Inoculating ourselves against all those journalistic nonsense

How many times have we been taken in by seemingly literally true newspaper headlines and stories that turned out to be seriously misleading if not outright false? These travesties of language and logic are not the sole province of tabloids but of supposedly mainstream media as well, and John Allen Paulos, mathematics professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and author of the best-sellers Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, trots out for dispassionate analysis some of the usual suspects: “Thousands to Die After Swine Flu Vaccination,” “Math Formula Links Your Social Security Number to Your Age,” “Otherworldly Properties of Metal Found at Roswell,” and “Roswell UFOs Foretold in Bible.”

Paulos, who also wrote Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up, makes this prescription in ABCNews against all these journalistic tomfoolery masquerading as truth: “Don’t forget to inoculate yourself against the flu and, as much as possible, against nonsense as well.”

Joe, Joe, Joe.....

In all my born days, I have never encountered anyone who uses “nonsense” as a plural noun. “Nonsense,” like “malarkey,” “rubbish,” “garbage,” “stuff” and the like, may well have multiple elements and therefore be considered grammatically (if pedantically) plural, but their colloquial use is as all-encompassing singular nouns—names for all that which has gone before. And all those jazz!

It does look like most people feel more comfortable attaching a noun right after the phrase “those nonsense,” but this practice doesn’t disprove the fact that “those nonsense” can be correctly used as a stand-alone noun phrase. Indeed, if anyone can convince me that the writers of the following passages are mistaken about their use of “those nonsense” as a stand-alone noun phrase, then I’ll concede that I was also mistaken in using it. (All italicizations mine)  

(1)
In the Shadow of History: Jews and Conversos at the Dawn of Modernity
By José Faur

“Sanchez painted to the atmosphere of religious persecution and violence plaguing Europe, and those who ‘scrupulous about God and religion bravely spilled blood.’ Alluding to the ideological and religious conflicts of his days, he observed:

‘And in proving those nonsense, what kind of argument do they use? What shouts? What claims? What tortures? If false proofs are insufficient, then they resort to fraudulent truths, contemptuous remarks, rumours, invectives, and libels.’”

(2)
SkinX, A framework of a skin plug-in package
By Neil Yao

“There is a lot to talk about hooks and message processing, but let’s just skip those nonsense and give the solution directly. We define different classes for each different kind of window. For example, we define a CMacButton class to wrap the window procedure, which will give a button window the look & feel of Mac OS.”

(3)
NFS 2010, if/when released, would you buy without hesitation

“I’m just angry that EA is earning money because of their brand and not the games. They bring it big stars like Maggie, Josie Maran and Brooke Burke. For what? EA’s always hyping things up whenever a new game is released; teasers here and there, a new celebrity is introduced, gaming launch. They are wasting their time for all those nonsense when they could have taken their time to build one perfect game.”

I could cite perhaps half a dozen more of such usage of “those nonsense,” but I hope that these three examples would suffice to prove my point.

Nope! You’ll have to do better than cite three dodgy examples. I don’t know who wrote (poorly) the third example, but the first two were by writers with somewhat non-Anglo-Saxon names, which suggest a lack of familiarity with colloquial English. In any event, anybody who uses oxymorons like “fraudulent truths” is immediately suspect.

Do you object to "all that jazz" when, colloquially, "jazz" encompasses a multiplicity of things?

No, I have absolutely no objection to the expression “all that jazz”; I think it’s a finely wrought phrase. As to the validity of “those nonsense” as a stand-alone noun phrase, however, I stand my ground on the usage. It would be great, though, if we can get some third-party viewpoint about this usage—regardless of whether that third party has a somewhat non-Anglo-Saxon name or not.

In the sense of “similar but unspecified things,” I would prefer “all that jazz,” as when John Updike wrote “…that wind, and the waves, and all that jazz” (citation from Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary). In that sense “all that jazz” has indeed acquired strong idiomatic status.

On the other hand, I won’t be averse to using “all those jazz” in the sense of “jazz” in its literal sense, as American music developed especially from ragtime and blues and their various variations, as in “All those jazz they are playing at the club—excessively fast ragtime, overly depressing blues, and some poorly syncopated rhythm that I can’t even describe—are getting on my nerves.” In that sentence, “all those jazz” refers to the three types of jazz enumerated in the parenthetical.

Some non-countable nouns are really confusing and troublesome, attracting attention of various researchers in linguistics. Why English adopted these perennial headaches could be the secret of this language in remaining interesting and ever growing, causing controversies...

Collective-noncountable nouns must always be in singular form?

Unfortunately, this case is not covered in the book I consider the grammar-bible. Although authored by a non-Anglo-Saxon, surname Celce-Murcia, this book co-written by an English native speaker/writer is considered a grammar authority by many educators worldwide. There’s no example given on “those” or “these” as determiner of non-countable nouns like “jazz” or “nonsense.” I think we have to suggest to researchers to investigate this topic further.