Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 1; January 2001

Brain-clever Word Choice or the Opposite of Mistakes

( This article first appeared in The Teacher Trainer, Vol 14/3 )

We know that slips of the tongue....times when you mean to say one thing but something else falls out of your mouth....are not random but occur within certain constraints. (See Crystal 1987) For example consonants may get reversed as in, "It was really mell-wade " (for well-made). Syllable number and some letters can be the same in the slip as in the intended word as in "I love those sebacious plants!" (for scabious plants). Keep a diary of you and your friends' verbal mix-ups and you'll find this to be true.

For a winter or two I've been keeping a very different kind of diary. It has to do with, what I call, "brain-clever word choice". Here's an example from an article in a science journal.

After suffering strokes, two patients began to have language problems. One patient made speech errors with vowels. The other with consonants. "The pattern is striking.", says the researcher. The researcher could have said that the pattern was marked or that the difference was clear, noticeable or definite, or great. But he chose, unconsciously, the word "striking" which is virtually a pun given the root cause for the patients' problems i.e. their "strokes".

Brain-clever word choice, in my view, is not the same as deliberate word play or punning. The speaker seems to have no consciousness of having said anything amusing or of having made any uncannily appropriate word choices. Even when it's pointed out to them they may look blank for a while not seeing a connection.

Let me give you some more examples. I've underlined the brain-clever word choice in each case.

Talking about whether sportswomen are feminine or not, a US basketball player said,

"Outside the court you can get your hair done, be feminine but when I step on the court, it's a different ball game."

In a programme on interior design (BBC 2)
"We were shattered when we walked into a building and found that all the walls were made of glass."

An American resident in Britain spotting his wife's really red tongue (gained from stealing strawberries) said,
"I'll bet George Washington accused his son of eating strawberries (rather than of cutting down a tree) and he had to stick his tongue out and say, 'I cannot tell a lie'. Yeah, his Dad probably gave him a licking for eating the strawberries!"

A singing teacher I once had said,
"The piano is not really my forte."

A tutor re-arranging a class schedule on the Monday morning after Princess Diana's death said,
"I don't think we should do that group mourning activity now. After the weekend , it'd be a bit close to the bone."

A spectator of one of Damien Hurst's tank exhibits said,
"He's a strange fish."

Two friends discussing an 18 year old's prospects of romance,
"I think it's inconceivable that she won't have a boyfriend some time soon."

On a gardening programme on TV based in the US desert and while looking at cactuses,
A."I think if I was gardening around here I'd get hooked on these kinds of plants
B."Yeah, they're great, aren't they ? And this was grown from scratch."

Overheard on a plane,
Wife, "Don't fall asleep!"
Husband, "I wouldn't dream of it!"

Ice skating show commentator,
"He's got 5.7 Oh Yes! ...Markedly better.

Two participants on a horse training course,
A, "So....have you whispered to many horses today?"
B, " Well...in a manner of speaking."

Once you tune into brain-clever word choice, you'll hear it all around you in conversation, On TV, on the radio. You can get quicker and quicker at spotting it.

What interests me about it, apart from the simple fun of matching word choices to the speaker's topic, is the fact that the decision making is happening at a level that bypasses the speaker's consciousness. Time and time again I've smiled at a word choice, gently repeated it for the speaker, only to hear them say, "I'm sorry, I don't get it!".

Now, many people will happily take the credit for witty word play. "Ouch! Sorry!", they'll say if they have planned a pun or even when they've just noticed an unplanned one the moment it falls from their lips. Brain -clever word choice, on the other hand, seems to be happening at some level that allows its results to sneak out unnoticed, unrecognised, even when they're held up by the scruff of the neck and presented to the parent! So, if you see me smiling at you when you're talking, it's probably because your brain has just been really clever!

Tessa Woodward