Use of 'or' to indicate the consequence of an action

I have recently come across this (to me) strange usage of 'or':

Given an option to do some action X with a consequence Y

Do I want to do X or do I want to risk Y?

Specifically, this appears in this article as

do I want the glass of wine or do I want to raise my own risk of breast cancer?

I believe this is simply a mistake and the right connector to be used here should've been and, but it has been suggested to me that this usage is correct. Is that actually the case?

Regarding the duplicate flag

This does not appear to be the same question as the one this is marked a duplicate of. I know about inclusive and exclusive or. This doesn't appear to be either an inclusive or an exclusive or though (if it was, I'd be interested to hear how, however). Note that the statement neither means X or Y or both, nor does it mean X or Y and not both, it means if X then Y.


Here or is being used metalinguistically (it is not used to indicate that either of the two propositions [drinking wine or increasing risk] are true), but rather to contrast two ways of phrasing. The doctor is instead suggesting that you could describe the action that you are contemplating two different ways. It could be paraphrased as:

Would you describe the action you're contemplating as [drinking a glass of wine] or as [increasing your risk of breast cancer] (both descriptions could apply).

A related phenomenon is metalinguistic negation. For example, an athlete wins a race with a world record time. The proposition "She won the race" is true, but in that context someone could say, with the right intonation:

She didn't win the race. She broke a world record!

Google "metalinguistic coordination" or "metalinguistic negation" for more info.


I'm nearly 100% certain she misspoke. The other two answers given here (by jlovegren and V0ight) do not make sense to me in this context; these interpretations do not seem to fit the intention. Moreover, the "or" is clearly not inclusive, because she follows it with "I take a decision each time I have a glass."

The intention is clearly along the lines of, "Will drinking this glass of wine be worth the increased risk of cancer?" -- hence the decision. The question she should have asked would be something like, "Do I want the glass of wine or do I want to avoid raising my own risk of breast cancer?"


This is a case of an "exclusive or" being used rhetorically to provide an illusion of choice to better help whomever is speaking the phrase to decide what will benefit her concerning the future of her health.

The two choices aren't being presented in the context of consequence, but in the context of psychology, i.e. which of these states of mind will most benefit the person making the decision.


The first psychological choice presented is this:

"Do I want to drink the wine because it gives me pleasure and makes me feel good?"

and the second psychological choice presented is this:

"Do I want to drink the wine because it will potentially kill me by giving me breast cancer?"


The choice lies in the state of mind the drinker is having before potentially drinking. As you can see, it presents the "dilemma" in a way that the answer is obvious to the speaker of the sentence. This rhetorical strategy would be lost if the speaker instead replaced the "or" with an "and".

Notice that in the original sentence the doctor specifically separated the two sides of "or" with the qualifier "do I want ..." OR "do I want ....". This shows that the choice lies in what psychological state you can choose between and NOT intending to show cause and effect. If the doctor DID want to show cause and effect, this sentence would have been used:

"Do I want the glass of wine and subsequently raise my risk of breast cancer?"

Notice the subtle differences between this use of "and" as opposed to the use of "do I want ... OR do I want ...."