[psych/pshrinkery, Patreon] Words Matter
Mar. 27th, 2018 12:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidereaCanonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1402234.html
One of the differences between psychotherapists and most of everyone else is that psychotherapists generally, as a species, understand that what seem to most everyone else to be tiny, insignificant changes in how one says something can have huge, out-sized effects on how hearers receive what is said.
To us, they don't look like tiny insignificant changes. We realize them to be the means of our magic.
Or as I like to think of it, psychotherapists believe in grammar. In a way nobody much but poets and editors do. Also vocabulary choice. While we may vary, as individuals and by our schools of practice, considered as a profession we're really into wordsmithing. We're into wordsmithing not in pursuit of descriptive beauty or prescriptive propriety, but in pursuit of effective potency.
We turn our wordsmithery on our own words, to do the things therapists are supposed to do: to comfort, to elicit information, to make it easy to disclose to us, to get ourselves listened to, to educate, to convince, to challenge. (My branch of the family may be the most severe in our verbal discipline, which may explain why this is a topic dear to my heart.) Some of us – the hypnotherapists – even use words to induce altered states of consciousness. We also bring our attentions to the words of our clients, to pick up the nuances, the pregnant elisions, the implications of what they are saying, and not saying. Some therapeutic approaches attempt to help patients with their problems by instructing them to change how they talk, whether to others, or to themselves.
There isn't really a name for this thing we do with crafting language for efficacy, this thing that is not one art, but a whole collection of arts – all the different arts of different psychotherapeutic schools and traditions, all the personal spins put on it by all the therapists who make it their own. Call it all wordwork.
We are big believers in mindchanging through wordwork, and wordwork resides in fine, little finicky details of how words get used. Frankly, it's hard to work in this profession without having one's nose ground in the fact that small differences in speech have radically different effects in reception. It's an actual fact, and reality is always patiently waiting there to teach it to you as often as you need it to for you to get it.
But a lot of the rest of people – the non-therapist people – don't really believe in wordwork. I have literally done something through wordwork in front of a client, involving a third person, and had them say, "Wow, I've never seen them respond that way!", and explained, "That was a thing I was doing. I could teach it to you." and have them refuse, insisting, no, it couldn't possibly have been a thing I did, it couldn't possibly have been how I talked to the other person, no, it must have been that the other person was in a weird mood, or liked me better, or was reacting to new medications, or was withdrawing from medications, or the phase of the moon.
A lot of people really don't believe that how you express yourself makes much of a difference. In fact, a lot of people are emotionally invested in the idea that it doesn't.
People vary in how open they are to the idea that small details in language use can have big consequences to how effective it is. Plenty of people pay the idea lip service. They say they think it matters, but then behave like someone who doesn't. Plenty of other people don't even go so far: they think therapists' attention to speech is just fussiness, and dismiss it. And others are even more resistant, and refuse to even entertain the notion. Sometimes heatedly.
I've had conversations with clients which have gone, "Here's a thing you could say in that situation...."/"Thanks, I'll try that!", "Hey, did you try that thing I suggested last time?"/"I did, and it totally didn't work", "Yeah, what did you say?"/"[Something completely other than I suggested]", "Huh. Well, something you might try is [thing I originally suggested]"/"That's what I did." Which illustrates that they didn't understand the difference between the two. And not uncommonly, when this happens, and I explain, no, they are different, they scoff. "Same thing!"
Because so many people are so resistant to the idea that fine changes in language use can have big effects, I mostly only attempt to teach clients wordwork in regard to how they talk to themselves, and only very judiciously attempt to teach clients wordworking for them to use with others. Sure, it might help them, but first I would have to get them up over the hump of believing it could actually matter. And it's a big hump. That hump's there for a lot of emotional reasons, some of which can be very intense.
(Some people may find that just reading this makes them feel defensive.)
Often it's a better use of limited therapeutic time to tackle the hump directly, rather than try to haul someone over it. The latter can result in someone who is much more interpersonally effective while being just as messed up and miserable inside, which is a kind of pyrrhic victory.
So mostly, I use this magic myself, rather than trying to teach it to my clients; I use my knowledge of how careful, cunning language use can achieve things interpersonally that are not otherwise possible, to make my own speech more effective when I talk with my clients.
Which is something of a shame. I think a lot of people would benefit by having a bit of familiarity with wordwork.
Which brings me to my point in mentioning all this. A thing you could do to supercharge your own therapy – or any psychotherapeutic work you do on your own, from self-help books or so forth – is to get on board with this notion that small changes in language can have big results.
