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Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean
Um… is about how you really speak, and why it’s normal for your casual, everyday speech to be filled with verbal blunders — about one in every ten words. Why do they happen? Why can’t we control them? What can you tell about the people who make them?
In this charming, engaging account of language in the wild, linguist and writer Michael Erard also explains why our attention to some verbal blunders rises and falls. Why was the spoonerism named after Reverend Spooner, not some other absent-minded person? Where did the Freudian slip come from? Why do we prize "umlessness" in speaking? And how do we explain the American presidents who are famous for their verbal blundering?
You’ll have new ways to listen to yourself and others once you’ve met the people who work with verbal blunders every day — journalists, transcribers, interpreters, police officers, linguists, psychologists, among others — and when you’ve learned what verbal blunders tell about who we are and what we want.
A rich investigation of a fascinating subject, full of entertaining examples, Um. . . is essential reading for talkers and listeners of all stripes.
In this charming, engaging account of language in the wild, linguist and writer Michael Erard also explains why our attention to some verbal blunders rises and falls. Why was the spoonerism named after Reverend Spooner, not some other absent-minded person? Where did the Freudian slip come from? Why do we prize "umlessness" in speaking? And how do we explain the American presidents who are famous for their verbal blundering?
You’ll have new ways to listen to yourself and others once you’ve met the people who work with verbal blunders every day — journalists, transcribers, interpreters, police officers, linguists, psychologists, among others — and when you’ve learned what verbal blunders tell about who we are and what we want.
A rich investigation of a fascinating subject, full of entertaining examples, Um. . . is essential reading for talkers and listeners of all stripes.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
63 people are currently reading
845 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
October 11, 2007
Who knew that a book about speech errors could be so entertaining? But there are many laughs to be had from the often hilarious mistakes that linguist Michael Erard uses to illustrate his theories. I am still giggling over the poor newscaster who said “Also keeping an eye on the Woodstock Rock Festival was New York’s governor, Rockin Nelsenfeller.” Ahem. But this book is far more than a collection of spoonerisms, malapropisms and eggcorns. Erhard makes some fascinating arguments that speech errors reveal valuable information about how we learn and use language.
Early on, the author makes a point of calling into question assumptions about that most famous of speech errors, the Freudian slip. In one chapter, he tells the story of the throw-down between Freud and Viennese professor Rudolph Meringer, whose speech error research Freud borrowed when presenting his own psychological slip theory. Freud may have won that battle publicly, but Meringer made a compelling argument that such errors are shaped far more by the mechanics of speech than they are by unconscious repressions.
Of particular interest to me personally were Erard’s discussions about pause fillers such as “uh” and “um,” which I was disturbed to hear myself using with abandon during my first radio interview. I feel better now knowing that these kinds of pause fillers actually serve an important speech function for both speaker and listener. Erard’s chapters on Toastmasters and the history of speaking fashions did reinforce my desire to train myself out of the habit when I’m on the air, though, but I now have slightly more realistic expectations about how thoroughly I’ll be able to do that.
Early on, the author makes a point of calling into question assumptions about that most famous of speech errors, the Freudian slip. In one chapter, he tells the story of the throw-down between Freud and Viennese professor Rudolph Meringer, whose speech error research Freud borrowed when presenting his own psychological slip theory. Freud may have won that battle publicly, but Meringer made a compelling argument that such errors are shaped far more by the mechanics of speech than they are by unconscious repressions.
Of particular interest to me personally were Erard’s discussions about pause fillers such as “uh” and “um,” which I was disturbed to hear myself using with abandon during my first radio interview. I feel better now knowing that these kinds of pause fillers actually serve an important speech function for both speaker and listener. Erard’s chapters on Toastmasters and the history of speaking fashions did reinforce my desire to train myself out of the habit when I’m on the air, though, but I now have slightly more realistic expectations about how thoroughly I’ll be able to do that.
September 26, 2007
pop linguistics = HELLS YEAH.
July 30, 2010
The history of verbal gaffes and gaffers, from Reverend Spooner to George W. Bush. He discusses Freud, to whom all slips were a sign of hidden neurosis; Rudolf Meringer, who put a linguistic spin on blunders; the history of the sound "um"; the Toastmasters and their strictures on eliminating all verbal fillers; the many modern psycholinguistic studies of verbal slips; Mrs.Malaprop; and many others.
