SOMETIMES, THAT 'UM' IS JUST AN 'UM'.Byline: ROB LOWMAN >ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR When I started a question with, "Having wrote this book," Michael Erard understood my mistake. Actually, it was Erard who had written "Um ... Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean," which is why, as he explained to me, he knew I had been reaching for one thing when I meant another and it was not some unconscious slip. In "Um ...," Erard examines how we use language and mess it up. But the way we trip over words is not necessarily a sign of bad grammar or unconscious feelings, the Texas journalist believes. It was Sigmund Freud who asserted that verbal errors could be seen as uncensored signals from the unconscious. But slips, for Erard, aren't simply all Freudian. And sometimes we make too much of them, though he takes us on a fascinating trip trying to understand them. Erard even devotes a chapter to our current chief executive, who is known for "Bushisms" like "I will not keep this nation hostile," "terriers terriers a group of dog breeds, developed as farm dogs in the British Isles for the hunting of vermin and ground dwelling mammals, e.g. rats, badgers, foxes and rabbits. The name is derived from the Latin terra because the dogs commonly pursue their quarry into burrows. and bariffs" and his latest, "childrens do learn." Referring to W as "a canary in the linguistic coal mine," Erard thinks our preoccupation with his errors reflect a "cultural and political bias." We talked recently to Erard about "Um ...", Bush, Freud and "whatever." And, yes, the conversation from both of us was indeed peppered with ums, which we have mercifully mer·ci·ful adj. Full of mercy; compassionate: sought merciful treatment for the captives. See Synonyms at humane. mer edited out for the reader's sake. Are people listening closely enough to hear the ums? Most people don't hear them in everyday spontaneous conversation. If ums were really that disruptive, we wouldn't do a lot of listening. We'd be so distracted by the interruptions and the mistakes. We've evolved to filter those things out. It's when you're in some sort of public situation then the ethos is, "Don't say 'uh' and 'um' because you'll look bad." People now seem to talk in shorthand shorthand, any brief, rapid system of writing that may be used in transcribing, or recording, the spoken word. Such systems, many having characters based on the letters of the alphabet, were used in ancient times; the shorthand of Tiro, Cicero's amanuensis, was used . Isn't this the age of "whatever"? Saying "whatever" seems to be a symptom of an overarching o·ver·arch·ing adj. 1. Forming an arch overhead or above: overarching branches. 2. Extending over or throughout: "I am not sure whether the missing ingredient . . . lack of sensitivity toward talking about content and being focused on what really is a superficial attribute of talking. You seem to give Bush a pass on his gaffs. People don't like to hear this ... I don't give him a pass on being articulate. ... We live in a historical moment where there's a lot of complexity going on, and it would serve the moment to have a leader to articulate the complexities. ... But as far as the mistakes that he makes -- the malapropisms like "misunderestimate" -- I think they are blown out of proportion. Why do you think that happens? In the old days, when there was a public event, the reporters would get together to compare notes, and a consensus on what was said would emerge. Now everybody has a handheld digital recorder See DVR and CD-R. , and they go back to transcribe To copy data from one medium to another; for example, from one source document to another, or from a source document to the computer. It often implies a change of format or codes. it themselves; so the slip is apt to get transcribed and put into print. Part of what you're saying in "Um" is that Freud was wrong. Yeah, that's the three-word answer. The longer explanation is that Freud gave us poetry, but he didn't give us a scientific explanation for where slips of the tongue come from. To go back to a Bushism, there's one where he said, "Who would have thought that in this moment in history that there would be erections in ..." He meant to say elections in Iraq Elections in Iraq gives information on election and election results in Iraq. Under the Iraqi constitution of 1925, Iraq was a constitutional monarchy, with a bicameral legislature consisting of an elected House of Representatives and an appointed Senate. , but nearly said "erections in I-laq," which Freudians would have had a great time with and makes for great political humor humor, according to ancient theory, any of four bodily fluids that determined man's health and temperament. Hippocrates postulated that an imbalance among the humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) resulted in pain and disease, and that good health was . But the scientific explanation that he simply swapped the L and R is more accurate, but kind of dull. Should we change the way we look at errors? The way Freud studies slips really did constrain con·strain tr.v. con·strained, con·strain·ing, con·strains 1. To compel by physical, moral, or circumstantial force; oblige: felt constrained to object. See Synonyms at force. 2. linguists A linguist in the academic sense is a person who studies linguistics. Ambiguously, the word is sometimes also used to refer to a polyglot (one who knows more than 2 languages), or a grammarian, but these two uses of the word are distinct. by forcing them to look at emotion as a cause for slips and not letting them look at other cognizant reasons that really are the source of the errors. Do you listen differently to people now? At first while writing the book I was hyper-aware, but over time that relaxed a little bit ... particularly for me as a writer ... who tends to start sentences over. I'm always looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. the perfect line. Rob Lowman (818) 713-3687 robert.lowman@dailynews.com UM By Michael Erard Pantheon pantheon (păn`thēŏn', –thēən), term applied originally to a temple to all the gods. The Pantheon at Rome was built by Agrippa in 27 B.C., destroyed, and rebuilt in the 2d cent. by Hadrian. Books, $24.95 CAPTION(S): photo Photo: no caption (Michael Erard) |
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