Say what?

[rsc]

I may have remarked before (here or elsewhere) on the strange slogans or taglines that sometimes show up in the we're-not-supposed-to-call-them-advertisements on the local public radio station (like the University of Massachusetts' "You were, you are, UMass").

Lately my ear has been caught by a line from the rather lengthy spot for Legal Sea Bar, (which seems to be an offshoot of Legal Seafood), identifying it as "a focused yet full-flavored social urban venue". Other problems with this phrase aside, what's that "yet" doing there?

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

= "but", "and still", "but even so". It implies some kind of expected opposition between "focused" and "full-flavored", which they claim to reconcile. What kind of opposition or difference they may have in mind is beyond the Doctor's sphere of knowledge.

Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, I got that part. The question is, why would one put those two attributes in opposition?

It reminds me of the slogan for some cigarette in my youth: "Longer, yet milder". Aside from the non-comparing comparative (a staple of ad-talk), I always wondered why one would expect a long cigarette to be harsher than a short one, which is what the phrase seemed to imply.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

The point is not to make you think -- quite the opposite, to give you a good feeling about the product without thinking about why.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

It's not working (on me, anyway).