have no way of understanding. I didn't know what Bush could've meant with this "comma" thing.

Because, really, when the history books are written, this will clearly not be a comma. It is more likely to be a chapter, titled something like, Miserable Failure.