That word ‘reveal’ probably made you think of the famous “Freudian slips”, which sometimes have a way of ‘revealing’ something in our mind we’re not aware of. But interesting as that is, we don’t mean that in the psychological sense here but in the linguistic sense: do ‘slips’ show us something about how we process and use our language?
As we talk, we unconsciously make more kinds of little errors than we probably think we do. Usually we either don’t notice them at all or we go back and correct them so quickly that they stay below everybody’s awareness. Take a look at some of the most frequent kinds of ‘slips’ we all make. Each of these below is a real slip made by someone.
• We use the wrong consonant in a word, often under the influence of a neighboring sound:
WHAT YOU REALLY SAID WHAT WAS INTENDED
you can tell Ten you can tell Ken
bake my bike take my bike
I can start the stape back up I can start the tape back up
Of course the most famous of such slips are ‘Spoonerisms’, reversing two sounds - not necessarily the first - or series of sounds:
heave the louse leave the house
blake fruid brake fluid
they’re snoveling show they’re shoveling snow
he will lay the weed he will lead the way
• Sometimes we misplace the stress because we’re thinking of the same word but another part of speech:
you’re in an adVAN- - advanTAGeous position
(thinking of adVANtage)
the noise ENvelopes - - enVELops you
(ENvelope)
it was written by two ecoNOM- - eCONomists
(ecoNOMics)
• Or two words turn out to have exchanged positions by the time they come out:
take that persons’s account take that person’s concern
into concern into account
she got Ralph to let him she got Ralph to let her
cut her hair cut his hair
• An unintended word will intrude, often apparently triggered by some other nearby word:
the Mafia moved into Italy the Mafia moved into Boston
I’m going to April in May I’m going to Europe in May
Or a word might be triggered by something in the immediate social situation:
we need a new refrigerator we need a new washer
(looking at refrigerator)
where’s Tiffany? where’s Marcia?
(looking at Tiffany)
Occasionally we hear ourselves coming out with a wondrous portmanteau word, combining two:
that doesn’t bother me in the doesn’t bother me in the
sleast least / slightest
she editated the book she edited / annotated ...
• It’s more common than you might imagine for a grammatical element (a morpheme) to unaccountably turn up on a word where you didn’t think you intended it:
he cook the meats he cooks the meat
I’d forgot abouten that I’d forgotten about that
she stow it awayed she stowed it away
it get darks early it gets dark early
• But probably the most revealing of the way we process sentences in our minds are the occasions when an entire sentence comes out wrong:
(a) what it is that makes what is it that makes
the difference? the difference?
(b) what could have I done? what could I have done?
(c) it’s hard when there’s it’s hard when there’s
pressure, isn’t there? pressure, isn’t it?
(d) if I was done that to if that was done to me
All these show that, in deriving a question or a passive from a simple declarative sentence, something failed to get moved appropriately:
In (a), the first three words still show the normal declarative order what it is, but making it into a question requires the moving of the verb.
In (b), the same thing: the words remain in the order of the declarative I could have done (it).
In (c), the words isn’t there (called a tag question) have been influenced by the word there, but the question is really being asked about it.
In (d), in passivizing they did that to me, it is not the me that is turned into a passive, but that.
All these examples show the same thing about how we process language in our heads: we do not put words and sentences together in simple linear order, but we do it, so to speak, in layers: we lay out a general concept of a word, a combination of words, or a whole sentence in our minds (normally all at the same time!) and proceed to ‘plug in’ elements. It is these sounds, morphemes or words in construction that occasionally get scrambled on the way to being spoken.
All this complicated mental processing is happening entirely below the level of consciousness, so we’re not aware of ‘doing’ anything except when we hear ourselves saying something ‘funny’, and it’s all happening at such lightning speed that we’re not aware of any time these steps are taking.
Copyright © 2004 by William Z. Shetter
