Amphiboly
Roberto Ruiz
Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren’t able to practice their [...] their love with women all across the country.
George W. Bush
Amphiboly - which has the distinction of being one of the funniest logical fallacies out there - is a fallacy of syntax.
In linguistics, syntax refers to the study of the principles, general rules, and structure of a given language. While a typical sentence will be made up of various kinds of words and other parts (nouns, verbs, modifiers, connectives, punctuation marks, etc.), these cannot be put together in just any haphazard way because different arrangements and forms of organization and structure could lead to different sorts of meanings. Such ambiguities can justifiably lead people to come up with radically different interpretations of the same sentence or passage, and, furthermore, to draw questionable inferences, often with hilarious results.Consider the following newspaper headline: “Condom truck tips, spills load.” The reason you’re laughing - or at least snickering - is that this headline can be interpreted in at least two different ways, depending on what the phrase “spills load” refers to: if it refers to the contents of the truck, then it just means that there are condoms all over the place, but if it refers to the contents of the condoms, then, well... The ambiguity is produced by bad
Amphiboly 247 syntax: by the fact that the location of the phrase “spills load” makes it unclear what it’s modifying.
More formally speaking, the fallacy of amphiboly occurs when the meaning of a phrase or sentence is indeterminate or ambiguous, particularly as a result of poor syntax, and especially when further inferences are drawn based on the acceptance of an unintended meaning of such passages.
The ambiguities found in cases of amphiboly usually arise from mistakes in grammar (a dangling modifier, an ambiguous antecedent preceding a pronoun, awkward combinations of adverbs and adjectives, inconsistencies in subject-verb agreement, ambiguous referents, etc.) but also from various forms of linguistic booby traps: from loose or awkward phrasing, from compound phrases that have different meanings depending on whether their parts are being used individually or collectively, from the use of careless arrangements of words, from the ambiguity between the narrow and broad scope of certain phrases, and from inferences drawn based on the difference between what one party means by some utterance and how another party interprets it.
Comedians have been known to exploit these double entendres to great effect. Groucho Marx, who once insightfully quipped that “humor is reason gone mad,” basically made a career of his use of amphibolies (and other logical fallacies):
• Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
• Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others.
• I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.
• I intend to live forever, or die trying.
• One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know.
It is important to note, however, that not all instances of amphiboly are trivial. The interpretation of carelessly constructed legal contracts and wills, for instance, has been known to produce unnecessary and painful conflicts. Consider the following example: Since Mr. Moneypants stated in his will: “I leave my fortune of half a billion dollars and my pet poodle to Rich and Doug,” the court concludes that Rich gets the fortune and Doug gets the poodle. Because Mr. Moneypants did not specify whether the conjunction should be interpreted as including the word respectively or collectively, it is quite possible that his actual intentions will not be honored and that a regrettable feud will develop between his heirs.
It is particularly important to be careful not to commit this fallacy when addressing small children lest we inadvertently teach them a wrong lesson not only about the subject matter at hand but also about proper
communication and the ways in which language can be used to produce unintended meanings. The Wikiquote entry on the popular children’s book Charlotte’s Web, for instance, claims that the book is “about a pig named Wilbur who is saved from being slaughtered by an intelligent spider named Charlotte.” Because of the dangling modifier, the phrasing in this description makes it sound as though Charlotte - contrary to fact - is Wilbur’s would-be slaughterer.
Amphibolies can also have the potential to either threaten political careers or make them indefinitely memorable. In a speech about the “War on Terror,” for instance, former President George W. Bush once said: “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we” (White House Archives 2004). Of course, when he then went on to make other amphibolous remarks, such as: “There’s an enemy that would like to attack America [...] again. There just is. That’s the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best [...]” or “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda” (Weisberg 2000, 2009), it’s a bit hard not to sympathize to some extent with his more conspiracy-theory-inclined critics.
But perhaps it’s somewhat premature to jump to cynical and conspiratorial conclusions when we consider other amphibolies and head-scratchers made by President Bush over the course of his political career: “I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office,” “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully,” “I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace,” or “They misunderestimated me” (Weisberg 2000, 2009). This ability to be beaten into submission and dizzying confusion by his own words might help to confirm to the rest of his critics that the time the President almost choked to death on a pretzel was probably no accident.
Various real-life stories, ranging from the mundane and comedic to the tragic, have been immortalized by newspaper headlines that, intentionally and unintentionally, have capitalized on the ambiguities created by amphibolies:
Headless Body in Topless Bar Kids Make Nutritious Snacks Blind Bishop Appointed to See Homicide Victims Rarely Talk to Police Deaf Mute Gets New Hearing in Killing Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Ax Man Shoots Neighbor with Machete Bullying Session to Be Rescheduled
March Planned for Next August
Lack of Brains Hinders Research
Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons
Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case
Miners Refuse to Work After Death
Killer Sentenced to Die for 2nd Time in 10 Years
Finally, there are probably no more satisfying cases of amphiboly than those in which there is a dose of poetic justice: when the double meaning of an utterance ends up unwittingly reinforcing an institution’s mission statement, as in the following example found outside of a health clinic:
Family Planning Advice
Use Rear Entrance
True to its ideological vision, and in a climate of rising healthcare costs, this clinic just couldn’t help itself and inadvertently provided its patients with some technically sound - and quite fun! - family planning advice, free of charge.
References
“Charlotte’s Web (book).” 2015. Wikiquote. October 15. https://en.wikiquote.org/ wiki/Charlotte%27s_Web _%28book%29 (accessed September 29, 2017)
Weisberg, Jacob. 2000. “The Complete Bushisms.” Slate Magazine, March 7. http:// www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/bushisms/2000/03/the_complete_ bushisms.html (accessed September 29, 2017).
Weisberg, Jacob. 2009. “W’s Greatest Hits: The Top 25 Bushisms of All Time.” Slate Magazine, January 12. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/ bushisms/2009/01/ws_greatest_hits.html (accessed September 29, 2017).
White House Archives. 2004. President Signs Defense Bill. October 15. https:// georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/08/20040805-3.html (accessed September 29, 2017).