Matthew Wingett takes a fun look at the ambiguities in language that we meet every day, and invites you to share your funniest experiences with language - and win a prize!

 

Matthew Wingett, Editor, NLP LIFE

There's no doubt about it, the English language is unstable. Yup. That's why, in everyday life, phrases and sentences are so often misunderstood.

 

For us NLPers this is great news. Because with all this instability and uncertainty around, we get the opportunity to sharpen our eyes and our ears and become even more aware of the way language works. ("Sharpen our eyes and ears" - ouch! Sounds painful!) We get to listen out for how misunderstandings occur - and have some fun while improving our language skills. After all, many jokes pivot on language's inherent instability, so there are some great opportunities for laughs, if we just pay a little attention...

 

So, how does this instability happen? Sometimes it's all in the way it's said, or the way it's heard. Take my mum, for example. (No, don't actually take her. Leave her alone.) She's slightly deaf. Which explains why, one day, she became convinced that I'd told her I'd started doing "Tight Cheeks" when I had actually said I'd started doing "T'ai Chi". Sure enough, from that moment on, the ancient Chinese Martial Art became known as Tight Cheeks in our household. The new name was spot on, it seemed - all that crouching certainly toned me up in my nether regions. It was true in much the way that a friend's grandfather who accidentally spoonerised the words "handy bag" to "bandy hag", and deeply offended a rather grumpy older woman nearby, had also stumbled on an unexpected truth. He never quite lived it down, but it did have a little kernel of veracity at its heart.

 

Other mistakes come when people don't really think about what they are saying or writing. This often happens when a writer is under pressure, and he or she doesn't take the time to step back from what they have written. A little while ago I had my attention drawn to a headline that said:

 

"DRUNK SENTENCED TO TWO YEARS IN STOLEN VIOLIN CASE".

 

It certainly seemed quite a harsh punishment, even if he was very small!

 

Pressure of some sort might also have affected our postman when he told me some years ago that our postal service was delayed because the postal workers were "doubled up due to illness". I'm pretty sure he meant they were doing twice the workload as normal, but the image of hundreds of postmen curled up with the most impressive stomach cramps flashed into my mind before I realised that he meant something quite different.

 

So, what's this got to do with NLP? What's interesting is that many of these "mistakes" fit into the language patterns identified by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in The Structure of Magic 1 and 2, and in Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H Erickson, MD Vols I and II. Some of them are also reframes - "Tight Cheeks" and the "bandy hag" are great examples of how playing with the language makes one see something in a different light.

 

I've been writing up some of these patterns in my series on Basic Hypnotic Language Patterns in this newsletter. At first, those patterns seem hard to grasp - but if you start to watch and listen for them in real life, you suddenly find that learning them can be really good fun.  Here are some ambiguities, mistakes and cock-ups that I've encountered recently, as I've kept my ears peeled, and listened out of the corner of my eye for them:

 

1) Top of the list must be the pile of certificates that my partner saw in the council building where she works. The certificates were due to be handed out at the end of a training day. They read:

 

"This Is To Certify That X Has Successfully Completed A Course In Child Sexual Exploitation."

 

Thankfully, somebody spotted the ambiguity in this one before the certificates were handed out. The shredder was busy that afternoon, I am told.

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2) In a similar vein, someone in our local council works as the "Teen Pregnancy Co-ordinator". What this work comprises, I have no idea, but she must be highly effective, because we have had a higher rate of teen pregnancy since the post was conceived. The number of pregnancies swells every year.

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3) Next, is it a good idea for a possibly weight-conscious man or woman to step into the shower every morning and read on their Nicky Clarke Shampoo bottle the following:

 

 

Yep. It says "Great Body. Plump It Up." Those of a paranoid persuasion might consider this Embedded Command evidence of a conspiracy between the diet and beauty industries!

 

4) Here's an unusual one:

 

 

I'm surprised they can see over the dashboard...

 

5) Or what about this:

 

 

 

What, nothing other than toilet tissue to go down the toilet? That is a highly inconvenient Deletion.

 

6) Another sign I recently saw read:

 

"Cattle Please Do Not Swing On The Gate And Ensure It Is Closed. Thankyou."

 

Those, I thought, are bored and delinquent cattle. But if that interpretation was right, does the "do not" apply to the cattle swinging on the gate alone, or to them closing it, too? It's a good old fashioned Scope Ambiguity mixed up with a Punctuation Ambiguity.

 

7) This sign that I saw on the Isle of Skye at first had me flummoxed.

 

 

Until I discovered that it is exactly what it says it is. There is indeed a person who does hand-spinning who likes to have fun on the old pier on the Isle of Skye.  Whether or not the hand-spinner is always having fun, as the sign suggests, is up for debate. But at first I had no idea what this sign could have meant, and I can surely say I went through a series of Transderivational Searches to very little avail.

 

8) Here's a headline that I heard that Gavin Hadlan, a sub-editor with The Times, caught before publication:

 

"MINERS REFUSE TO WORK AFTER DEATH."

 

Were the mine owners really trying to save money by not employing living workers? Yes, it's another Scope Ambiguity...

 

9) ...And here's another one from Gavin Hadlan:

 

"STOLEN PAINTING FOUND BY TREE". Was it possibly a member of Special Branch?

 

10) But my personal favourite, when it comes down to it, is: 

 

"The men waited with baited breath."

 

Now, this one is not funny, really, I know. So why this one?

 

Well, because it shows that in the end you can be so wrong, that you start being right. The original phrase from which baited breath comes was abated breath - ie: the men stopped breathing while they waited. But over time it became 'bated breath, then bated breath. And finally, someone thought "hey, that doesn't look right", and put the letter "i" in the middle of the word, turning bated breath, into baited breath. 

 

What's interesting about this example is that baited breath is now becoming the more widely used spelling - even though it was, in the first place, completely wrong. It's a Phonological Ambiguity that has collapsed in on itself.

 

It just goes to show that sometimes you have to let those errant words grow up so that they can have a life of their own. That's flexibility in communication, I guess… 

Win A Copy Of Michael Neill's SUPERCOACH for your bizarre or funny observations on language! This is a rolling competition, with no end date - so just keep them coming in. All selected observations that we publish will win a prize!

 

If you spot any weird, funny or incomprehensible signs, do let me know. Or if you hear or read something that unwittingly follows the Milton Model Language Patterns and ends up saying something that it really probably didn't mean, then send me a photo or drop me a line. We will be giving out a prize of a free book by Michael Neill for the funniest and weirdest signage or strangest linguistic usage.

 

Please send your entries to me, Matthew Wingett, at matthew.wingett@nlplifetraining.com.

Please mark the Subject line: MIND YOUR LANGUAGE!

 

See you soon! 

 

Matthew Wingett is Editor of the NLP LIFE Newsletter, a hypnotist and freelance writer and editor. You can contact him at: matthew.wingett@nlplifetraining.com. This article and associated images copyright Matthew Wingett, 2009. His free eBook, The Tube Healer, can be download here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/128159 

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