I was thinking about this construction before I moved, but now there's a quasi-timely news hook (hat tip: Michael Froomkin):
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," Bush said."They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Now, the first time I saw this quote it was reported as saying that the administration will "never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people," and I was prepared to leap to the defense of Bush's usage. But now it looks like he's committed zeugma. Because, as far as I can tell, there are two senses of "thinking about," and in one it's perfectly unobjectionable to say that you're thinking about new ways to harm the American people.
Compare these:
(1) I'm thinking about how much I love Sally.(2) I'm thinking about asking Sally to marry me.
In (2), there's something that I'm considering doing--asking Sally to marry me. In (1), there's nothing that I need be considering--all that's stated is that one of my thoughts concerns how much I love Sally. (These examples are fictional, BTW; don't despair, readers! Or, if you're mom, despair, I guess. Or if you're the vast majority of Opiniatrety readers, remain completely indifferent. Where was I?)
I think of the sense at issue in (1) as the sense of "ideation" kind of as ideation is used here--a thought related to something is in your mind, but that thing needn't be something you're considering doing.*
So it makes sense for Bush to say he's thinking about new ways to harm America. He can be having ideas about new ways to harm America ("Hey, there's a new way to harm America! What can I do about it?") without planning to harm America himself. Compare "I will never stop thinking about new threats to America"--that's clearly ideative.
The problem is that Bush's original quote coordinates his thinking about new ways to harm America with our enemies' thinking about new ways to harm America. And the enemies are clearly thinking about those ways in a way that is not merely ideative--they're planning to carry them out. So it sounds as though Bush's administration is also planning to harm America.
I think either sense of "thought about" can take either a noun phrase, a wh-clause, or a participle. Compare:
(3a) I'm thinking about my old Kentucky home.(3b) I'm thinking about a flight to Kentucky.
(4a) I'm thinking about what Kentucky is like in the summer.
(4b) I'm thinking about how to get back to Kentucky.
(5a) I'm thinking about making a fool of myself in class yesterday.
(5b) I'm thinking about apologizing to class for what happened.
All the a's are ideative; all the b's express courses of action under consideration.
I don't know how to handle this question, but it strikes me that Bush's original saying may contain an ambiguous hidden pronoun. Consider:
(6) Our enemies are thinking about ways to harm us.That seems as though it might (I'm not sure) be spelled out a bit as
(6a) Our enemies are thinking about new ways [PRO] to harm uswhere the PRO has to refer to our enemies. But if Bush says
(7) I'm thinking about new ways to harm usfor (7) to be ideative "harm us" has to have a subject other than PRO (if I'm correct that PRO has to refer to the subject of the original sentence). Perhaps that's not possible, and Bush's original statement is a gaffe no matter how it's thought about.
*I am probably misusing "ideation" here--"suicidal ideation," surely the fons et origo of this use, seems to be used by psychologists to mean the "wish for oneself to die, without active plans to facilitate the process"--so there's some sort of pro-attitude toward what's being ideated here, whereas in my use any sort of attitude, pro or con, is sufficient for ideation. On the other hand, any link to Heather Havrilesky is a good link. Here's the beginning of the strip I linked, and Step One of the dating how-to is here.
Posted by Matt Weiner at August 8, 2004 02:49 PM