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(2013) Varieties of tone, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

"Dead" and "deceased"

Richard D. Kortum

pp. 67-69

How is it, then, with other of Dummett's examples of tone? The passage quoted from The Logical Basis of Metaphysics in §2.5 contains eight more pairs: "dead"—"deceased", "woman"—"lady", "vous"—"tu", "rabbit"—"bunny", "womb"—"uterus", "enemy"—"foe", and "politician"—'statesman". Dummett's inclusion of this last pair strikes me as rather surprising; perhaps it is merely overly hasty. The difference in meaning between "politician" and 'statesman" is sufficiently large-grained to effect a difference in truth and falsity. To quote Henry Adams, "They were statesmen not politicians; they guided public opinion, but were little guided by it".

Publication details

DOI: 10.1057/9781137263544_11

Full citation:

Kortum, R. D. (2013). "Dead" and "deceased", in Varieties of tone, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 67-69.

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