Question

Pinker (Words Don’t Mean What They Mean) and Kakutani (The Word Police) both discuss the way we use language to not quite say what we mean. They discuss ways of cloaking our language through political correctness, innuendo, ambiguity, veiled threats and others.

1) Discuss an example of one of these that you have experienced or heard. What was the effect?

Answer 1

We usually frame a sentence where we use the language to not quite say what we mean but pass the message in an indirect way especially when we don’t want to hurt them by saying it directly. Which at times people understand what they really mean and behave according to it. This happens to me a lot of time and I will share the coffee experience that I have to explain a similar situation. When I was working in a place far from my country, though I had limited friends we used to meet very frequently. We used to go to each other’s home and we used to talk, play and have fun but when it is late I used to ask them whether they need coffee as usually after a cup of coffee those people usually leave for their respective homes. Later people noticed what I mean and started to use the same strategy to indirectly mean that it’s late as it does not hurt anyone. Even though I am not a fan of such indirect communications between people, it is essential at times to achieve the goal.