Mottos Posted Sun, 01 Feb 2009

I recently ate a bag of potato chips made by FoodShouldTasteGood, Inc.. Their motto (as printed on that bag under their name) was, "It's our name. It's our brand. It's our motto." Now, either the antecedents for those three it's are different -- which seems implausible -- or their motto is lying in its final sentence. It's all very complicated.

Seth Schoen reminded me of a somewhat similar issue with the United States' national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. The final stanza includes the line, "And this be our motto—'In God is our trust.'" This is not and has never been the U.S. motto. In fact, the U.S. had no motto at all until 1956 when "In God We Trust" -- which is very similar, but not quite the same -- became official.

It seems that nobody is quite sure where "In God We Trust" came from but there is some speculation that it originated in the anthem itself. Presumably, it became the motto because lawmakers thought it sounded good in the song and not because the U.S. government failed while trying to "correct" the embarrassing incorrect line in its anthem.

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Great musings, but I felt the need to point out that an entity could, theoretically, have multiple mottos --- so your potato-chip company doesn't necessarily have addled antecedents, just an unconventional motto-structure!

But I'm always a fan of an excuse to clear up misconceptions about when "God" got put into so many things United States.
Posted by Ian McEwen at Sun Feb 1 19:21:58 2009
The referred-to sentence could also be simply a tagline, which is of course quite distinct.

(So then what's a motto? I dunno, what's a motto with you? ::rimshot:: Sorry.)
Posted by Kat at Sun Feb 1 19:44:27 2009
(Incidentally, I've tried the chips. My biggest problem with them is not the package giving the words triple duty, but that the food is simply underwhelming. Alas.)
Posted by Kat at Sun Feb 1 19:47:32 2009
Kat: I have to agree about the quality of their food's taste; my greatest misgiving about exposing their slightly awkward and misguided use of language was that I might draw attention and sales dollars to their slightly awkward and misguided products.

It's the difference between FoodShouldTasteGood FoodThatTastesGood.
Posted by Benjamin Mako Hill at Sun Feb 1 21:14:13 2009
Thanks to you, I am now aware that there is more than 1 verse to that song.  I couldn't recall that line being in there anywhere, so I had to go ask Wikipedia.
Posted by Mackenzie at Sun Feb 1 21:33:54 2009
What?
Their motto is "FoodShouldTasteGood" not "It's our name. It's our brand. It's our motto." or on the bag do you read MOTTO: "It's our name. It's our brand. It's our motto." ?
Posted by klop at Mon Feb 2 08:47:23 2009
Klop: I am interpreting the typography but it seems pretty unambiguous to me. It's right below the name, quoted, in an italized font and right in the place that companies in the U.S. put their motto.
Posted by Benjamin Mako Hill at Mon Feb 2 11:02:09 2009
There was a big movement in the 1950s in the US to stamp "God" everywhere, because of the cold war with those atheist communists.  Before the 1950s, there was no "under God" in the pledge of allegiance and no "In God We Trust" on the money.  The line from the national anthem was in a verse that people almost never sang.

Oh, and I was unaware that there is an official place for a company to put its motto on a package, such that any text that appears in that position becomes the motto.
Posted by Joe Buck at Mon Feb 2 14:01:04 2009
But of course, a motto need not be official, nor exclusive. It is simply a pledge or witticism. So for Key to claim that "our" (note the ambiguous scope of this pronoun) motto "be" (what's the tense being used here?) "In God Is Our Trust" seems perfectly reasonable: he may have been making the claim on behalf of some subset of young Americans, and he may have been making a proposal, not a statement of fact.

Ditto for FoodShouldTasteGood. When Martin Sheen rolls into Kurtz's camp in the boat, the grafitti displayed on the old temple wall is "Our Motto: Apocalypse Now", presumably painted by Dennis Hopper's manic journalist. But one needn't come to the conclusion that the motto is lying because it excludes the prefixed "Our Motto:". One must be able to state the group's motto with appended explanatory notes on the temple wall, or the potato chip bag, without falling into infinite motto recursion.

Hope all is well otherwise.
Posted by Matt Norwood at Tue Feb 3 13:27:06 2009

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