DEGREES OF COMPLETE CONVICTION.

DEGREES OF COMPLETE CONVICTION. Although the English language, as Wierzbicka describes it, characteristically uses modifiers which reflect what Locke calls “degrees of assent”, it seems to me that policy debates are conducted more and more in terms of unqualified expressions of certainty. To some extent I attribute this to a belief that expressions of certainty are needed in efforts to persuade. Issues in legal briefs —even those issues which involve disputed facts—are usually discussed in black and white terms. The litigators I knew had favorite expressions to describe complete certainty (“degrees of complete conviction” rather than “degrees of assent”), and there were fashions in these expressions. I remember seeing “it is crystal clear” a number of times and then later noting that it had been trumped by “it is clear beyond peradventure.”