The book's thus rather wide in scope, but its thesis can loosely be summed as: speech errors are a normal and necessary part of speech, as the human mind uses them to keep speech parallel with thought. For example, in anticipating the word "advent" but stuck on the word "invention," one might say, "The invent of computers has..." One of the interesting facts about such blunders that the book points out is the maintaining of emphasis across errors, so in the previous example, "invent" would have a stressed first syllable, like advent. The same goes for parts of speech: nouns are replaced with nouns, and so on. Erard writes in a pleasant, open style that is neither too erudite nor too simple. It's a terrific primer on a deceptively significant subject to those with an interest in language and linguistics.
The book's thus rather wide in scope, but its thesis can loosely be summed as: speech errors are a normal and necessary part of speech, as the human mind uses them to keep speech parallel with thought. For example, in anticipating the word "advent" but stuck on the word "invention," one might say, "The invent of computers has..." One of the interesting facts about such blunders that the book points out is the maintaining of emphasis across errors, so in the previous example, "invent" would have a stressed first syllable, like advent. The same goes for parts of speech: nouns are replaced with nouns, and so on. Erard writes in a pleasant, open style that is neither too erudite nor too simple. It's a terrific primer on a deceptively significant subject to those with an interest in language and linguistics.
November 7, 2007
As someone who is a lover of language and the varied psychosomatic nuances behind it, I was expecting to fly through this one. I was slightly disappointed. It was mainly a review of all the research that has been done verbal disfluencies, and the general consensus among all the experts far and wide is (drum roll please)...that no one really knows what's going on behind our ums, slips of the tongue, and other varied blunders we make on a daily basis. Erard did at least debunk the idea of the Freudian slip, and brought to light a few interesting points, but the book's main point was that the only way to stop making verbal blunders is to stop talking. It didn't really answer the question of "What they mean". It's worth reading if you come at it with the right approach - that it is a social and political look, and not a scientific exploration, at what we say and how we say it.
June 7, 2008
Parts were fascinating, but I had a lot of trouble with the numerous slips translated from other languages. It was hard to see what was wrong and why it was important.
February 19, 2008
An astonishingly dull book, remarkably devoid of intellectual content.
Here is what you might learn from this book.
SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILER ALERT!! (tee-hee)
Chapter 1: Most 'spoonerisms' are probably apocryphal.
Chapter 2: There is less to Freudian slips than meets the eye.
Chapters 3-5: Mistakes and hesitation are an intrinsic part of verbal communication. Everybody makes mistakes, and while the particular pattern of doing so is specific to an individual, ascribing some deeper significance to verbal 'disfluisms' is generally misguided. In other words, the answer to the question implicit in the last part of the book's title is "precious little".
The origin of verbal mistakes lies in the fact that speaking is essentially complicated. People who are tired, or distracted, are prone to more frequent errors; similarly, variation in frequency of errors with age follows a predictable, unsurprising pattern.
Chapter 6: The Toastmasters hold speakers to a higher, error-free, standard than is actually consistent with normal human speech.
Chapters 7 and 9: People are often amused by other folks' hilarious bloopers, particularly when committed by celebrities and captured on camera.
Chapter 8: (probably the only chapter with the germ of an interesting idea) the frequency of occurrence of particular mistakes does shed some useful light on how the brain acquires language.
Chapter 10: President Bush makes a boatload of verbal blunders.
Amazingly, the author manages to stretch this thin gruel over a total of 270 pages.
If most of the revelations above strike you as either blindingly obvious or completely banal, then you will understand why I give this book only a single star.
Here is what you might learn from this book.
SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILER ALERT!! (tee-hee)
Chapter 1: Most 'spoonerisms' are probably apocryphal.
Chapter 2: There is less to Freudian slips than meets the eye.
Chapters 3-5: Mistakes and hesitation are an intrinsic part of verbal communication. Everybody makes mistakes, and while the particular pattern of doing so is specific to an individual, ascribing some deeper significance to verbal 'disfluisms' is generally misguided. In other words, the answer to the question implicit in the last part of the book's title is "precious little".
The origin of verbal mistakes lies in the fact that speaking is essentially complicated. People who are tired, or distracted, are prone to more frequent errors; similarly, variation in frequency of errors with age follows a predictable, unsurprising pattern.
