Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 18, 1994 TAG: 9407220072
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Monty S. Leitch
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
You can say - or write - a thought, and believe that you've expressed exactly what you had in mind, only to find out from your words' very first interpreter that you've expressed another thought entirely.
I was once asked, for instance, to supply a bit of biographical information to a fellow who had to introduce me before a group. I dutifully wrote out the mundane details of my resume and then, thinking to spice up the facts, added that "she is also a skillful sewer."
Now, when I wrote those words I meant that I can sew, that I have been sewing since I was a girl, and that, at times, I sew pretty well. In short, I wrote that I am a skillful "sew-er."
What this fellow read, though - at least the first time through- was that "she is a skillful se-wer."
I suppose there's a sense in which any normal human's physiological plumbing can be praised as "skillful." But, of course, that's not what I had in mind at all. As my introducer fortunately figured out before addressing the crowd.
My point is this: The mistake was mine, not his. It was I who carelessly let a slippery word wriggle out from under its intended meaning.
And without a second thought!
As so often happens. "There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip," to coin a phrase. Which is what makes communication so dag-blamed hard.
In my case, the mistake was inconsequential. In other cases, legal proceedings and international negotiations have dragged on for years while words have wriggled around, in, under and beyond what-A-thinks-was-said vs. what-B-thinks-was-said.
I believe that all this wriggling accounts for the conundrum of legal language. Once a general consensus has been reached on the meaning of a particular phrase, then that phrase - however obscure and tortured it seems to unschooled eyes - stays in legal language until the end of time, merely because a consensus has been reached.
Would that such a consensus could be reached in other forms of communication. In a recent country-and-Western song, the female singer demands to know of an exasperating man in a bar, "What part of 'no' don't you understand?" Is this not the crux of the date-rape phenomenon?
Our Sunday-school class has recently tried its hand at biblical translation. We don't, any of us, read Hebrew or Greek, so it's been an odd experiment. But with the help of our study aids we have been able to conclude at least this much: Biblical translators have a tough row to hoe. Those holy words slip and wriggle away the same as any others.
King Solomon reminds us: "The words of the mouth are deep waters; the fountain of wisdom is a gushing stream."
Or maybe it's: "The words of a man's mouth are as deep waters, and the wellspring of wisdom as a flowing brook."
Whichever, it seems to me that wise old fellow was just reminding us that what comes out of our mouths isn't always what we mean. Or all that bright, either.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB