"I hate you"

[koganbot]

"I hate you"

Person A says to Person B, "I hate you." Is it more likely that Person A is:

(1) expressing affection?

or

(2) expressing hostility?

Let's posit that A and B are each over twenty years old, and that they're speaking English. This is all we know. "More likely" means "probability of at least 50.1%."

Although "expressing a mixture of affection and hostility" is a reasonable third option, I'm not allowing it. Just pick (1) or (2).

See comments.

Comments

All the sweet, green icing flowing down

[koganbot]

I could probably think up many more scenarios for number 2 (expressing hostility) than for number 1: B espouses destructive politics, B marries the woman or man of A's dreams, B taunts and humiliates A, B says something negative about Ashlee Simpson, etc.

Nonetheless, I think number 1, expressing affection, is way way way way WAY more likely.

Another manner of asking the question would have been: "Take all the instances last year where someone says to someone else, 'I hate you.' Do you think there were more cases where this was an expression of affection or more cases where this was an expression of hostility?" For some reason I think such wording might have pushed people more in the direction of "affection" than the way I did phrase it. (Putting "affection" first also may do that a little, I'd guess. My simply asking the question probably jostles people in that direction anyway, they wondering what answer I'm looking for.)

Off the top of my head, the only scenarios that spring to mind for number 1 (expressing affection) are affectionate responses to bad jokes. E.g., people are inside watching TV, it's raining hard out, a torrential downpour. Person B suddenly gasps and says, "I left the cake outside!" Person A says, "I hate you."* But I believe these are very common. What they lack in variety they make up for in amount.

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The reason I specified "over twenty" is that children are more likely than adults to say to people whom they hate (and to people they're momentarily peeved at), "I hate you." I specified "English" because that's the only language I know, and I don't assume that every other language has a word with connotations and usage that are identical to the English "hate." (Not that "hate" necessarily has the same connotations and usage everywhere English is spoken. My question implies a range of connotations anyway, even for an individual speaker.)

Of course, expressing affection does not automatically mean that I feel affection. I could be dissembling, pretending to express affection by saying "I hate you," when actually I hate you. Still, dissemblings or lack of dissemblings, I think "I hate you" is more commonly used to express affection than to express hostility.

*Actually, she didn't say "I hate you." She simply started hitting me, as I continued with, "I don't think that I can take it, 'cause it took so long to bake it, and I'll never have that recipe again." Jim, at that point, chimed in with, "Oh, no."

Re: All the sweet, green icing flowing down

[koganbot]

Here's the link to that video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHS8hj4TdT8