Chapter 6: The Toastmasters hold speakers to a higher, error-free, standard than is actually consistent with normal human speech.
Chapters 7 and 9: People are often amused by other folks' hilarious bloopers, particularly when committed by celebrities and captured on camera.
Chapter 8: (probably the only chapter with the germ of an interesting idea) the frequency of occurrence of particular mistakes does shed some useful light on how the brain acquires language.
Chapter 10: President Bush makes a boatload of verbal blunders.
Amazingly, the author manages to stretch this thin gruel over a total of 270 pages.
If most of the revelations above strike you as either blindingly obvious or completely banal, then you will understand why I give this book only a single star.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 24, 2014
Uh, who says um more than once a sentence? Why do we do that?
It used to be that people ignored the 'um'.
Then Freud said its a sign of deep seated anxiety.
Then Reverend Spooner turned the whole business into a joke.
Now linguists and other scientists seem to think that this is the sign that your brain is just taking a moment to line up the words in order, like a toddler trying to fit the red square and the yellow rectangle and the orange triangle into their correct slots. Because your brain is generating ideas and phrases, and changing one word/phrase for another to be more accurate, and oops! They all have to line up to be spoken one word at a time.
Is 'um' a sign of stupidity? Nope. The more words you know, the more 'shapes' you can choose from, and they all have to fit together properly.
My favorite bit: When you get the word category right, and the actual word wrong, you have committed a COHYPONYM.
Did your mother ever call you by another sibling's name?
Do you mix up "Put the food on the ___" table or counter? I always use the wrong one.
Presidential blunders - Surprise! They don't actually blunder more than other people, we just pay closer attention.
It used to be that people ignored the 'um'.
Then Freud said its a sign of deep seated anxiety.
Then Reverend Spooner turned the whole business into a joke.
Now linguists and other scientists seem to think that this is the sign that your brain is just taking a moment to line up the words in order, like a toddler trying to fit the red square and the yellow rectangle and the orange triangle into their correct slots. Because your brain is generating ideas and phrases, and changing one word/phrase for another to be more accurate, and oops! They all have to line up to be spoken one word at a time.
Is 'um' a sign of stupidity? Nope. The more words you know, the more 'shapes' you can choose from, and they all have to fit together properly.
My favorite bit: When you get the word category right, and the actual word wrong, you have committed a COHYPONYM.
Did your mother ever call you by another sibling's name?
Do you mix up "Put the food on the ___" table or counter? I always use the wrong one.
Presidential blunders - Surprise! They don't actually blunder more than other people, we just pay closer attention.
November 26, 2007
Not enough esoteric linguistic facts! I also dislike the cover (yes, I am judgmental and judge books by their covers) and title, since it seems to appeal to idiots.
August 18, 2019
I forget where I saw a reference to this one recently, but as soon as I read about it, I ordered it, as it seemed very aligned with my interests. It was a bit of a disappointment, operating neither as proper academic essay nor as fully successful pop-history or pop-linguistics. Sometimes I felt like the author was giving me too much info and other times not nearly enough, and his style seemed inconsistent. It just didn't feel to me like a final, well-made thing. It's fine, but it's not one I'd recommend.
July 27, 2015
I liked it! Here were some of my take-aways/ favorite parts
1. Our verbal blunders don't decrease with fluency, but they increase. Surprising , but makes sense when you consider the web like associations in our brains. The more connections we have, the faster they happen, the more prone to error we are.
2. even blunders have patterns, like how we tend to swap a noun for a noun, and switch words that have the same number of syllables with the same stress.
3. "Knows better" vs. "doesn't know better" kinds of errors.
4. Terms new to me like egg corn, malapropism, anticipation, idiom blend.
5. People famous for their rhetoric, like Cicero and Thomas Jefferson were actually timid speakers!
6. 'uh' changes is different languages, according to the most neutral vowel is in that languages.
7. I liked the part where they explained that blunders happen in the scope of the language spoken. Arabic has consonants stems with different vowels in between or around them. Blunders might occur when you use the wrong vowel.
