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Semantics of forgiveness and Oprah

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The semantics of forgiveness cannot afford to be flawed

The semantics of forgiveness was readily apparent in the following statement by Oprah Winfrey:

Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, it’s accepting the past for what it was, and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward.

Oprah

But the statement gave me pause, so I have broken down the reason why below. However, first let’s establish an understanding of the use of the word hope. The “Perfect English Grammar” website provides an excellent reference for when and how to use it. The source states the following:

“We use ‘hope’ to talk about things in the present or future that we think have a good chance of happening.”

“Perfect English Grammar” website

The semantic case for WHY the proposition is flawed, though well-intended

You don’t give up the hope that the past could have been any different because could have been already expresses either that:

  1. There is a possibility of something BEING TRUE in the past, although it was not in fact TRUE. (Therefore, how or why would you maintain hope?)
  2. It is possible that something was TRUE in the past, although it did not in fact HAPPEN. (We now know that it didn’t happen, so, again, how or why would you maintain hope?)

These meanings of could is according to the “TheFreeDictionary.com.”

The semantic analysis for HOW to improve the proposition

From a present-tense perspective, hope refers to an opportunity that is already lost, NOT an impossibility. So there is no longer any point in hoping, hence:

  • I give up the hope that the past could be any different.

From a past-tense perspective, hope no longer refers to an opportunity that was lost but to an impossible situation, something that we cannot change. Therefore, we are now referring to the future in the past. So there is an even stronger reason to no longer hope, hence:

  • I gave up the hope that the past would be any different.

A BETTER way to improve the proposition

  • I give up the wish that the past would be different.

SIMILARLY,

  • I wish that it would stop raining.

The “Perfect English Grammar” website has an excellent reference for using the word wish. It states the following:

“It’s not usually used about [our selves], or about something which nobody can change though, exceptionally, we do use it about the weather.”

“Perfect English Grammar” website

The BEST way to improve the proposition

  • I wish that the past had been different.

THEREFORE,

  • I give up the wish that the past had been any different.

So the original statement would be better and correctly expressed as follows:

Forgiveness is giving up the [wish] that the past [had been] any different. [I]t’s accepting the past for what it was and using this moment and this time to help [you] move forward.

A revision to the original quote

Syntactic analysis

While could may be used to express OPPORTUNITY in the present, could have does not. Instead, it expresses something else altogether as a tense used to refer to a past event that DID NOT in fact HAPPEN or to something that was NOT in fact TRUE.

The above link to the “TheFreeDictionary.com” does an excellent job navigating the different uses of could.

CONCLUSION

Let’s not forget the power of forgiveness: it’s about you giving up the horrible construct of regret. Entertaining hope when there is an extraordinary unlikelihood of the thing hoped for coming to be is the epitome of regret. Indeed, the past could never be different than what it was, unless we are referring to differing recollections of it, which is a whole other ball game. And in that game, no amount or degree of semantics can help you manoeuvre the inherent lack of rules that would be involved in how we see or process our own subjective experiences.

Garie McIntosh
Garie McIntosh
Hi, I’m Garie. Since 2016, I’ve been engaged in intense academic studies and research through problem-based learning. This has been a time during which I discovered the learning theories that work for me, and applied them so that I could teach myself not only English grammar but also the linguistic aspect of the language. My objective is to engender understanding through the Socratic and the life-affirming and build new knowledge through making innovative connections. I have formally translated my learning education into McIntoshLinguistics, an organization that I developed on the Microsoft platform. The organization enables me to use my educational and grammatical editing model to support educational processes and meet traditional publishing standards. Through a Microsoft Qualified Educational User designation, the objective is to utilize Microsoft Teams Education to build a professional learning community and create unique processes and methods through grammatical and linguistic studies. As a literary fiction writer, I have published my first novel, “What’s in a Name.” By utilizing Microsoft applications to help me develop and formalize pedagogical processes and methods, I am able to produce manuscripts that are highly readable and semantically sound.

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