Time that your therapist doesn't have to spend convincing you of this, or working through your neuroses around it so you can stand to humor the idea long enough to try it out, is time that your therapist can spend on actually getting down to teaching you specific wordwork. You're far more likely to wrest actual value from self-help books and other intra- and interpsychic training materials if you don't dismissively skate past the places they get fussy about language use – which is them trying to teach you wordwork.
The hump – the emotional resistance to the idea that small details of speech can have big effects – can be in part pretty serious emotional problems. Like, if growing up you had an abuser who beat you or otherwise terrorized you over how you used language, the idea that there are better and worse ways to use language may touch a very raw nerve. It's understandable that learning wordwork might not be something you'd want to pursue. And even if you did, that issue is not necessarily one you're going to be able to resolve on your own, and certainly not trivially.
Likewise, sometimes people become emotionally invested in their incompetence. "There's nothing I could have said," can be a belief that people cling to passionately for solace and comfort, for instance, if a loved one committed suicide, or if a relationship went sour, or in any a number of terrible situations in which people tried to get a different outcome than the one they got, and blame themselves, on some level, for not managing to get the outcome they wanted. The idea that one's speech could be more powerful than it is right now – the very premise of wordwork – can be very threatening to someone for whom a belief in the limit of their ability with words is a bulwark against the searing shame and ruminative self-recrimination that, "I should have known better, I could have stopped that from happening". Getting past this can be tricky, and the sort of thing people go to therapy for help with in the first place.
But other parts of the hump can just be simple acculturation. We have a greater culture which in various subtle ways discourages us from thinking about language use critically. There are ideas loose out there that suggest picking and choosing your words – as wordwork entails – makes you dishonest or lacking in authenticity.
Moreover, there is no wordworking without self-monitoring, without stopping and thinking about how one says what one says before one says it. But having to think carefully about what one says and how one says it is deeply associated in many people's minds with having to manage hostile authority figures – a child trying not to set off a rageful parent, an employee trying not to set off a capricious boss, a black motorist trying not to set off a hair-triggered cop – and so is associated, emotionally, with being subordinate and subaltern; and, concomitantly, not having to think about how one expresses oneself is seen as a privilege to be pursued and enjoyed.
Indeed, people born to rather more privilege than usual may have never, as part of their childhood development, been expected to learn to self-monitor their speech or deliberately choose how they express their ideas. Doing so may be an entirely unfamiliar notion, and a rather ridiculous seeming one, in how uncomfortable it feels to try for the first time.
So if you've scoffed at the notion that small changes in speech can have big effects simply because it seems like such a drag – to have to pay attention to yourself, to have to stop and think about what you say instead of just popping off and saying it – if that seems like a cramping of your style, well, you might want to think again.
These attitudes are keeping you from learning something cool, something empowering, something that will help you make your way in the world with more ease and success.
I mean, up to you of course. It may be that the sort of spontaneity and freedom of expression is of more value to you than anything else. In which case, good luck with that.
And it is totally true that wordwork – especially learning wordwork – can be a hassle. I won't kid you: learning to self-monitor this way can be a drag. It is, indeed, very like unto actual work. Like any new skill, it can be slow to acquire and possibly frustrating.
Honestly, it reminds me of learning to program. I remember on my first pro coding gig, spending something like a week trying to debug a routine I'd written that just wouldn't go, and eventually, humiliatingly, figuring out that I'd called a class, widgets, where I had meant to call an instance, widget, and that single "s" was what was had borked the whole thing. The compiler kept telling me that widgets didn't take that method, and I kept going, "What do you MEAN widget doesn't take that method?! It says right in the manual...! And it works all the other places I call that method on it...!!" I, of course, had looked at it a hundred times and not seen what I had actually typed, as opposed to what I had expected to see. (And my IDE's coloration was happy to indicate that widgets was a totally legit noun, because, indeed, it totally was.) It was a valuable learning experience, as to the importance of small details in expression.
But like with programming, the reason therapists get so into this is because of the wonder and delight of what we find we can do by means of wordwork. It's really cool.
So I commend it to you.
And, really, one of the biggest things standing between most people – maybe you, gentle reader – and learning wordwork skills is the attitude that wordwork does not, cannot possibly, exist. Open to the possibility it does – that careful and cunning choice of how your express yourself can have amazing shifts in how others respond to what you say – and you may be surprised – and gratified – by what you learn.