From p. 190 "the stem for all things related to writing is k-t-b. To make nouns, verbs, and other verbs and other words, you add other morphemes, which appear as a sequence of vowels that slot between the consonants. Thus, to make the verb "to write" you add the morpheme a-a-a to the morpheme k-t-b. The resulting word is "kataba." Other vowel patterns produce other words. "Book" is kitab. "Library" is maktaba."
8. As listeners, we tend to filter out Uhs and ums. When we see it written though, it makes the speaker seem disflentl truth is, we all blunder! Also, there are news agencies that make transcripts of press conferences. They are told to ignore blunders in the transcript, usually.
1. Our verbal blunders don't decrease with fluency, but they increase. Surprising , but makes sense when you consider the web like associations in our brains. The more connections we have, the faster they happen, the more prone to error we are.
2. even blunders have patterns, like how we tend to swap a noun for a noun, and switch words that have the same number of syllables with the same stress.
3. "Knows better" vs. "doesn't know better" kinds of errors.
4. Terms new to me like egg corn, malapropism, anticipation, idiom blend.
5. People famous for their rhetoric, like Cicero and Thomas Jefferson were actually timid speakers!
6. 'uh' changes is different languages, according to the most neutral vowel is in that languages.
7. I liked the part where they explained that blunders happen in the scope of the language spoken. Arabic has consonants stems with different vowels in between or around them. Blunders might occur when you use the wrong vowel.
From p. 190 "the stem for all things related to writing is k-t-b. To make nouns, verbs, and other verbs and other words, you add other morphemes, which appear as a sequence of vowels that slot between the consonants. Thus, to make the verb "to write" you add the morpheme a-a-a to the morpheme k-t-b. The resulting word is "kataba." Other vowel patterns produce other words. "Book" is kitab. "Library" is maktaba."
8. As listeners, we tend to filter out Uhs and ums. When we see it written though, it makes the speaker seem disflentl truth is, we all blunder! Also, there are news agencies that make transcripts of press conferences. They are told to ignore blunders in the transcript, usually.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 26, 2008
Mostly a book on the history of the study of verbal blunders, it didn't really meet my expectations. I expected more elucidation on the meaning - either syntactic, psychological or psycholinguistic - of verbal mistakes. As a prolific gaffe-r myself, I suppose I was looking for insight.
Interesting throughout, the last three or four chapters seemed a bit meandering and unfocused, as though they were tacked on or sent to the publisher on deadline instead of highly polished. Or maybe I was getting cranky because I haven't eaten lunch yet.
Interesting throughout, the last three or four chapters seemed a bit meandering and unfocused, as though they were tacked on or sent to the publisher on deadline instead of highly polished. Or maybe I was getting cranky because I haven't eaten lunch yet.
June 21, 2021
Way more interesting than it sounds. You'll be paying more attention to how you talk. Which is good and bad. The book reads pretty well (it isn't too dry or academic) and yet it well-researched and I feel like I learned a lot!
October 30, 2018
I finished the book, "Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean" by Michael Erard on October 29th, 2018. I had started it on June 17th, only a few months earlier. I thought the material covering historical texts was a drag to read through. I was expecting a deeper linguistic analysis but this wasn't the right book to read. I also do not believe that "um" is a speech error. It is a channel feedback mechanism designed to tell the listeners to wait patiently. The book did cover sign languages and I commend the author for doing this. I had read the part in the book where one presenter on verbal blunders "psychically" caused the speakers after her to blunder more than usual. I experienced a similar "psychic" effect today. I finished the book during a lull at a work meeting while I waited for a lady technician at her request to do something on her computer. I was surprised to find that I only had a few pages left to read before it went into the appendices. Later, another technician who was installing a printer for me noted that I had typed "The lazy dog jumped over the quick brown fox" and told me that I had it backwards. It was a slip of the hands! I tried to fix it and he said that it was missing an "s" and I should add the word "sleepy" to it. I said that the problem was the verb; it should be "jumps." He told me that "A quick fox jumps over the lazy brown dog" was used for testing all the letters on the keyboard. I asked him if he liked pangrams and he was noncommittal.
March 31, 2021
Do you really pay attention to how you speak? Or how others speak? This book follows a lot of what we automatically skim over or don't pay attention to, unless it results in accidental humor, such as Spoonerisms or other wordplay that wasn't intended.
The focus is on Um and Uh, which are the filler sounds that we insert into pauses. Other cultures have other sounds, but whatever is the norm is something that is a neutral easy-to-say sound.
