James Randi Speaks: Problems with Miscommunication

good morning good afternoon or good evening as the case may be I am James Randi as an educator I'm very much aware of the single most important factor that differentiates our species from all others the ability to communicate verbally or by writing so that we may be in touch with past or future generations of our kind we've learned to examine records left to us by previous inhabitants of our world as well as to create our own records for those who will follow us back in the 1930s a Samana sustained Alfred Korzybski invented a term for this ability he called it time binding and I find that to be a very good expression for this valuable function this is why I believe that our language skills should be carefully controlled and restrained used with great care meanings are often confused and lost between individuals and cultures a minor and relatively unimportant example of this is the different terms that the English have for various parts of an automobile they have a boot a lorry and petrol where we have a trunk a truck and gas but I hardly think that this will lead to war or to a trade embargo between the UK and the USA what I'm really concerned about here is how careless we can be and are in our everyday conversation and in our advertising take this example this is something that popped up in my mailbox just today it advertises that these folks are offering me natural chicken and I really have a hard time imagining an unnatural chicken does it involve some moral turpitude on the part of the bird was the creature created in a laboratory rather than by natural and traditional means should this follow be featured on an FBI bulletin of course the intention of the advertiser probably was to ensure potential consumers that no growth hormones or antibiotics were used in raising the chicken and that is a reasonable enough statement because such chemicals should be used minimally if at all however that term natural is so overused it appears on packaging and in TV ads very frequently and serves as a generally comforting word to the unwary because as I've often said gravel and bird droppings as well as belladonna and Strickland are also natural yet I do not consume them just this morning I heard a weather forecast on TV warning that a warm front was approaching and could drop a ton of moisture on us well first of all I'm thoroughly bored by weather forecasts especially one that meteorologists goes into Rhapsody's about low pressure areas and high altitude jet streams as if he or she is trying to give us a crash course in meteorology but the approximate weight of the amount of water that will be precipitated is far more information than I'd like to have or need oh yes I understand that this is only an expression but it's a careless one I hear the same term being used by economists like a ton of problems for example and by would be Martha Stewart's as in a ton of flavor and I'm quite certain that these items are not thus measured redundancies you know what I mean references to rich millionaires stupid superstitions and self-serving politicians are increasingly popular errors of speech used by newscasters recently I heard references to a plummeting drop in prices what are the kind and the current political uncertainty of today da and - a dead leaf fatality this sort of usage appears to be an attempt to emphasize an expression but it fails and if I hear once more a reference to a definite fact or an unfortunate tragedy I just may give up viewing TV for at least the next 20 minutes I note that persons being interviewed on the NBC Today Show almost invariably begin every single response with the word well the girl a function of that I'd be hard-pressed to define and these folks also seem to have forgotten how to pronounce the simple word yes using instead the word absolutely as if to assure the audience and the interviewer that there is just no other possible affirmative answer of course the word no is equally neglected being replaced by absolutely not fewer things and they might imagine are absolute in any respect and have you noticed prices of merchandise and services seem to always end in nine a monstrous piece of machinery was offered for sale just last week on television at a price of four hundred ninety nine dollars and ninety nine cents now tell me is there anyone who would choose to believe that this is not five hundred dollars consider that saving of one cent amounts to 150 thousandth of the price Wow such a bargain yes we're familiar with paying gas prices like a dollar ninety-nine a gallon saving one two hundredths of the price and perhaps pretending that is not two dollars but as anyone fooled into celebrating the saving of one cent perhaps 20 cents on a Philip I asked that question quite seriously because highly paid ad executives seem to think that they are bottom line despite improvements in communication skills we still have Sylvia Browne and John Edwards speaking to dead people quacks shaking up homeopathic compounds while shaking down the suckers and some naive South they're still believed that a certain conjurer with a four trick repertoire can bend spoons with his thoughts certainly not a skill that has brought us anything in the way of a benefit any more than breaking lightbulbs would make our lives better or richer finally as a careless flaw in our use of language I'll mention the speech item the particular lyrics me and is heard very often here in the USA it's the term you know inserted every few words by sports figures politicians and so many different people in some different circumstances I once recorded a telephone conversation with the permission of the caller of course and I later played it back to him asking him to count the number of times he dropped in ah you know has a sort of punctuation to his narrative he listened to four minutes that I'd selected from the recording and announced a total of eight times that he'd used the expression I then replayed the recording for him indicating by a rap on my desk each time that I heard the phrase he had actually said it 18 times not 8 but it had become such a part of his speech pattern that he simply didn't notice it other offensive phrases of this kind are I mean and like randomly dropped into conversations ad nauseam far more often than we think well that's today's tirade and I hope that you feel thoroughly scolded I think we do well to pay more attention to what we're really saying and what we're really trying to express so that our communication can be more useful to all of us like you know I mean I'm James Randi and I thank you for the use of your screen and your time

Channel: JamesRandiFoundation

Views: 106,630

Rating: 4.6302519 out of 5

Keywords: james, randi, sgu, jref, communication, education

Id: o4ISmhwE1aY

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 09 2009

Reddit Comments

[u/devinedj]

Almost anything with Randi needs to be upvoted.

[u/screamsionara]

James Randi needs to take over Andy Rooney's spot on 60 minutes.