Informal Logic X.3, Fall 1988 Hedging as a Fallacy of Language* GARY JASON Orange Coast College While there has been considerable pro- gress in the study of fallacies over the twen- ty years since the publication of Hamblin's excellent monograph on the subject, the treatment of the fallacies of language still remains much as it has always been. The usual suspects-equivocation, amphiboly, accent, composition, and division-are rounded up, and covered in an abbreviated fashion. In this paper I would like to discuss another fallacy of language, hedging, with an eye to broadening our view of fallacies of language. Specifically, I want to ac- complish three things. First, I want to con- vince the reader that hedging is indeed com- mon (and so should be added to the admit- tedly burgeoning list of standard fallacies). Second, I want to give an adequate theoretical (i.e., linguistic) treatment of the fallacy. Third, I want to show how the stan- dard treatment of fallacies of language can be modified to include not only hedging, but other fallacies as well. The fallacy of which I speak is ex- emplified by the following paradigm dialogue: A: Henry is a totally selfish man. B: I don't find him so-he once helped me find a job. A: Well, about things that affect his wallet, he is totally selfish. B: Yet he has on many occasions loaned money to his friends. A: Well, about matters that affect his wallet he can be very selfish. In this simple dialogue, A puts forward a claim, and then systematically evades B's counterevidence by weakening the initial claim. This is the first paradigm for the fallacy of hedging: a claim which is reasonably qualified at the beginning of the dialogue gets systematically weakened as the dialogue proceeds to avoid the thrust of counterevidence. In our paradigm, A simply will not come to grips with the substantial evidence B has offered that Henry is not selfish. A's final weak claim is totally unin- formative: anybody "can be" selfish, but is Henry selfish in fact? Contrast this with honest and non-fallacious backing down (i.e., retraction of an initial claim): A ought simply to have said, "I can't at the moment recall the incidents which lead me to think that Henry is selfish. Let me think about it. Maybe I'm wrong." Consider next this sample dialogue: A: I believe that a true Christian is going to be less likely to commit crimes than a Moslem in the same circumstances. B: That seems ridiculous to me. Look at the high crime rate in the U.S.A., which is a predominantly Christian country, and compare it to any Moslem country. A: Ah, but the U.S.A. is different from Moslem countries in that those countries have harsh laws. B: Well, okay then, just look at the U.S.A. Moslems in the U.S.A. have a lower crime rate than the general Christian population. A: Yes, but the so-called Christian popula- tion includes many people who are not true Christians. In this paradigm, A puts forward a pro- vocative claim, but hedges it round with the weasel words "true", and "so-called," which allow A to make it completely unclear to whom the term' 'Christian" ap- plies. (The phrase "weasel word" is a col- 170 Gary Jason loquial expression denoting qualifying phrases and detensifiers. Those are defin- ed below.) Thus B' s legitimate attempts to test A's claim with relevant evidence are frustrated. One wants to shout at A, "Look, do you genuinely believe that Christians are less criminally inclined than Moslems? Then allow us to bring some facts to bear on the issue. Otherwise, shut up and don't insult the Moslems." Again, contrast A's hedging with honest and non-fallacious backing down (i.e., retraction). A could simply have said "Well, maybe I'm wrong. Let me check into some statistics and we'll talk later." Temporarily retracting one's claim until he or she has better evidence for it is a logically acceptable way to save face; hedging is not. Looking at the paradigms given above, then, we can define roughly the fallacy of hedging as the systematic weakening of a claim, or the putting forward of an unreasonably restricted initial claim, so as to avoid refutation. We will tighten this definition later. It might fairly be asked whether the fallacy of hedging, defined as above, is so frequently committed in ordinary argumen- tation as to merit placing it on the list of "standard fallacies." The lexicon of fallacies is already large, and so the burden of proof is on the proposer of an addition to that lexicon to give some reason for fur- ther expansion. In defense of adding hedging to the rogue's gallery of fallacies, I would point out how common it is for politicians to hedge in debates and news conferences to avoid taking positions which will cost them votes. Consider these examples from the se- cond Reagan/Mondale presidential debate: Example I: Q: Mr. President, in the last few months it has seemed more and more that your policies in Central America were begin- ning to work. Yet just at this moment we are confronted with the extraordinary story of the C. I. A. guerrilla manual for the anti-Sandinista Contras, whom we are backing, which advocates not only assassinations of Sandinistas but the hir- ing of criminals to assassinate the guer- rillas we are supporting in order to create martyrs. Is this not in effect our own state-supported terrorism? Reagan: No, but I'm glad you asked that question because I know it's on many people's minds. I have ordered an investigation; I know that the C.I.A. is already going forward with one. We have a gentleman down in Nicaragua who is on military tactics, the Contras. And he drew up this manual. It was turned over to the agency head of the C.I.A. in Nicaragua to be printed, and a number of pages were excised by that agency head there, the man in charge, and he sent it on up here to the C.I.A., where more pages were excised before it was printed. But some way or other, there were 12 of the original copies that got out down there and were not submitted for this printing process by the C.I.A. Now those are the details as we have them, and as soon as we have an investigation and find out where any blame lies for the few that did not get excised or changed, we cer- tainly are going to do something about that. We'll take the proper action at the proper time ... Q: Well, Mr. President, you are implying then that the C.I.A. in Nicaragua is directing the Contras there. I'd also like to ask whether having the C.I.A. in- vestigate its own manual in such a sen- sitive area is not sort of like sending the fox into the chicken coop a second time. Reagan: I'm afraid I misspoke when I said there is a C.I.A. head in Nicaragua. There's not someone there directing all of this activity. There are, as you know, C.I.A. men stationed in other countries in the world, and certainly in Central America, and so it was a man down there in that area that this was delivered to. And he recogniz- ed that what was in that manual was a direct contravention of my own executive order in December of 1981, that we would have nothing to do with regard to political assassinations. I In the first question, Reagan was asked about a provocative pamphlet allegedly pro- duced by the C.I.A. His answer inadver- tantly revealed that the C.I.A. had a man in charge of the military tactics of the Con- tras. When pressed, he hedged by saying there are C.I.A. men all over, and "it was a man down there in that area it was delivered to." Example 2: Q: You've been quoted as saying that you might quarantine Nicaragua. I'd like to know what that means. Would you stop Soviet ships as President Kennedy did in 1962 and wouldn't that be more dangerous than President Reagan's covert war? Mondale: What I'm referring to there is the mutual self-defense provisions that exist in the inter-American treaty, the so-called Rio Pact, that permits the nations, our friends in that region, to combine to take some steps, diplomatic and other- wise, to prevent Nicaragua when she acts irresponsibly in asserting power in other parts outside of her border, to take those steps, whatever they might be, to stop it. In the question, Mondale is pressed on his position that he would possibly quaran- tine Nicaragua. In reply he hedges by talk- ing about "our friends" combining with us to "take some steps," "diplomatic or other- wise," to prevent Nicaragua from acting "irresponsibly," "in asserting power." Some sort of action by the U.S. is being indicated, but the statement is so heavily qualified that the audience cannot tell what that action would be (thus how dangerous it would be), and what acts by Nicaragua would bring it on. Another area in which hedging is com- mon is in the statement of conditions in con- tracts, especially statements of guarantees which accompany various products. Such Hedging 171 guarantees are often so heavily qualified as to be virtually useless. For example, one manufacturer of color photographic film guaranteed for quality puts the guarantee as follows: This product, if defective in manufacture, labeling, packaging or shipping, or if damaged by us, will be replaced with like fresh film or purchase price refunded, at our option. This is your exclusive remedy and the limit of all contract or tort liability. Since color dyes may change in time, no warran- ty against any color change is expressed or implied. This film will not be replaced or purchase price refunded for any change in color. A guarantee for color film which is hedg- ed to be optional at the will of the manufac- turer and to not apply to changes in color is a pretty worthless guarantee. Contrast this with a completely unhedged guarantee by Gillette Corporation for its razors: "Com- plete shaving satisfaction guaranteed or Gillette will replace free of charge or re- fund full purchase price." No qualifications are put forth, and the option for return lies solely with the customer. If hedging is reasonably common, then why is it so commonly overlooked in ac- counts of fallacies of language? I suspect it is because fallacies of language are often equated with, or at least limited to, fallacies of ambiguity. 2 To see why such an equa- tion is wrong, reconsider fallacies of am- biguity for a moment. Is ambiguity per se bad? Surely not. Very likely most English words are ambiguous, and unavoidably so. As one semanticist has noted: A moment's reflection will show that, far from being a defect of language, polysemy [ambiguity I is an essential condition of its efficiency. If it werc not possible to attach several senses to one word, this would mean a crushing burden on our memory: we would have to possess separate terms for every conceivable subject we might wish to talk about. Polysemy is an invaluable fac- tor of cconomy and flexibility in language: what is astonishing is not that the machine occasionally breaks down. but that it breaks down so rarely.' 172 Gary Jason Yet ambiguity is not normally a pro- blem, because context usually makes the in- tended meaning clear. A word can be am- biguous without being used ambiguously in a given conversational context, as a number of logic texts have noted. 4 What gives rise to a fallacy of ambiguity, i.e., a fallacious use of ambiguity, is the use of an ambiguous phrase one way in one premise of an argu- ment and a different way in another premise (or the conclusion). The vision that emerges here is that of a pervasive feature of language which is not normally bad, but which can be used to commit fallacies. Viewing fallacies in this way naturally leads us to ask what