Also covered are repeated words, slips of consonants from one word to another, restarted sentences, and other verbal blunders of off-the-cuff speaking. Speech that is transcribed is usually edited to remove those things by reporters, court reporters, and other transcribers. Dialog in books usually also leaves them out in most cases.
Chapters are: The Secrets of Reverend Spooner; The Life and Times of the Freudian Slip; Some Facts about Verbal Blunders; What We, uh, Talk About When We Talk About "uh," A Brief History of "Um;" Well Spoken; The Birth of Bloopers; Slips in the Limelight; Fun with Slips; President Blunder; The Future of Verbal Blunders.
The focus is on Um and Uh, which are the filler sounds that we insert into pauses. Other cultures have other sounds, but whatever is the norm is something that is a neutral easy-to-say sound.
Also covered are repeated words, slips of consonants from one word to another, restarted sentences, and other verbal blunders of off-the-cuff speaking. Speech that is transcribed is usually edited to remove those things by reporters, court reporters, and other transcribers. Dialog in books usually also leaves them out in most cases.
Chapters are: The Secrets of Reverend Spooner; The Life and Times of the Freudian Slip; Some Facts about Verbal Blunders; What We, uh, Talk About When We Talk About "uh," A Brief History of "Um;" Well Spoken; The Birth of Bloopers; Slips in the Limelight; Fun with Slips; President Blunder; The Future of Verbal Blunders.
September 3, 2019
I'm about two and a half chapters in and I'm throwing in the towel. Onto the abandoned shelf this one goes. Part of it is my misunderstanding of the purpose of this book. I was under the impression that it deals with and explains how we speak and the meaning behind the ways we speak, especially formal vs. informal speech; it's more about various speech patterns (e.g., spoonerisms, Freudian slips), how they came about, and what they might possibly mean. Erard goes to great lengths to discuss the rivalry between Freud and Meringer without picking a side to explain why such slips of the tongue happen - are they signs of our subconscious or our brains looking backward or forward to combine words - other than to say that Freud's work lived on longer. In addition to the misunderstandings, the writing is too dry for my tastes and relies too much on examples and not enough on relevance.
December 15, 2019
I've read books about reading, books about writing, even books about editing, but this is the first book I've read about speaking. The first part of the book, a review of studies that have been done about sentence interrupters was slow-going, but then the author switched to historical data--malapropisms, mondegreens, eggcorns, and the like--and it got more interesting. But the most egregious sentence interrupter of all time - the gratuitous LIKE - got only a mention in a list of ums, ahs, and wells. I have turned off a radio interview if the interviewee was not able to express himself/herself without every third word being LIKE. You'd think it would, like, deserve its own chapter in this book.
April 23, 2020
Ah, well, I am not sure , well, you know what it all means
I thought this book would be interesting and it was , fire the first few pages of each chapter. Then I was bored and started skimming instead of reading. I was hoping that Erad would have something interesting to say.
I liked the chapter on the Toastmasters club. I always wondered what they did. But not for me; I hate speaking in public.
I learned that um and ah might mean something or nothing about the speaker, but they can tell linguists a lot about language and it's development. I also learned I uninterested in all of GW Bush's mistakes.
I thought this book would be interesting and it was , fire the first few pages of each chapter. Then I was bored and started skimming instead of reading. I was hoping that Erad would have something interesting to say.
I liked the chapter on the Toastmasters club. I always wondered what they did. But not for me; I hate speaking in public.
I learned that um and ah might mean something or nothing about the speaker, but they can tell linguists a lot about language and it's development. I also learned I uninterested in all of GW Bush's mistakes.
August 25, 2017
This is a hard book to rate because I did learn a lot and I can see the huge research endeavor behind it. HOWEVER, the way it was written seems to be all over the place and lacks focus. The way it's packed, too, seems to be more about linguistics than history, and I'd say that ratio is actually around 35-75. Bearing that in mind, it's not a bad book to check out if the subject catches your attention.
April 30, 2020
It's very nice, although most of it is more discursive than analytical.
There are some very interesting bits certainly, in terms of pragmatics and even universals.
Some good research, some striking questions.
But it's also a little bit stretched, which is understandable as this is not a book for linguists and so cannot really push things too far - hence what feels like padding at times..