This post brought to you by the 137 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
One of the differences between psychotherapists and most of everyone else is that psychotherapists generally, as a species, understand that what seem to most everyone else to be tiny, insignificant changes in how one says something can have huge, out-sized effects on how hearers receive what is said.
To us, they don't look like tiny insignificant changes. We realize them to be the means of our magic.
Or as I like to think of it, psychotherapists believe in grammar. In a way nobody much but poets and editors do. Also vocabulary choice. While we may vary, as individuals and by our schools of practice, considered as a profession we're really into wordsmithing. We're into wordsmithing not in pursuit of descriptive beauty or prescriptive propriety, but in pursuit of effective potency.
We turn our wordsmithery on our own words, to do the things therapists are supposed to do: to comfort, to elicit information, to make it easy to disclose to us, to get ourselves listened to, to educate, to convince, to challenge. (My branch of the family may be the most severe in our verbal discipline, which may explain why this is a topic dear to my heart.) Some of us – the hypnotherapists – even use words to induce altered states of consciousness. We also bring our attentions to the words of our clients, to pick up the nuances, the pregnant elisions, the implications of what they are saying, and not saying. Some therapeutic approaches attempt to help patients with their problems by instructing them to change how they talk, whether to others, or to themselves.
There isn't really a name for this thing we do with crafting language for efficacy, this thing that is not one art, but a whole collection of arts – all the different arts of different psychotherapeutic schools and traditions, all the personal spins put on it by all the therapists who make it their own. Call it all wordwork.
We are big believers in mindchanging through wordwork, and wordwork resides in fine, little finicky details of how words get used. Frankly, it's hard to work in this profession without having one's nose ground in the fact that small differences in speech have radically different effects in reception. It's an actual fact, and reality is always patiently waiting there to teach it to you as often as you need it to for you to get it.
But a lot of the rest of people – the non-therapist people – don't really believe in wordwork. I have literally done something through wordwork in front of a client, involving a third person, and had them say, "Wow, I've never seen them respond that way!", and explained, "That was a thing I was doing. I could teach it to you." and have them refuse, insisting, no, it couldn't possibly have been a thing I did, it couldn't possibly have been how I talked to the other person, no, it must have been that the other person was in a weird mood, or liked me better, or was reacting to new medications, or was withdrawing from medications, or the phase of the moon.
A lot of people really don't believe that how you express yourself makes much of a difference. In fact, a lot of people are emotionally invested in the idea that it doesn't.
People vary in how open they are to the idea that small details in language use can have big consequences to how effective it is. Plenty of people pay the idea lip service. They say they think it matters, but then behave like someone who doesn't. Plenty of other people don't even go so far: they think therapists' attention to speech is just fussiness, and dismiss it. And others are even more resistant, and refuse to even entertain the notion. Sometimes heatedly.
I've had conversations with clients which have gone, "Here's a thing you could say in that situation...."/"Thanks, I'll try that!", "Hey, did you try that thing I suggested last time?"/"I did, and it totally didn't work", "Yeah, what did you say?"/"[Something completely other than I suggested]", "Huh. Well, something you might try is [thing I originally suggested]"/"That's what I did." Which illustrates that they didn't understand the difference between the two. And not uncommonly, when this happens, and I explain, no, they are different, they scoff. "Same thing!"
Because so many people are so resistant to the idea that fine changes in language use can have big effects, I mostly only attempt to teach clients wordwork in regard to how they talk to themselves, and only very judiciously attempt to teach clients wordworking for them to use with others. Sure, it might help them, but first I would have to get them up over the hump of believing it could actually matter. And it's a big hump. That hump's there for a lot of emotional reasons, some of which can be very intense.
(Some people may find that just reading this makes them feel defensive.)
Often it's a better use of limited therapeutic time to tackle the hump directly, rather than try to haul someone over it. The latter can result in someone who is much more interpersonally effective while being just as messed up and miserable inside, which is a kind of pyrrhic victory.
So mostly, I use this magic myself, rather than trying to teach it to my clients; I use my knowledge of how careful, cunning language use can achieve things interpersonally that are not otherwise possible, to make my own speech more effective when I talk with my clients.
Which is something of a shame. I think a lot of people would benefit by having a bit of familiarity with wordwork.
Which brings me to my point in mentioning all this. A thing you could do to supercharge your own therapy – or any psychotherapeutic work you do on your own, from self-help books or so forth – is to get on board with this notion that small changes in language can have big results.
