Readers who wax impatient with language minutiae should really skip this post. The news this past week has been full of the message on the back of Melania Trump’s Zara jacket, worn in the muggy Washington heat en route to a shelter, in Texas, run for children taken from their asylum-seeking parents at the border. For the record, the jacket read, in all caps, “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” You’ll be grateful to learn that I don’t care whether that slapdash mark after
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Readers who wax impatient with language minutiae should really skip this post. The news this past week has been full of the message on the back of Melania Trump’s Zara jacket, worn in the muggy Washington heat en route to a shelter, in Texas, run for children taken from their asylum-seeking parents at the border. For the record, the jacket read, in all caps, “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” You’ll be grateful to learn that I don’t care whether that slapdash mark after CARE is a comma or a period, or about the use of U for YOU. What interests me is the placement of the adverb really.
Both in casual conversations and in the headlines I’ve seen about the jacket, really and don’t have sometimes switched places, as in TheHollywood Reporter‘s roundup, “Melania Trump’s ‘I Don’t Really Care’ Jacket Mocked on Late-Night Comedy Shows.” Misplaced modifiers are among the pesky so-called grammar lessons we ignore in sixth grade. In the famous example of John’s hitting Peter in the nose, we get these four possibilities —
Only John hit Peter in the nose.
John hit only Peter in the nose.
John hit Peter only in the nose.
John only hit Peter in the nose.
— but everyone knows that the last one is the one you would use to describe the incident, even though, technically, it implies that John’s action was merely hitting and not, say, stabbing. The same applies to sentences like “She practically annoyed every customer she encountered,” where the annoyance itself isn’t in question so much as the percentage of customers annoyed. Or “I just want a tiny bite of your ice cream,” where you may want a roast-beef sandwich as well and should (properly) have said, “I want just a tiny bite of your ice cream.”
So switching really to modify care rather than don’t seems like not that big a deal. Yet, given that this may become a catchphrase in this fall’s elections, I’d like to pause over it. Let’s imagine the conversation:
Me: You don’t care, do you? Melania: I don’t really care. Me: But you’re making a gesture. Melania: Yeah. I have a heart, after all.
or
Me: You don’t care, do you? Melania: I really don’t care. Me: But you’re making a gesture. Melania: Yeah. I’m pretending to care, but I really don’t.
In other words, if you really don’t care, as the jacket announces, then you haven’t a shred of caring in you, and you’d like to emphasize that fact. If you don’t really care, then you have a shred of care that isn’t fully engaged. The former phrase is emphatic. The latter often suggests fatigue; it’s the sort of thing you might say after a debate has gone on for hours and you’re ready to concede.
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Another way to look at how meaning differs depending on adverb placement is to state the sentence in the positive: I really do care versus I do really care. The former seems to be asserting your caring nature against a challenge; the latter emphasizes the degree to which that caring nature is applied.
I take the jacket statement as written. What Mrs. Trump really doesn’t care about remains open to question. But if strategists decide to use the phrase this fall, they should think about how the question is posed when they give their answer:
Melania: I don’t really care, do you? Slogan: Yes, we really care.
Melania: I really don’t care, do you? Slogan: Yes, we really do.
Or as Stephen Colbert put it: “For the record, we do.”
Note that my directive at the start was “Readers who wax impatient with language minutiae should really skip this post.” Perhaps I should have written, “Readers who wax impatient with language minutiae really should skip this post.” Might have saved you a few minutes and some irritation. Oh, well.