Pretty cool nonetheless.
There are some very interesting bits certainly, in terms of pragmatics and even universals.
Some good research, some striking questions.
But it's also a little bit stretched, which is understandable as this is not a book for linguists and so cannot really push things too far - hence what feels like padding at times..
Pretty cool nonetheless.
December 29, 2019
It was cute and I liked it but it did go on !!!
July 23, 2021
This is a hard read but interesting. Toastmasters and any person who deals in oral communication would find this information useful.
did-not-finish
November 6, 2023Page 59
November 15, 2009
You speak between 7,500 and 22,500 words per day and 1800 of them involve a verbal blunder. You have a slip of the tongue every 7 minutes. You "um" a lot. You make some sort of error on average once every 10 words. It's going to get worse as you get older.
This is likely why you spend all your time trolling around the internet, rather than engaged in those old fashioned talking conversations with people in the same room.
Take heart, fair introvert! Um: Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders and What They Mean exists to let you know that no one is immune speech errors. Not even American Presidents...but more on that later.
Speech errors fall into two main categories: a slip of the tongue - saying the wrong word or wrong sound (like "black bloxes") - or a speech disfluency such as the pause filler (uh, um, er). These errors likely happen when your brain shifts from planning what you're going to say, to executing the actual talking or shifting back again. It has been happening forever and it will continue to happen forever.
The author, Michael Erard, wants readers to know that errors should not always be considered disruptions to communication. Often, they are essential to communication. An "uh" lets your engrossed listeners know you've got more to say, but you need a second to pull it together. It may take you a moment to grab a word that is on the Tip of your Tongue (TOT - that is an Official Acronym), but that is because you know 30,000 of them, which is pretty damn awesome. And where would Freud be without the slips?
There are fun little facts throughout the book, such as the idea that hand gesturing reduces speech errors, that "uh" is one of the easiest sounds to make in English (and likely why we use it as a pause filler), that you make more speech errors when you are nervous or lying, and that when a cop pulls you over and asks you about the weather, he is probably measuring the number of errors you make when speaking about easy things so when he hauls you downtown to start the tough interrogation, he can tell when you're hiding something. So, it may be to your advantage to stutter a lot right off the bat.
Erard states early in the book he became interested in the subject of blunders because of the media coverage of President Bush II and the image of the President's...mental capacity as a result. While some info is interesting (Bush wasn't noted as a verbal blunderer until after Dan Quayle left the race in September, 1999), Erard's defense of Bush gets downright preachy at times and I'm left wondering if I just read a 300 page scolding. Did he write the whole book in an effort to make over-educated elitist Liberals feel bad for calling Bush a dummy?
Take this passage, which is related to the idea that people judge speech errors in two categories: the speaker "knows better" and just flubbed, or "doesn't know better" and their mistake was a result of being an idiot. The author believes Bush's blunders were/are considered "doesn't know better" in order to further the idea that he isn't very bright.
For all the fun little facts and...deep philosophical questions about Bush's mental capacity, there is also a lot of boring, wasted space throughout the book. In some sections it seems the author includes excess information (like, every "Spoonerism" ever uttered) just to prove he did his homework. It takes a lot more work than it should to find the interesting stuff and I'm not convinced the book follows any logical order.
I suppose if you are looking for an excuse not to attend a social event and talk like an idiot, there are worse things to read. But, in defiance of the author's ranting, I'll recommend Slate's The Complete Bushisms instead.
This is likely why you spend all your time trolling around the internet, rather than engaged in those old fashioned talking conversations with people in the same room.
Take heart, fair introvert! Um: Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders and What They Mean exists to let you know that no one is immune speech errors. Not even American Presidents...but more on that later.
Speech errors fall into two main categories: a slip of the tongue - saying the wrong word or wrong sound (like "black bloxes") - or a speech disfluency such as the pause filler (uh, um, er). These errors likely happen when your brain shifts from planning what you're going to say, to executing the actual talking or shifting back again. It has been happening forever and it will continue to happen forever.
The author, Michael Erard, wants readers to know that errors should not always be considered disruptions to communication. Often, they are essential to communication. An "uh" lets your engrossed listeners know you've got more to say, but you need a second to pull it together. It may take you a moment to grab a word that is on the Tip of your Tongue (TOT - that is an Official Acronym), but that is because you know 30,000 of them, which is pretty damn awesome. And where would Freud be without the slips?
