"I could care less" (Steve's Grammatical Observations)

See the Steve's Grammar DEMO REEL with links to other episodes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWtk1JtCnls

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Here is an interesting video I recently watched on many fascinating linguistic phenomena, most importantly the language of politics.
http://fora.tv/2009/05/13/Talking_Dangerously_Geoffrey_Nunberg
I have not watched the whole thing, but somewhere in there he says "they could care less" , maybe with a sense of appropriate irony.

"I'm interested in defending the English language"
"you dont know how you feel about something until you know what to call it."
"

-speaker Geoffrey Nunberg, a Professor at UC Berkeley and Senior Researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.

Category:

Education

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• grammar
• english language
• ESL
• EFL
• english
• english lessons
• learn english
• rhythm
• drums
• playing the drums
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• linguistics
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[MasterB4]

If you hadn't dropped them F bomb I could have shared this.

[Plomomedia]

@MasterB4 then i wouldn't have had a point to make. 

[hammaann]

How about a vid about people inserting "like" into every sentence- even several times in the same sentence? They even BEGIN sentences with "like". It's infuriating!

[Plomomedia]

@hammaann if you find videos of people overusing it, please forward me the URL. I would definitely like to make a video on this topic, but i need videos to reference. thanks -st

[vitom27]

Hmmm, is it a testable? I run a race, you ask me how it went, I respond 'well, i didn't come last' implying that this was a close thing or I could descibe someone as 'not the fattest person Ive ever seen'. Conversational maxim of relevance springs to mind, 'I could care less' is assumed to provide relevant information which it only does on the basis of the (implicit) assumption that I don't care very much. Never heard 'I could care less', I like it, emphasis on 'could', 'I could hate you more!'

[Plomomedia]

@vitom27 great point. except: people dont mean it that way, and to effectively describe what you mean is the goal in language, isn't it? Unless the phrase were short for "I COULD care less, but then I'd probably just dissolve into porridge," or something.

[Kiddalee]

"I'm full of shit" made me laugh.

[hagiadzo]

The caption at 1:06 is missing an apostrophe and says "I dont care" instead of "I don't care."

[ZhouFantastic]

I hate it when people make this mistake. x___x

[hammaann]

@Plomomedia It's everywhere. Any time the public is interviewed they insert "like" into about every sentence, especially if they are under 20. Latest I saw was a guy from the Reno airplane crash. I think he said "like" 3 times in the same sentence when taling about the incident. One hilarious example you might use is when the women on the show "THE TALK" did a segment on irritating things people say. They leff out the fact that THEY all say "like" constantly when THEY speak. Use clips of them.

[prb245158aac]

"I countnt care less" makes the exact oppisite of what people intend. If i were to use the prase "i couldn't care less",a grain of sand on a beach means more to me. I "could care less" about my wife however,I love her more than anything, but "could not care less" to learn Euskara, until im in dondinista Spain. If youve yet met a basque: visit. Saved my life, kindess people, try to explain origin of euskadi "they are said to understand one another, but I dont believe it at all" nicolas chamfort