OOPS ! HOW'S THAT AGAIN ? - Roger Rosenblatt
Summary
This essay describes the mistakes people make when speaking, and the reasons why they make these mistakes. The mistakes are divided into categories, for example slips of the tongue, faux pas, mistranslation and spoonerisms. Slips of the tongue are common mistakes where the speaker says one thing when they mean to say another. Usually a faux pas occurs when a person says something that he or she thinks is harmless but it actually has a meaning that will upset some people. Mistranslations are mistakes made when words in one language are translated badly into another language. Spoonerisms occur when a person mixes up the letters of the words they are saying. The author gives examples of each type of mistakes being made by a famous person. This essay looks at why we make mistakes. Several theories are described. One theory is that mistakes show our inner thoughts. These are the thoughts we have inside us but want to keep secret. This essay explains why we find mistakes humorous. For example, sometimes we find mistakes funny because we are being meant, but at other times we laugh because we fell sympathy. This is because we all make mistake.
Summary
“Oops! How’s That Again” is an essay written by Rosenblatt and this essay has a humorous tone. Through the humorous tone also, the essayist has tried to reflect the bitter reality of human beings when they make mistake when they speak. He enriches his discussion with remarkable examples; although, as befits its subject. He is much concerned with the psychological causes of bloopers.
Human beings often make mistake knowingly and unknowingly when they speak. After making mistake they also apologize for it. From the uneducated person to highly intellectual and educated, scholar, different mistakes are made according to their level. This essay describes the mistakethe people make while speaking and the reasons behind it are divided into four categories. They are as follows: i. Public Blunders ii. Memorable Translations iii. Bloopers iv. Spoonerisms.
Public Blunders are the mistakes made by the people when they give speech. While delivering the speech, they don’t actually care for the grammatical mistakes or vocabulary mistakes. These mistakes are specially committed by especially by the political leaders when they deliver their speech. They try to give emphasis by giving different examples but their sentences are not totally complete. This happens due to their tongue slip. Here the speaker may be trying to give message from one view but the different audience may take it in wrong way.
Memorable translations are the mistakes generally done by the people who speak very fast. This is also related to the psychological condition of the listener. The words spoken by the fast speaker may not be easily understood the real words. There may be misunderstanding between the speaker and listener. The person with weak psychology, if, wrongly interprets the words of the speaker, it may bring violent situation.
Bloopers are the mistakes done foolishly and not tried to correct. These mistakes are very simple types of mistakes, which are not given much importance by the speaker. This may be the habit of some people. Spoonerisms are the mistakes, which are done by the use of incorrect words due to tongues slips. Here, wrong words are not known by the listener as the speaker immediately tries to replace the wrong word when he comes to know the mistake. While the replacement of words the speaker should be conscious as wrong replacement can misinterpret the actual meaning.
There are different views about the verbal errors according to different people. Victoria Fromkin, a linguist, says that the verbal errors happen due to tongue slips concerned with the brain. Before the words are expressed, thought is placed by the brain into a grammatical framework. Sigmund Freud, a psychiatrist, presents his theory about the verbal error in different way. According to him, a tongue slips are caused by the network of id (unconscious mind), ego (subconscious mind) and superego (conscious mind). When people make mistakes, it has become the trend to laugh at them. Why do we laugh at them we don’t know. According to the philosopher Henri Bergson, the act of laughter is caused by any interruption of normal human fluidity or momentum. So, tongue slips are like slips of banana peels. We simply make fun and hoot at the errors simply to break the monotonies.
Types of Tongue Slips:
i) Mistranslation: Mistake occurred in translation
ii) Spoonerism: This kind of mistake is made when a person mixes up the initial letters of the words he is speaking.
iii) Bloopers: Mistake occurred in Public blunder; spoken wrong in radio, press, etc.
iv) Faux pas: This type of mistake usually occurs when a person says something that he thinks harmless. But is actually has a meaning which upsets the speaker as well as the listeners.
iv.Spoonerism: This kind of mistake is made when a person mixes up the initial letters of the words he is speaking.
Comments
Post a Comment