There are fun little facts throughout the book, such as the idea that hand gesturing reduces speech errors, that "uh" is one of the easiest sounds to make in English (and likely why we use it as a pause filler), that you make more speech errors when you are nervous or lying, and that when a cop pulls you over and asks you about the weather, he is probably measuring the number of errors you make when speaking about easy things so when he hauls you downtown to start the tough interrogation, he can tell when you're hiding something. So, it may be to your advantage to stutter a lot right off the bat.
Erard states early in the book he became interested in the subject of blunders because of the media coverage of President Bush II and the image of the President's...mental capacity as a result. While some info is interesting (Bush wasn't noted as a verbal blunderer until after Dan Quayle left the race in September, 1999), Erard's defense of Bush gets downright preachy at times and I'm left wondering if I just read a 300 page scolding. Did he write the whole book in an effort to make over-educated elitist Liberals feel bad for calling Bush a dummy?
Take this passage, which is related to the idea that people judge speech errors in two categories: the speaker "knows better" and just flubbed, or "doesn't know better" and their mistake was a result of being an idiot. The author believes Bush's blunders were/are considered "doesn't know better" in order to further the idea that he isn't very bright.
On one hand, criticizing how smart or competent or moral a person is because he or she doesn't speak like you do (or as you expect them to) smears a larger set of people than you'd think, including nonnative speakers of English, stutterers, people with diseases that impact their motor control, and the elderly. Liberals shouldn't talk about speaking this way - it contradicts how they work to include everybody and make sure that everyone has equal opportunity.That's a nice shout out at the end, but really? We should be easy on Bush because there are people in this country who have Parkinson's or don't speak English as a first language? That makes absolutely no sense. At all.
For all the fun little facts and...deep philosophical questions about Bush's mental capacity, there is also a lot of boring, wasted space throughout the book. In some sections it seems the author includes excess information (like, every "Spoonerism" ever uttered) just to prove he did his homework. It takes a lot more work than it should to find the interesting stuff and I'm not convinced the book follows any logical order.
I suppose if you are looking for an excuse not to attend a social event and talk like an idiot, there are worse things to read. But, in defiance of the author's ranting, I'll recommend Slate's The Complete Bushisms instead.
December 27, 2007
This is a survey of different attitudes towards a variety of verbal blunders. Verbal blunders include hestitations, like "um" and "uh", starting sentences over (reconstructions), slips of the tongue (Freudian and otherwise), malapropisms ("a nice derangement of epitaphs"), and a variety of other ways of misspeaking. It begins with an account of Freud's approach to slips, and the reaction among his contemporaries. The best historical anecdote in the book is the account of gentlemen of Freud's era appropriating his interest in the psychological significance of verbal slips and tics and deliberately "psyching" everyone they met (doing off the cuff analyses of the significance of a hestitation or the fact that someone does something odd with their hands).
The contemporary view of blunders is that they're valuable evidence for linguistics and cognitive science. By studying the breakdown of cognitive operations, we can better understand their normal functioning. The author notes that Arnold Zwicky (a famous linguist and contributor to Language Log) teaches a class based on verbal mistakes, which sounds like a fantastic idea.
The contemporary view of blunders is that they're valuable evidence for linguistics and cognitive science. By studying the breakdown of cognitive operations, we can better understand their normal functioning. The author notes that Arnold Zwicky (a famous linguist and contributor to Language Log) teaches a class based on verbal mistakes, which sounds like a fantastic idea.
January 10, 2008
First book finished this year!
I feel like I know more about slips and disfluencies than I ever expected (and possibly wanted) to know. Among the more fascinating bits, it's interesting to find that slips occur in predictable ways—that is, our slips are "patterned according to the structure of the language." I always thought slips were random and totally the product of the speaker's idiosyncratic mind. But no! No wonder so many linguists study verbal blunders. Secondly, the reason we slip is because our mind arranges words into a sentence before it arranges sounds into a word. I never really thought about my mind assembling sentences as I spoke before, but there you have it. And most entertainingly, you're least likely to use pause-fillers like "um" when you're drunk because you're less self-conscious and less likely to self-edit. Fun facts like these abound, but I still found myself slogging through the book at times—especially in the middle, where linguistic cases and data abound.
