"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."

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I would say 1. The cases that come to mind are "affectionate response to domestic/friendly nagging re: responsibilities, or any other conversation where interlocutee is unanswerably right about something unpleasant, but 'I hate you' is a way of indicating that interlocutor recognizes and accepts this".

For 2, the most common usage seems to be "I really hate you sometimes" said seriously, i.e. "sometimes you drive me completely bonkers, and this is a problem". Which in a way also presupposes affection, or at least a relationship that both people want to fix.

I guess the pattern is that people don't say "I hate you" out loud to others they genuinely hate, only to others they care about or at least are stuck with. Which I think is true for children under 20, too.

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

3) Expressing humor, which may not reflect the speaker's feeling towards the listener at at all.

As you said, people over twenty have usually gone through social conditioning about the harshness of the word "hate," and so don't use it as a straightforward sincere statement except as a last resort to elicit the maximum emotional impact.

But "I hate you" as a sarcastic response to anything can happen in any sort of casual situation, between two people who may not have any sort like or dislike for each other at all, but are merely going with conversation flow, "I hate you" being the punchline of that discussion thread.

[koganbot]

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http://www.kpoplyrics.net/eru-hate-you-lyrics-english-romanized.html

hate wiggle room

[lostcosmonaut.livejournal.com]

option 1. One of my ex-girlfriends used to say that to me all th time, pretty much every day, basically every time I said something funny in a teasing way or something politically incorrect

When people mean "I hate you" they generally go for something like "fuck you"

--mza.

emigrating to estonia

[(Anonymous)]

Hey hey


Have a nice girl

By

I Hate You, Inanimate Carbon Rod

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Usually when I actually say "I hate you" aloud to another person, it's to my wife, but that's probably more about statistical likelihood, given that I say probably a good 70-90% of all words on a given day to my wife. I've probably used the phrase endearingly before, and I'm certain my wife has used it for me. I can't remember a single time I've said it to someone else, though, except maybe my sister when we used to fight. (Would guess that the people you say "I hate you" -- and mean it -- would almost have to be a close relation, probably family.)

But most of my use of "I hate you" is more likely expressing hostility toward inanimate objects. Computers, mostly. "LOAD! I *HATE* YOU, *LOAD*." I used to have some anger management issues that were expressed almost entirely at my videogames, which I would throw around, scream at, curse at, otherwise do terrible things to. I've stopped the screaming for the most part, but I still say "I hate you" to objects a lot, I think (when I use the phrase -- most often I "hate" ideas or situations, not people or things; "I hate it when..." or "I hate how...")