Misfigures of Speech
I know it is said that your enemies will tell you what your friends won't. And so even though I think of you as my friends, I hope you'll tell me to my face. I so rankle when I hear it in the speech of others, so if I am guilty please, risk injuring my hidebound ego. Rescue me by pointing it out at once. I'll do the same for you. We'll be doing each other a favor, truly.
The offense to which I refer and from which I try to steer clear is ORPs: the use of Obnoxious and Repetitive Phrases in one's day to day speech. This comes to mind because all day long (I hate to admit it) I've been yelling at someone on a teaching DVD as if she could hear my hollering every time (and oh there have been so many times) she says "go ahead and..." as in "go ahead and open a new layer." In twenty minutes of narrative, she'll use it 40 times, and she consistently has done so now across twenty hours of her otherwise pleasant and knowledgeable voice. I keep shouting to her "No, just tell us to OPEN a new layer. It won't make you sound pushy if you do. We won't think you rude or controlling. Just tell us what to do. Not to go ahead and do. That's just saying the same thing twice. Can't you hear yourself!" But she doesn't listen. Or doesn't care, I can't say which.
I suppose some people can just tune out that sort of thing and get to the meat of what the speaker is saying. I cannot. In college (somewhere I still have the notebook) I couldn't attend to the vertebrate zoology professor for all of his "uh's" and "um's". Every one of them was a little road bump that made my mental needle skip, and I ended up off track. I counted the skips with little hash marks--all around the edge of the page, until they spilled into the center where my notes should have been. We're talking duhs by the hundreds! And that was the same prof, who, like my CD maven, didn't want to seem too forceful or cock-sure, so he used the terms "pretty much" and "and that sort of a thing."
Which reminds me: we had a neighbor, a man who perhaps had sworn the secret pledge of Devout Indecisiveness. He ended almost every sentence with "and so on and so forth and what-have-you-there." I kid you not. This was an intelligent man capable of normal human vocabulary! But he was mired in this bog of habit and without help, he could not escape. I imagine he is there to this day, and **stuff and such and whathaveyouthere. (**An occasional variant.)
Some people mush their adjectives into a puree to make them easy to swallow: the woods are not dark, they are KINDA dark. The dog that bit them was KINDA mean. They KINDA make my flesh crawl! Ya know? Or "don't ya know?" Crimminy! Don't ask me if I know, turning declarative into interrogative. You might as well turn down that dark road to uptalk if you're going to Ya Know me over and over again before you make your point. Assuming you don't think that would be too threatening to actually just say it out move on.
Sorry. I got on my high horse there for a minute. Didn't mean to throw stones. I don't doubt that I am blind to my own ORPs that make people cringe. Should you and I meet someday for a nice afternoon of conversation, you may find yourself making mental hashmarks, keeping score of my own obnoxious verbal habits. But 'til then, tell us about ORPers you have known--a neighbor, classmate, family member or coworker. What meaningless space-filling sentence fluff and egregious wishwashies have you been exposed to? Wink Wink. Nudge Nudge. Know what I mean? Eh?
Comments
O Fred!
yessss they are always
annnnnnnoying
and quickly become
the focus of what issues from the other's mouth
everything else drown out
"like... "
is one
like uptalk is another ?
like uh
and like "so on and so on" et cetera
Posted by: suzanne | June 30, 2005 6:27 AM
Eons ago, in my student days, we had a maths lecturer who was well known for a certain catch phrase - and rack my brain as I might, I just can't remember what it was from this distance in time - anyhow, we used to count its occurence, and before the start of every lecture someone would sneak down and write the total from the previous lecture on the overhead projector (hey, remember the days before Powerpoint?). Just the number, nothing else. This went on for the whole term. After the first couple of weeks the lecturer noticed that something was going on, but couldn't figure out what - he'd come in, turn on the OHP, see the number on the screen, look around in a puzzled sort of way, shrug his shoulders and carry on with the lecture. He must have had an uneasy feeling that it had something to do with him, but was it harmless or more sinister? Who knows what students might be up to...
But all became clear on the last day of the course, when the OHP carried the message (and here my failing memory spoils the effect) "Grand Total: 437 go aheads" (or whatever the total and phrase were).
I wonder if it cured him?
PS Had to edit an "I guess" out of there before hitting post!
PPS Curious that, as you note, so many of these phrases seem designed to lessen the force of a statement, be it a directive or an opinion. A favourite of a colleague of mine is to preface things with "how can I say?" Makes me want to butt in and say "I don't know, how *can* you say?" I wonder what a psychologist would make of it all?
Posted by: andy | June 30, 2005 7:23 AM
You beat me to it, Suzanne. How many kids today couldn’t even order a pizza on the phone if the word “like” were suddenly removed from their vocabulary? Another pet peeve I have is the way laziness is changing the language of even those people who are presumed to be educated in public speaking. Notice the next time a newscaster insists that the word “definitely” has only two syllables. I am reminded of a statement made by the late Dave Gardner, a comedian of the sixties, who once said, “I know my grammar ain’t too good, but it’s communicable”.
Fred,
This DVD you’re watching surely isn’t the Photoshop tutorial of which you wrote. For the big bucks Adobe gets for anything they sell, they can afford a class act.
