Rising? Intonation?

Apparently there's been quite a bit of discussion in the linguistic community of the tendency of some speakers to use rising intonation in declarative statements. (Rising intonation is most often used, in English, to mark questions.) Some hold that it is a mark of uncertainty, or of a reluctance to make strong affirmations, but others (as here) suggest that it's actually an instrument for asserting dominance.

I'm a bit puzzled by both stances. I use rising intonation quite a bit, but I see it as an invitation to comment: do you understand? Do you agree or disagree? The source I linked to in the last paragraph seems to claim that this is, in fact, an assertion of dominance, as it demands a response. Maybe it is; I frequently use it while lecturing and in one-on-one discussions with students. But that's not what it feels like to me. One early lesson in linguistics is that introspection is not to be relied on, so I don't know how much I can trust that feeling, but there it is.

I'm going to have to think about this. If it is received as being aggressive, I may need to quit doing it in class, or at least cut back. Is a puzzlement...

Colorado Springs

There are worse sins than abuse of authority. Still, that is one of the sins to which I have the most visceral reaction. I'm not sure why; perhaps it is because it is one of the besetting sins of people in my profession, educators. In any case, it enrages me to hear of it.

As an undergraduate, I spent a year or so in ROTC. One day, in one of my Military Science classes - this must have been late in 1976 or early in 1977 - the instructor, a major, began talking about politics, making his Republican preferences quite clear. Then he began going around the class, asking each of us how we had voted. When he got around to me, I told him that I would prefer not to say; he stopped a moment in apparent surprise, then nodded. He didn't ask anyone else. I don't know that I've ever been angrier with a teacher than I was that day. A few months later, I left the program (for entirely different reasons), but that memory has stuck with me, and continues to rankle.

In my classes, I don't talk about politics, or about religion. (Well, with certain exceptions: in my History of Math class, religion is occasionally relevant, e.g. in discussing Pascal, but I try to keep my discussion purely descriptive.) It would be deeply unethical for me to do so, in my judgement.

It is for reasons like this that the scandal over proselytizing at the Air Force Academy offends me so. John Cole - no liberal he - has a good discussion of the matter. If I, a civilian mathematics professor, am ethically constrained in this respect, how much more so an officer at a military academy? An officer has far more influence over a cadet than I could possibly have, and it is therefore far more incumbent on him - or her - to use that power ethically. As an individual, yes, s/he has the right to attempt to propagate his/her faith; but within the confines of the Academy, s/he does not, cannot, act as an individual, but only as a representative of the United States and of its armed forces. I think, as Cole does, that the guidelines put forward a few months ago were wise ones, and I am disturbed that they seem to have been watered down.