In “Stuck inside of Mobile…” Dylan sings “you know you know about my debutant…” and while i was trying to figure out if this was just a slip up, of which he made several during the recording of this long intricate song, i also wondered if there is actual meaning in “you know you know” beyond that in “you know”— what say you?
I think he was just stumbling there. The Blonde on Blonde recording sessions were very loose and disorganized, in the middle of the night, and Dylan sang every take differently, often sloppily. They discarded most of the takes where he stumbled, except for “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” and “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” The released track of “Stuck Inside of Mobile” is the best take selected for the album after they got tired of doing takes. Presumably the least sloppy take.
I don’t know what Dylan meant there, but outside of that context, as far as English language goes, there’s rhetorical purpose to the repetition. It’s stating the knowledge being referred to is already understood. It’s “you know that you know.”
Ok but how exactly does that differ from " you know" in meaning?
Not necessarily, no. Sometimes, we don’t realize we know something until something reminds us of it. That’s one of the principals of police questioning, in fact. On the other hand, we might know something that would be embarrassing to divulge, but the person talking to you knows that you know it even though you are trying mightily to be disingenuous. “Come on, Jasmine, you know that you know this!” Uh-oh, busted! LOL
It’s reinforcing that the knowledge in question isn’t just something the listener is aware of-- it’s something they are already certain of. It’s also implied “I know that you know.”
But doesn’t that usage require that someone has denied knowing something? In the song, Dylan accuses Ruthie of knowing she knows something that she hasn’t yet denied knowing.
And of course i agree with Johanna that it’s just a goof in the recording process. But I’m asking about the usage. If it has a separate meaning, then Dylan found that meaning by accident.
‘You know’ just means that you have some knowledge of it somewhere, ‘you know you know’ indicates that is in active thought. So it’s not really a redundancy, it’s about knowing in present consciousness about something you know about.
The full verse is:
Now when Ruthie says come see her
In her honky-tonk lagoon
Where I can watch her waltz for free
'Neath her Panamanian moon
And I say, “Aw, come on now
You know you know about my debutante”
And she says, “Your debutante just knows what you need
But I know what you want”
The implication being Ruthie is attempting to seduce the narrator and he’s said to her, “You know that you know about my current relationship” and she’s actively ignoring it.
And Dylan’s creative process notwithstanding, it’s still a valid rhetorical device.
“You know” is a strange phrase to begin with. One person asserts what’s in another person’s mind. Even as a filler phrase, it’s weird.
I suppose it’s short for “you know what I’m somewhat ineptly trying to put into words, don’t you?” as a filler.
Or maybe it’s short for "i hope you know "?
This is something like asking if the last three "very"s are redundant in the phrase “Electrons are very, very, very, very, very, very small.” You might consider them redundant, or you might consider them as meaningful distinctions between levels of smallness. I don’t know.
It means “I know that you are fully aware that you already possess this knowledge.”
Do you really know that you don’t know?
And yes, “that” is redundant in the above sentence.
I would say that “you know”, “you know you know”, “you know you know you know”, etc., all represent different pieces of (meta-)knowledge.
Consider the Two Generals’ Problem: Two Generals' Problem - Wikipedia
A general might, for instance, know that the other knows he knows they know when to attack, bit that does not mean they know he knows they know he knows they know.
I hate to quibble with Johanna, since the Visions were of her, but that song appeared on Bringing It All Back Home.
No quibble, you’re right of course, and I never meant to imply anything different… I just cast about for one more example of when they released a flubbed take. Should have specified it was from another album, because I’d already set up the topic of Blonde on Blonde, but I was writing loosely and sloppily, in the middle of the night…
Is this really different from “I know that you know this”? Would I be adding anything by tacking on a few more "you know"s? As in “I know that you are fully aware that you know that you already possess this knowledge.” Is that redundant, or does it add something meaningful? I would say that it’s redundant.
You know you know is not redundant, because the two “know” are not the same concept. One “know” is about meta-knowlegde: you know about knowing. It is introspective. The other “know” is about a knowlegde about something, that is external knowledge. Perhaps it becomes more evident if you substitute “you know you know” with “I know I know”, which seems to me logically equivalent.
Now if you add more "know"s, and be it in other words like
that add up to three “know” in a row, then yes, it easily becomes redundant. With every “know” you add, the more redundant it gets. But two is fine.
This is correct. Although so many people have already said the same thing, it’s been repeated to redundancy. Sometimes redundancy is actually a good thing. The English language is full of redundancies because repetition helps understanding. Only the most formal and carefully written language considers redundancy bad. But that’s not applicable to “you know you know” since it’s not in any way redundant.
The idea of analyzing the lyrics of something like SIOMWTMBA to get a series of clear unambiguous statements seems a little weird to me. But you know that.