> Many people, including me, take simple English words rather literally....

> It's unfortunate, but I will not start interpreting language "less accurately".

But, in this case, the literal interpretation is the "less accurate" one. Literal != accurate.

> It's unfortunate, but I will not start interpreting language "less accurately".

Do you feel the same way about "Starve the beast"?[1] Surely you understand the difference between a slogan and a program?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

Some slogans tend to detract from their end goals, too. Not sure that comparing it to an unsuccessful republican slogan is really a good look.

While I agree that “defund the police” is a bad slogan, no fluent speaker of any language takes words and phrases literally. Human communication is chock full of idioms, allusions, allegories, and a number of other rhetorical devices that depend on a non-literal interpretation of words. It’s highly unrealistic for you to declare that you “take simple English words rather literally”, as that’s not how natural languages work.

There's a thing I constantly tell people. Communication often has three components: 1) What you mean to say, 2) What you say, 3) What was heard. As a communicator you should try to ensure that what you say and what you mean are the same. All the while you have to keep in mind your audience to ensure what was heard was what was intended. At the same time, as a listener your job is to try to understand the meaning and not what was said. Getting the intent is much harder and requires one to be aware of the limitations of language and communication as well as your own internal biases and often the biases of the one communicating (what assumptions are they operating under).

Additionally, analogies, slogans, sayings, and such are all simplified and reduced methods intended to prime a person to remember or think of a more complicated topic. Here "defund/abolish the police" is an easy to remember/say slogan (and can be easily written down and read from afar). It is much harder to communicate "we need to rethink policing in general, their funding, and what they should be doing. Currently we do not know the answer but are trying to drive a national discussion so that we can come to an agreement and fix what a large portion of us believe is a problem." The latter is much more vague and is trying to bring together people with wildly different opinions but do agree with that main point.

Reading __ANY__ slogan as an absolute and/or literal meaning is simply naive. It's hard enough to communicate accurately with the roughly 300 words in this comment, let alone slogans, which need to be smaller than a tweet.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

That’s a straw man.

I never claimed that anyone can make up their own definitions, only that setting the bar at “literal meaning” is unrealistic, as that’s not how language actually works.

See: catching a bus by the skin of your teeth so that you and your friends can have a night out and paint the town red.

Chances are you understood exactly what I meant, but taken literally that sentence is utter jibberish.

But "abolish the police" isn't jibberish, and is what some people actually, literally, mean. So how can I tell?

> So how can I tell?

In communication as the recipient your job is to try to understand what is meant, not what is said.

Conversely, as the communicator, your job is to say what you mean, and ensure what is said is in line with what is meant. The added complexity is that to do this you need to have a decent grasp on what recipients will hear (as in "understand intent," as opposed to the literal words that they physically hear)

How can you tell what’s an idiom, and what isn’t? Context clues. Do the same thing here.

Or, actually listen to people. Your call.

So when I see someone on TV holding an "abolish the police" banner, which context clues should I use to figure out what they really mean?

The slogan makes many people think you're advocating an unreasonable idea that you're not actually advocating. Do you think that makes for a good slogan?

Edit: I apologize. I missed where you said it's a bad slogan, and took your defense of it as implying it's good.

> So when I see someone on TV holding an "abolish the police" banner, which context clues should I use to figure out what they really mean?

The same ones you use to understand what the word "police" means. Human language isn't a direct, thought transmission mechanism (especially with short utterances). Ambiguity and uncertainty and reliance on shared context are inherent. The artificial language Toki Pona gives an exaggerated demonstration of this [1].

> The slogan makes many people think you're advocating an unreasonable idea that you're not actually advocating. Do you think that makes for a good slogan?

No one can ever cram the nuance of a complex political position onto a slogan to fit on a sign. Inevitably someone will misunderstand to some degree, then have to go on to read one of the hundreds of articles titled "what does 'defund the police' mean?" to correct your misunderstanding.

If you're searching for some optimal slogan, you're not going to find it. Sure there are alternatives, but a couple things count in "defund the police"'s favor: 1) it succinctly indicates the topic and 2) pretty clearly conveys the opinion that a radical break with prior reform efforts is needed. "Abolish the police" does the same, except it's more amplified.

[1] https://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/tokipona

I’ve made it clear I think it’s a bad slogan, why are you insisting on the contrary?