Posted by: Ken | June 30, 2005 9:51 AM
Hey, I (kind of) resemble those remarks. (I guess) I can't (really) throw stones on the indecisive language thing. But it drives me "batty" when people make "quotes" in the "air" with their "hands" for no apparent "reason".
Posted by: Ana | June 30, 2005 9:52 AM
fred--one of the phrases that my father uses A LOT is, 'to make a long story short . . ' which usually *doesn't* shorten the story at all with his style of telling. your post today struck up a conversation in this household with sara telling me that i use the phrase, 'given' or 'given this' more than i'm aware. very thought-provoking you are, mr. first--thanks. :)
Posted by: Sean | June 30, 2005 9:55 AM
I noticed that many of my professors had a certain phrase they would end a statement with. My children's lit prof would say: "OK?" every 3-5 minutes, as if to imply, "Get it?" My Math prof would say: "All right?" with the exact same inflection. I noticed this, but it did not bother me nearly as much as the choruses of "likes" and "you knows" that infiltrated even the most intelligent of my classmate's daily language. A friend of mine in Poetry in Performance class even wrote a spoken word piece commenting on it...which was hilarious, but also kind of scary.
Posted by: Mara | June 30, 2005 10:37 AM
Of course I can't remember where I read this, but: Some study showed that the use of [put technical term here, which I also can't remember... those interjective speech elements with no actual meaning] makes fluid speech possible for many people. It's almost like a strategy for avoiding stuttering (it's essentially the OPPOSITE of stuttering, i.e., the continual emission of words to keep speech flowing).
If you require people to omit those interjections, their speech becomes halting, they often lose their train of thought, and they become far LESS articulate. I don't know whether, with practice, this deficit can eventually be overcome, although I do imagine it would take a highly motivated individual to make the transition.
So, who do you favor? The speaker or the listener?
Posted by: Pascale Soleil | June 30, 2005 11:53 AM
I work with a young woman from Africa. She speaks very carefully, slowly, and every so often she says the most gentle "Om mm mm", like she was putting thoughts in order. It is so lovely. Awhile back I saw a documentary on Africa, and the goatherders had this same sound beginning every sentence as they conversed. I hope my friend never looses this sound.
Posted by: Bonita | June 30, 2005 1:28 PM
"Is that it or what?" Professor of Chemical Engineering at U of MO School of Mines & Metallurgy in 1955-1956.
Posted by: Cop Car | June 30, 2005 2:11 PM
Yes, Pascale...
I'm sure for some duh-hm-um-uh-types, that's exactly what it is--by virtue of acquired habit or necessity, they cannot speak fluidly without it.
Then there are others for whom it seems merely an assumed habit often picked up from peer groups, and I wonder if these unnecessary words or phrases couldn't be conditioned out of their speech with no harm done (and easier listening.) I know I have acquired more than a few over the decades and broken myself when the phrase went out of style or began to get on MY nerves!
I've known several 'former stutterers' but haven't noted this kind of speech pattern. I'm sure it's not a universal trait among them. -- FF
Posted by: fred1st | June 30, 2005 6:50 PM
umm... this is mine. i stuttered as a child, and was (am) bilingual (french and english). though diction, enunciation and inflection were grilled into me (both parents were public school teachers), perfect speech is still like putting on a coat. it doesn't come natural. i have to stop and think, still, before i speak. and lots of time i just stop and say, "ummm... fiddle-dee-dee." don't ask why, it just happens. i guess it helps me breathe, gets my train of thought back on track, straightens the curtain fluttering before the open window of my mind while my thoughts blow lifeless straight out into the open air. something. fiddle-dee-dee.
Posted by: susannaheanes | June 30, 2005 11:09 PM
The script on the Adobe tutorial CD's is very carefully constructed and focus grouped. The repetitive use of "folksy" phrases is not accidential nor extemporaneous on the speaker's part...nor is the choice of gender.
Adobe (or the production company) would have tested a selection of word prompts and chose "go ahead" for the feedback/responses they received.
Perhaps you've noticed that announcements in public places and automated response systems such as voicemail cues are delivered by a female voice, can you recall a male voice on any phone system other than an a user's recorded mailbox message or an answering machine?
Decades ago, Ma Bell found that men will not follow cues delivered by unknown male voices. In a galaxy far, far away, we operated call centers and the male reps had a markedly lower percentage of resolution and customer satisfaction, male callers quickly escalated from a query, to complaint, to aggression. Whereas with female reps they gave information and accepted instructions/resolutions calmly.
I've never understood why this works, as any woman will tell you the males in her family only hear 1/4 of what she says, but it does.
Most folks do not realized how much our behavior is guided by subliminal cues and research on every level. Often it is as simple as a color response targeted at a base demographic. The more successful a company, the less random the marketing.
As you well know, education has it's own set of techniques and cues that have been researched to enhance the learning process and of course, politicans slavishly follow polls.
Next time you're in the cereal aisle at the local Piggly Wiggly, let your eye wander and a given box design will attract you.
Like Google they know where we live. ;^)
Posted by: BJ | July 2, 2005 12:36 PM