Gravitahn
Steven Pinker asks the question “Why don’t people just say what they mean?” and de-mystifies innuendo & euphemism for the rest of us.
Excerpted from his talk “The Elephant, the Emperor, and the Matzo Ball: Common Knowledge as a Ratifier of Human Relationships” at the Association for Psychological Science conference (May 26-29, 2016).
===========================
Steven Pinker is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on language and cognition and has authored ten books, including:
The Language Instinct
How the Mind Works
The Blank Slate
The Stuff of Thought
The Better Angels of Our Nature
and most recently, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.
http://stevenpinker.com
Source
no, it's because you can dismiss indirect speech as a joke, whereas a statement is like a command. It's about the invitation to make light of things, and allows the other person to have some input… it's a lead in to banter
Keep it up man, i like them.
Is "etchings" a generational thing? I'm familiar with coffee as the indirect request for sex, but I've never heard someone ask another person to check out their etchings.
Brilliant
I find this guy so interesting even when I'm not sure I understand everything he says.
Love this! That lip smacking though!! ?
Pinkers hair > Don King and Ken Burns' hair combined
Well that settles it then, we all need to keep a stash of etchings.
Oh, man. I do this everyday.
One of my favorite comedians is Sam Hyde who uses this to get away with saying some pretty mean shit under the guise of plausible deniability. Also, it's just charming when people are smart enough to employ this technique.
jew
Cheryl's b-day is July 16th
I would say that we speak with innuendo because it's a less threatening and confrontational way of trying to get what you want. The old idea that you can catch more flies with honey. Just basic human psychology.
I was always told that when travelling in a foreign country, the best way to see if a police officer is bribable is to ask "In my country there is a system of on-the-spot fines. Does the same system apply here?"
Cool. This theory is what it describes: Things we all sort of already understood, but when recognized as a connected, common knowledge structure (at least on this academic level), it is mind-expanding (and perhaps relationship-changing) theory!
I don't think Pinker's right that he has ID'ed examples where plausible deniability is not intended in indirect speech. In his example of "see my etchings", it is plausible deniability when Harry says "maybe Sally thinks I'm dense"
Awful hair.
What did I learn here? Zilch!
I disagree with his assumption that the kid wasn't the only one who could see the emporer had no clothes. in my opinion the kid was the only one, due to his young age not to have been indoctrinated and thouroughly brainwashed as the rest of the population had been and the child's claim that he had no clothes on was just the trigger to slap the shit out of them to bounce them even momentarily out of their stupor. the glazed eyed state they'd been in was due to a combination of both fear and unreasonable idol worship drilled into them through edgeamahcaytion run by the emporers shadow government so that even though he had been naked as a liberal which he himself had come to believe he was himself clothed by the shadow government that was using him as a puppet and nothing more and therefore just another useful idiot.
I never use indirect speech! I always keep it direct and to the point! I also keep my etchings in my pants!
Ok since I'm listening to you and dorking around perhaps a lie would go over better? NOTE: I myself have a strict adherence to the truth I am currently in possession of… However, my sister got pulled over around 16 years old going 53 in a 35 and told the officer she had dyslexia… rofl.. he let her go… ok back to the topic… lol
Three kinds of relationships? I understand a fourth… I don't know what adjective to use… There's a known terminology for this that escapes me… It's the I just like you and I don't know why relationship perhaps we could be friends… All your forms of relationships are in generalizations of 'what I get out of it'… why is that? Is there nothing more seen here? Dang can't we just have a talk?
You know what this reminds me of… and we all do it… it's the moment when someone asks you a question that you find personal and don't want to answer then you find something stupid and kinda untrue just slips out of your mouth unintended to avoid it all… the in that moment when you realize you said something untrue you have to choose… I try to go back and backtrack and correct it all in the best way possible… the whole unintended lie charade which sometimes but very rarely happens to me… I don't know why weird stuff slips out when it was not indented. I suppose there's a pressure to respond then you have to correct it all.
When is Cheryl’s bday tho?
With the sexual innuendo "common knowledge vs shared knowledge" concept, I know a guy here in Korea who went on a blind date set up by a coworker of his. When their date was over, he invited her to come to his place. She said no. So, he took this as her turning down the idea and he thanked for the good time and they went their separate ways.
The next day, he found from his coworker that the girl was a bit angry because she had wanted to have sex with him really badly and he was supposed to know that she had to say no and that he was supposed to rent them a room in a "love hotel" (yes, they call them that literally). Renting a room, she could act like she didn't know what was up while less if she said yes to going to his place. Similarly, there are "dvd rooms" you can rent to watch movies in that often are nothing more than for sex.
And these days, asking someone if they want to go have some ramen together (if it's late at night) is the same kind of euphemism.