I feel like I know more about slips and disfluencies than I ever expected (and possibly wanted) to know. Among the more fascinating bits, it's interesting to find that slips occur in predictable ways—that is, our slips are "patterned according to the structure of the language." I always thought slips were random and totally the product of the speaker's idiosyncratic mind. But no! No wonder so many linguists study verbal blunders. Secondly, the reason we slip is because our mind arranges words into a sentence before it arranges sounds into a word. I never really thought about my mind assembling sentences as I spoke before, but there you have it. And most entertainingly, you're least likely to use pause-fillers like "um" when you're drunk because you're less self-conscious and less likely to self-edit. Fun facts like these abound, but I still found myself slogging through the book at times—especially in the middle, where linguistic cases and data abound.
January 29, 2013
Reading this book is like watching a man look for his keys under the streetlight because it's the one place he can see. The topics within the category of verbal blunders are a bit random because Erard follows the research and linguistics has only recently become something remotely resembling a science. Before now, it has been a mix of armchair theorizing, quirky passions, and dominance by one or two figures that have taken all the air out of the field. Somewhat like Freud's dominance of psychology before that field opened up to other perspectives. So there's too much on Spoonerisms, for example, as Erard tries to separate fact from fiction in the life of that interesting pastor. Did we really need to know that he was an albino?
All that said, the topic is fascinating, the writing excellent, and Erard's ability to bring research to life unmatched. A must-read for anyone interested in language.
All that said, the topic is fascinating, the writing excellent, and Erard's ability to bring research to life unmatched. A must-read for anyone interested in language.
September 13, 2012
I thought this was going to be more interesting. I like linguistics and think the field is extremely interesting, but I was more or less bored by this book. Part of that is not the author's fault because I was under the impression that Freudian slips were "real." Unfortunately, Freud and his theory that slips in speaking reveal a person's hidden thoughts/desires has been disproved. So the part of the book that promises to explain to me what they (the slips) mean is mostly about the brain and how it packages words and creates sentences. Which is interesting, but not as interesting as the Freudian theory. Ah well. If you are very interested in linguistics and how the brain works to create sentences (and why we pause in sentences where we do and why we say "um" and "uh") then you will like this book. I just found it a little too dry and the chapter on Toastmasters was really boring.
January 14, 2013
"Um..." is a fairly dense book, introducing readers to the history of linguistics with a focus on the study of verbal "bloopers" through the years. I didn't enjoy it much. Oddly for a book on such a specific-sounding topic, it suffers from lack of organizational focus; the author separates out several categories of verbal slip, but attempts to sort his chapters by ill-defined historical era rather than by the categories, even though he focuses on one category at a time for long sections. It was difficult to follow the author's trains of thought or figure out what conclusions - if any - he was drawing.
Sadly, I don't recommend this book. It could have been excellent with a much better editor, but as it stands, it's difficult to read and not very illuminating for the linguistics non-specialist.
Sadly, I don't recommend this book. It could have been excellent with a much better editor, but as it stands, it's difficult to read and not very illuminating for the linguistics non-specialist.
July 11, 2015
A very scholarly text that delves into the linguistic and psychological meaning behind language disfluency. (Yes, I learned that word from this book.) We all make errors, use space fillers (um, uh) hourly. I enjoyed the chapter on Spoonerisms (With this wing, I thee red) and on current thought. The chapters that went deeper--there is not really a correlation to Freudian slips-- were too much of a throwback to my university days and transformational grammar. The best things I learned: 1. If you have interesting content, people will be less apt to notice your blundering, 2. People don't trust too polished a performance. Finally vindication for my lack of slick, salesman's patter! 3. After seven beers people seldom say um or uh.
September 12, 2016
Light, fun, and slightly misleadingly titled, "Um..." is a discussion of the place of verbal pauses and disfluencies throughout the known history of oration and speaking in (mostly) English. Combined with linguistic studies on similar phenomena in roughly twenty other languages, that discussion includes the parallels to neurological phenomena and how they're reflected in our speech. I liked the seasoning with well known historical examples of mistakes, though some of the speech errors collected by highlighted scientists of the (nearly) present day were also rather excellent. As the author predicted, I have run around paying attention to all the normally-transparent "um..."s in conversations around me since.
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