“YOU LIE!” (No, “You’re Lying!”)

Perhaps you were watching President Obama’s speech on the evening of September 9, 2009 and heard (R-SC) Rep. Joe Wilson’s by now notorious, “You lie!” outburst. And even if you were not watching, you have probably at least read the subsequent news articles about it or caught the moment on YouTube. There have been many, many responses to this outburst but not one of them has remarked on how strange it is that a native-English-speaking American would shout out, “You lie!” and not, “You’re lying!”

Rep. Wilson claims that his outburst was spontaneous – but “You lie!” is simply not a natural tense for native speakers of English. “You lie” is in the present simple tense – the one we use for expressing facts or things done regularly: “I cook badly;” “She walks to work everyday.” “He lies when he’s stressed.”

When speaking of what we or someone else is doing at a particular moment, we use a tense called the present progressive (or continuous). Say you’re at the stove with raw meats, vegetables, and sauces in various pots and skillets and your spouse walks in and says, “Hi, honey – what’s up?” you’re not going to say, “I cook.” You would say, “I’m cooking.”

In that same way, “You lie” is a totally unnatural thing to say to another person when that person is still speaking: “You’re lying!” is what most of us would have said. (Or, as Whitney Houston is quoted as saying to Oprah Winfrey in this week’s National Enquirer, “You’re a liar!” Grammatically speaking, that is absolutely perfect.)

The difference between the present simple tense and present progressive is, respectively, as clear as the difference between “What do you do?” (i.e. for a living?) and “What are you doing?” (actively, now).

In his book, “Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue,” linguist John McWhorter goes to great lengths to show how English is distinguished from its Western European language counterparts (French, Spanish, German, Dutch, etc.) by this progressive tense – a Celtic influence not found on the Continent: the Celts were living in England when the West Germanic Saxon tribes overtook the island in the 6th century; the Celts then set about learning the language of the new Saxon rulers – bringing some structures of their own language into their adopted one.

That is why a “What’s up?” to someone in the kitchen in, say, New York or London prompts an “I’m cooking” answer; but the answer in Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, or Paris would mostly likely be, when translated, “I cook.”

So, getting back to Joe Wilson and his so-called spontaneous outburst during the president’s speech before Congress on health care and other reforms: That evening, Obama had just finished saying, ““The reforms I am proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally,” when from the audience a voice yells out what we now know to be Wilson’s “You lie!” exclamation, but which is a bit unintelligible even on repeated viewings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw9lQT1Ark4&feature=related

In any case, there is no dispute that “You lie!” is what Wilson said. Still, my question remains: How could Wilson claim his “You lie!” outburst was spontaneous, when it is simply not a natural thing for any native speaker of English (and Wilson is) to say? Perhaps Wilson thought that “You lie” was better -- punchier, stronger-sounding -- than the more drawn out, “You’re lying.” If that is the case, then there would be at least a bit of premeditation there. And where there is premeditation, there is no spontaneity.

So from a purely grammatical point of view, Wilson’s excuse for his outburst rings, ironically, false.