知名的语言学博客Language Log近日先是建议布什总统省略掉发言中不必要的“in other words” (换句话说)( Advice to the president: omit needless "in other words")，后又认为布什用“interesting”太多了，个别近乎于误用( Interesting times)。两个结论均由统计数据作为支撑，并非作者Mark Liberman臆测。漫画中的句子自然比较夸张，“I find it curious that they would offer comfort to our enemies instead of to our warriors. In other words, offering comfort to our enemies instead of to our warriors is something that I find curious” ("我觉得这不合常理，他们情愿给敌人提供援助而非给我们的战士。换句话说，提供援助给敌人而非给我们的战士，这我觉得不合常理")，“In other words”前后并无不同的“other words”，无非是词序调换一下而已。在举了一些实例之后，作者认为布什总统这样做是在重申，但“In other words”用得过频，多多少少像个暂停时的填充词了，有时候由于前后句子没什么大的不同，导致此短语不恰当。

关于Interesting，作者还有续篇(More interesting)，综合一下有两点需要记下来：

1. when we say "the interesting thing is X", we usually imply that X is something that is not already part of the knowedge we share with our interlocutors. Thus we might try to comfort someone by reminding them, "the important thing is that you have your health", but it would be somewhat odd odd to say "the interesting thing is that you have your health". And there's also an implication that X is intellectually rather than emotionally absorbing -- we might explain a colleague's behavior by informing someone "the key thing is that her mother just died", but it would seem strangely callous to say "the interesting thing is that her mother just died".

2. Interesting has a completely different impact in those examples from its effect in this NPR interview response:

   I think that's a really, really interesting question. And the honest answer is that at the moment we just really don't know.

   This is a polite and engaged answer, which gives a very different impression from a similar answer that doesn't mention the interest of the question, say:

   I don't know, and neither does anyone else.

   On the other hand, it would have been on the edge of rudeness for the speaker to have expressed interest by starting an answer with something like "I find it interesting that you asked that question."