Time that your therapist doesn't have to spend convincing you of this, or working through your neuroses around it so you can stand to humor the idea long enough to try it out, is time that your therapist can spend on actually getting down to teaching you specific wordwork. You're far more likely to wrest actual value from self-help books and other intra- and interpsychic training materials if you don't dismissively skate past the places they get fussy about language use – which is them trying to teach you wordwork.
The hump – the emotional resistance to the idea that small details of speech can have big effects – can be in part pretty serious emotional problems. Like, if growing up you had an abuser who beat you or otherwise terrorized you over how you used language, the idea that there are better and worse ways to use language may touch a very raw nerve. It's understandable that learning wordwork might not be something you'd want to pursue. And even if you did, that issue is not necessarily one you're going to be able to resolve on your own, and certainly not trivially.
Likewise, sometimes people become emotionally invested in their incompetence. "There's nothing I could have said," can be a belief that people cling to passionately for solace and comfort, for instance, if a loved one committed suicide, or if a relationship went sour, or in any a number of terrible situations in which people tried to get a different outcome than the one they got, and blame themselves, on some level, for not managing to get the outcome they wanted. The idea that one's speech could be more powerful than it is right now – the very premise of wordwork – can be very threatening to someone for whom a belief in the limit of their ability with words is a bulwark against the searing shame and ruminative self-recrimination that, "I should have known better, I could have stopped that from happening". Getting past this can be tricky, and the sort of thing people go to therapy for help with in the first place.
But other parts of the hump can just be simple acculturation. We have a greater culture which in various subtle ways discourages us from thinking about language use critically. There are ideas loose out there that suggest picking and choosing your words – as wordwork entails – makes you dishonest or lacking in authenticity.
Moreover, there is no wordworking without self-monitoring, without stopping and thinking about how one says what one says before one says it. But having to think carefully about what one says and how one says it is deeply associated in many people's minds with having to manage hostile authority figures – a child trying not to set off a rageful parent, an employee trying not to set off a capricious boss, a black motorist trying not to set off a hair-triggered cop – and so is associated, emotionally, with being subordinate and subaltern; and, concomitantly, not having to think about how one expresses oneself is seen as a privilege to be pursued and enjoyed.
Indeed, people born to rather more privilege than usual may have never, as part of their childhood development, been expected to learn to self-monitor their speech or deliberately choose how they express their ideas. Doing so may be an entirely unfamiliar notion, and a rather ridiculous seeming one, in how uncomfortable it feels to try for the first time.
So if you've scoffed at the notion that small changes in speech can have big effects simply because it seems like such a drag – to have to pay attention to yourself, to have to stop and think about what you say instead of just popping off and saying it – if that seems like a cramping of your style, well, you might want to think again.
These attitudes are keeping you from learning something cool, something empowering, something that will help you make your way in the world with more ease and success.
I mean, up to you of course. It may be that the sort of spontaneity and freedom of expression is of more value to you than anything else. In which case, good luck with that.
And it is totally true that wordwork – especially learning wordwork – can be a hassle. I won't kid you: learning to self-monitor this way can be a drag. It is, indeed, very like unto actual work. Like any new skill, it can be slow to acquire and possibly frustrating.
Honestly, it reminds me of learning to program. I remember on my first pro coding gig, spending something like a week trying to debug a routine I'd written that just wouldn't go, and eventually, humiliatingly, figuring out that I'd called a class, widgets, where I had meant to call an instance, widget, and that single "s" was what was had borked the whole thing. The compiler kept telling me that widgets didn't take that method, and I kept going, "What do you MEAN widget doesn't take that method?! It says right in the manual...! And it works all the other places I call that method on it...!!" I, of course, had looked at it a hundred times and not seen what I had actually typed, as opposed to what I had expected to see. (And my IDE's coloration was happy to indicate that widgets was a totally legit noun, because, indeed, it totally was.) It was a valuable learning experience, as to the importance of small details in expression.
But like with programming, the reason therapists get so into this is because of the wonder and delight of what we find we can do by means of wordwork. It's really cool.
So I commend it to you.
And, really, one of the biggest things standing between most people – maybe you, gentle reader – and learning wordwork skills is the attitude that wordwork does not, cannot possibly, exist. Open to the possibility it does – that careful and cunning choice of how your express yourself can have amazing shifts in how others respond to what you say – and you may be surprised – and gratified – by what you learn.
This post brought to you by the 137 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 04:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-27 06:30 am (UTC)So, short of a degree in a field that uses wordwork, are there resources (textbooks, introductory classes, ...?) that you would recommend for those interested?
(This is probably a less alien line of thought to those of us who ponder possible conversational paths before, say, picking up the phone.)
(no subject)
From:nvc video
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-03-27 09:07 am (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 06:54 am (UTC)Which does *not* make me socially deft. I can not-observe critical nuances and often am not processing content and social detail as expected by my interlocutor(s).
Words tend to be my favorite tool. I use them often and oddly. The conviction that they are secondary is something I've often observed in people who fluently 'speak' the facial and body languages of their culture and are sharply critical of imprecision there, while I (silently, silently) catalog their paucity of phrasing.
I wish you luck in convincing people that words matter; it may be of use in a good many circumstances; I don't think it will improve how most people treat people-who-don't-matter-to-them, and that is saddening to me, because I think there was a time when I would have believed that it could.
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 07:06 am (UTC)I also feel overwhelmingly incompetent at it outside certain structured situations. I accept it can be learned, but my "hump" is alive and well. When I prod it, it seems to be made of sheer terror at the idea of using my words to advocate for myself, which is a) unsurprising, considering and b) good to know and c) actually pretty infuriating.
Thank you.
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 08:58 am (UTC)I already liked linguistics but I think moving from one majority-English speaking country to another and being called up on all my Americanisms has been all the proof anyone could need that small changes in language matter. :)
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 09:39 am (UTC)Being able to be more experimental and wry and even flippant with my tone and words, even in serious situations, is something I think a lot of people take for granted. On the other side of that, speaking to people through text is one of the most natural mediums imaginable to really give you the time to consider word choice carefully, and really measure what you want to say and how you want to say it to maximally achieve your goals, and that's something that, while again can be stifling to do all the time, I don't think people spend enough time doing, myself included.
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 09:42 am (UTC)Collaborative Problem Solving is particularly difficult for me. I can respond to it, but I can’t initiate it on command. Allegedly this can be taught with practice, but my kiddo’s home therapist has been helping me practice for over a year.
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 11:08 am (UTC)Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 12:33 pm (UTC)For that matter, how does a therapist handle teaching wordwork to any clients who don't share their primary language? Is that even possible, or does someone seeking help with relationships conducted in Hmong really need a Hmong-fluent therapist?
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-03-28 11:38 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-03-29 12:45 am (UTC) - ExpandRe: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 01:32 pm (UTC)Excerpt from the Popehat quote: "You can’t even talk properly. If you’re an attorney and you need to prepare someone for testimony, you know: we’re a bunch of vague, meandering, imprecise assholes. We talk like a water balloon fight, sort of splashing the general vicinity of the answer."
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 01:41 pm (UTC)Thanks for writing this. Lots of food for thought.
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 01:46 pm (UTC)Also, 10/10 would take an online wordsmithing workshop from you.
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 01:48 pm (UTC)"A lot of people really believe that how you express yourself makes much of a difference."
Is there a missing "don't" before "really"?
Content:
By a curious coincidence, the paragraph of Joyce-ean text I am currently annotating contains the word "wordwork". I may have to link to this :-)
I observe the "this can't possibly matter so much" idea in many current discussions about pronoun use.
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 02:33 pm (UTC)I'm currently trying to convince my hindbrain, not that words matter *less*, but that I can afford to spend a bit less time-and-effort on wordwork for most emails and forum posts, and that it'll be fine in the larger scheme of things.
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 02:39 pm (UTC)Repeating it back was astonishingly difficult. And I was amazed at how much I cared that every detail of my words mattered so much to me.
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 04:03 pm (UTC)Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
Date: 2018-03-27 04:14 pm (UTC)Re: content: There is so much here that is about me and for me, that reading this I felt...whatever is the opposite of defensive (so that reading "Some people may find that just reading this makes them feel defensive" actually made me want to laugh kind of painfully) ... engaged? vulnerable? self-conscious? hopeful? wistful?
There's so much I want to say about this topic, and this topic in relation to my experience.
But ironically, foregrounding awareness of wordwork (and nonverbal-communication work that go with it though to a lesser degree in this written medium than in person) and the self-monitoring it entails, also (for me) evokes that self-monitoring in a way or to a degree that makes effective communication harder. Like writer's or artist's block, the internal critic/monitor stifles the creative, communicative impulse. Something like that, anyway.
This touches on something I've tried to talk about in my own therapy, without satisfying effect. People --including those therapists to whom I brought it up--generally judge me articulate, considerate with words, a 'good communicator' ... and at the same time seem to misunderstand or not hear what I'm trying to communicate through my careful wordwork (*), and also judge me as "holding back" (holding back what?) or monitoring my words and manner 'too much'. That seems like a nest of contradictions, a catch-22, and is intensely frustrating and confusing. I don't know what to do about that.
Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-27 04:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-27 04:38 pm (UTC)"Excuse me please guys" makes people move out of my way, so that I can get my power wheelchair through a corridor/foyer etc
but
"Excuse me please people"
or
"Excuse me please folks"
just gets completely ignored.
Any idea on why this is?
Is it the hard loud sound of guys, or the choice of word, or...?
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-27 04:46 pm (UTC)When I get really anxious/stressed, I get selective mutism as well, where I literally cannot talk and am reduced to gestures.
One thing I've found helps me is trying LESS for the right/perfect word, and instead just going for any word in the general vicinity that I can find, even if it's not quite the right one.
Often people are "well, word XYZ would have been more tactful/polite/accurate" and I'm like "Well, word ABC was all I could think of, it was either that or stunned silence."
Do you have any wordwork recommendations (books, articles) for people with aphasia and/or selective mutism?
(no subject)
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:(no subject)
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:apprentice word worker comm
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:(no subject)
From:Re: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2018-03-29 01:03 am (UTC) - ExpandRe: Comment Catcher: Words Matter
From:The nonnecessity of in the moment reflection
Date: 2018-03-28 11:38 am (UTC)When doing hypnosis with another person I'm often in a trance state myself for purposes of leading the person in a deeper trance state in which I don't reflect over words before I say them. I'm still very careful with the words I say and how I use them.
There's a time for reflection about language but that doesn't have to be in the moment. If you are well-prepared and in the right state of mind, trusting your intuition will work well.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-28 06:21 pm (UTC)So, thanks for your typically entertaining and persuasive article, which I can now link to to sway my clients!
(Speaking of which: your frequent use of humor and register shifts are excellent examples of wordwork -- using the tools of language to increase the power of your rhetoric in ways that may well be invisible to many of your readers. "I dunno why, but it sure sounds like she knows what she's talking about.")
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-28 07:20 pm (UTC)Thank you.
I find that trying to eliminate ableist language and slurs from my speech (and thinking) has helped me be more creative in my language use, and kinder. My parents were (and are) big on using respectful language.
miscellaneous reactions
Date: 2018-04-01 12:37 pm (UTC)1) Another profession who study this are stand-up comics. The exact choice of word, the exact timing, make all the difference in how a joke goes over.
2) As an INTP STEM nerd, I find it very easy to fall into the lazy belief that what matters is the semantic content of what I say, and that two logically equivalent ways of saying it are, in fact, equivalent. Obviously not true when dealing with human beings, and in practice when I'm writing (especially when writing something that I know will be controversial, or in a forum that has already engendered ill feeling), I tend to spend a significant amount of time substituting one word for another, shuffling the order of phrases and sentences, etc. to get the right emphasis and connotations. But I don't have the habit of doing that in real-time speech.
3) For example, I frequently find in conversation with a particular friend that the friend asks "What made you think saying that would help?" or "What made you think saying that would make me feel better?" To which I have no answer: I didn't say it because I thought it would help or make Friend feel better, I said it because it was true and relevant to the problem at hand. Which I suppose means I've misidentified "the problem at hand": the actual problem at hand is that Friend feels bad, and what I say in response is not merely about possible solutions to the problem, it's an implementation of a particular solution to the problem. Don't rush into implementing a solution until you're convinced that that solution is better than nothing -- duh!
4) Another friend has a behavior that I interpret as "trying out different wordings in order to bring on a crying jag." Friend has had a lot of years to practice this, and has gotten quite good at it. Crying jags can be just as addictive as opioids, I suspect.
5) Which leads me to recognize the same thing in myself: "trying out different wordings in order to feel sorry for myself." Not usually crying, but just feeling that I've been dealt an unfairly bad hand in a particular area. It's emotional masturbation, not accomplishing anything in the long run. I've had a lot of years to practice this, and have gotten pretty good at it :-)
6) Have you read Max Barry's Lexicon? SF novel about a secret society of people who are really really good at weaponized wordwork. Sort of what Cambridge Analytica wants to be when it grows up.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-04-26 06:49 am (UTC)