OOPS! HOWS THAT AGAIN?

-an essay about verbal error

-shows why and what types of errors we make while speaking

-verbal errors may have psychological and linguistic value

Types: i. Mistranslation: wrong translation to give negative impression

ii.Tongue slip: accidently saying sth else that’s not intended

iii. Sponerism: exchanging the initial sound of words to give funny meaning. Eg. Town drain Other names fauxPas, Blooper, Missteps, etc

-sometimes our hidden wishes are exposed through verbal errors

-verbal errors are human, so it is not necessary to take them seriously

-anyone can make verbal errors

This essay describes the mistake people make when speaking and the reasons why they make mistakes. The mistakes are divided into four categories: slips of the tongue fauxpas, mistranslations and spoonerisms.

Slips of the tongue are common mistakes where the speaker says one thing when they mean to say another. For example, a businessman Peter Balfour whished Prince Charles the happy married life with Lady Jane. But the prince was betrothed with the Lady Diana. He completely turned fool by expressing such a wish in a royal lunch. In the same way, during the election campaign Nancy Ragan telephoned her husband how delighted she was to be looking at all the beautiful white people. But she was unaware of the fact that the voters were not only the whites but also the blacks. Likewise, the French Prime Minister said that the bombing was aimed at Jew but stroke the innocent Frenchmen. He meant that the Jewis in France were not Frenchmen and they were not innocent either.

Another kind of verbal mistake is faux pas. Usually a faux pas occurs when a person says something that he or she thinks is harmless but it actually has meaning that will upset some people. Several political leaders have made such slips. Jimmy Carter never fully recovered when he mentioned the Polish lust for future. Chicago Mayor had the same bitter experience when he assured the public that “the policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.”

Mistakes also result from mistranslation. Mistranslations are mistakes made when words in bre language are translated badly into another language. For instance, the slogan “Come Alive with Pepsi” failed in German when it was translated: “Come Alive out of the Grave with Pepsi.” When Lubke greeted Indian President at the airport, he intended to ask, “How are you?” instead said: “Who are you?” to which his guest answered, “I am the President of India.”

The mistakes also appear due to spoonerism. Spoonerism occurs when a persom mixes up the letters of the words they are saying. Once radio announcer Harry von Zell said, “Hoobert Heever” for Herbert Hoover. Similarly, William Archibald Spooner caused a stir with his famous spoonerisms. He gave out a hymn in chapel as “Kinquering Kongs Their Titles Take.” Once a spooner chided a student : “You have hissed all my mystery lectures. In fact you have tasted the whole worm, and must leave by the first town drain.”

Rosenblatt mentions two theoretical explanations for such mistakes: linguistic and psychological. By referring to linguist Victoria Fromkin, he says that the brain stores new information into a grammatical framework. The information remained in wrong grammatical framework comes out as error. A grammatical framework was a part of Anneberg’s  trouble when he admitted before Queen as “some discomfiture as a result of a need for elements of refurbishing.”

On another front, psychoanalyst Eidelberg who made Freud’s work simple suggested that  a slip of the tongue involves the entire network of id, ego and superego. He offers the case of the young man entering a restaurant with his girlfriend and ordered a room instead of a table. This expression is the reflection of the repressed desire of preoedipal period.

We laugh at someone’s mistakes because such mistakes are deviations from the conventional and normal course of life. They provide us delightful relief. Henry Bergson theorized that the act of laughter is caused by any interruption of normal human activity (a pie n the face, a mask, a pun). Thus, slips of the tongues are like slips on banana peels. So we shouldn’t laugh at them who make such mistakes.