By Joel Bowman, on March 15th, 2013% Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” comments have become a well-known example of how a person’s mouth can get him or her into trouble, especially in these days of cell-phone video and YouTube. The moral of the story is that people (you, me, and Mitt Romney) need to be aware that the demarcation between “private” and “public” has become increasingly fuzzy.
Even when people are being careful with their language and know that others will hear or read what they say, choice of words and manner of delivery may say more than was intended. In a recent column in the New . . . → Read More: What You Say Is What You Mean
By Joel Bowman, on November 21st, 2011% In the movie, “Master and Commander,” Captain Jack (Russell Crowe) asks the ship’s surgeon, Dr. Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) to choose one of the two weevils crawling around in their food. The doctor initially says that they are the same in the critical aspects: “Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.” When Captain Jack insists on a choice, the doctor chooses the larger one. The captain says that he has chosen incorrectly because “in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils.”
Now that the political . . . → Read More: Lesser of Two Weevils
By Joel Bowman, on September 24th, 2011% When President Obama announced his new plans for improving the economy in the States, Republicans cried, “Class warfare!” Obama’s response was, “It is not class warfare—it’s math.” This response not only reminded me of Nixon’s infamous claim, “I am not a crook,” but also reminded me of George Lakoff’s warning against using your opponent’s frame in your counterarguments (see Framing—Again. It is a failure to remember the Don’t think of elephants rule. When Nixon said, “I am not a crook,” the connection made in most people’s minds was, “Nixon—crook.” The not gets lost in translation.
In addressing the issue . . . → Read More: Elephants, Crooks, and Class Warfare
By Joel Bowman, on June 9th, 2011% About a month ago, I blogged about metaphors we die by (and for). That blog entry barely scratched the surface of the subject (metaphorically speaking). One of the subjects that has been in the news a lot lately is the growing problem of obesity. Have you ever thought about the way language contributes to the size of that problem? The most obvious example is, perhaps, the now-defunct option at McDonalds, which invited customers to say, “Supersize me.”
That is just one example. For one reason or another, one of the meanings of the word “healthy” is “big” or “generous.” . . . → Read More: Metaphorically Speaking
By Joel Bowman, on June 4th, 2011% With apologies to the Beatles and “A Day in the Life”:
One of my daily habits is reading through the major online news sources to get a sense of what is happening here in the U.S. and in the world. I often find it fascinating to see what subjects are drawing the most media attention—and the kind of attention they are attracting. Here’s a brief round-up of recent “stuff”:
Placebos are in the news (again): One of the things I find most interesting about placebos is that articles about them written by medical doctors studiously avoid the word . . . → Read More: I Read the News Today (Oh, Boy)
By Joel Bowman, on May 21st, 2011% Way back in the pre-Internet days of 1980, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson published Metaphors We Live By. This landmark study of the metaphors we use in daily conversations illustrates the ways common metaphors shape our thinking and behavior. One of the examples often cited is “argument is war.” Ideas are attacked, defended, and shot down. We may even “destroy” someone’s theory or “kill” his or her idea.
A few weeks ago, while watching political commentary on TV, it occurred to me that we not only live by metaphors, but also die by them. This is a broader, and . . . → Read More: Metaphors We Die By (and For)
By Joel Bowman, on March 20th, 2011% What’s been happening in your life while you were making other plans? World events in recent weeks have basically captured attention I had intended to “spend” elsewhere. First, the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant meltdowns in Japan…. As someone with friends and semi-relatives (my daughter-in-law is Japanese, and her parents live in Osaka), I have been following the events there with some concern. Second, recent events in the Mideast have been difficult to ignore. Compared with what’s currently going on in Libya, the “revolution” in Egypt was fun to watch.
In an article titled, “Washington vs. the Merciless,” Thomas . . . → Read More: Are We Having Fun Yet?
By Joel Bowman, on March 13th, 2011% The Christian Bible says that Satan is the “Father of Lies.” The actual Father of Lies, however, is fear. Regardless of whether you believe that Satan is a metaphor for fear, you undoubtedly know that people lie when they are afraid. Everyone, George Washington included, has lied and will probably lie again. Lying is a normal part of human existence because humans experience fear. Think about the last time you told a lie, especially a significant one, and note that you felt fearful before uttering your lie. You can use knowing that fear is the “father” of lies to increase . . . → Read More: The Father of Lies
By Joel Bowman, on March 6th, 2011% Those of you who have studied NLP or persuasive communication are familiar with the concept of perceptual frames. The metaphor is fairly obvious: a window frame, for example, limits what we see on the other side of the window; a photographer can choose what is included in the frame of a photo by trimming the image so that it focuses on, say, one person instead of a group. The concept has been adopted by psychology for the purpose of understanding the context that determines how something is interpreted.
All communication (all? Yes, all…) occurs within a contextual frame. In . . . → Read More: Framing and Reframing
|
|
|
Comments are closed 
What You Say Is What You Mean
Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” comments have become a well-known example of how a person’s mouth can get him or her into trouble, especially in these days of cell-phone video and YouTube. The moral of the story is that people (you, me, and Mitt Romney) need to be aware that the demarcation between “private” and “public” has become increasingly fuzzy.
Even when people are being careful with their language and know that others will hear or read what they say, choice of words and manner of delivery may say more than was intended. In a recent column in the New . . . → Read More: What You Say Is What You Mean
Share this now: