Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They MeanEssential reading for talkers and listeners of all stripes: An original, entertaining, and surprising book that investigates verbal blunders: what they are, what they say about those who make them, and how and why we've come to judge them. “An enjoyable tour of linguistic mishaps.” —The New York Times Book Review Um... is about how you really speak, and why it's normal for your everyday speech to be filled with errors—about one in every ten words. In this charming, engaging account of language in the wild, linguist and writer Michael Erard also explains why our attention to some blunders rises and falls. Where did the Freudian slip come from? Why do we prize "umlessness" in speaking—and should we? And how do we explain the American presidents who are famous for their verbal stumbles? |
Contents
The Secrets of Reverend Spooner | 15 |
The Life and Times of the Freudian Slip | 28 |
Some Facts About Verbal Blunders | 53 |
What We uh Talk About When We Talk About uh | 78 |
A Brief History of Um | 111 |
Well Spoken | 144 |
The Birth of Bloopers | 167 |
Slips in the Limelight | 181 |
Fun with Slips | 202 |
President Blunder | 224 |
The Future of Verbal Blunders | 243 |
Recommended Reading | 269 |
Slips Versus Disfluencies | 285 |
Other editions - View all
Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean Michael Erard No preview available - 2008 |
Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean Michael Erard No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
adults aliquis American asked audience became behavior Bernard Baars blooper brain broadcast Bush Bush's Bushisms called classical malapropism cognitive collecting slips consonant conversation Cutler David Brooks eggcorn English fill pauses Freud Freudian slip Fromkin gaffes George Mahl Goffman grammatical Greek guage hear Herb Clark hesitation human instance interrupted interview Jaeger Kanzi Kermit Kermit Schafer kids knows better language Levelt lexigrams linguists listeners Lojban look Mahl malapropisms mean Meringer Meringer's Mondegreen Morelli Obama occur once pause fillers percent person phrases political president psychoanalysis psychologist public speaking radio recordings repair repeated words restarted say uh Schafer scientists sentences Shriberg Smedley social someone sort sounds speaker speech disfluencies speech errors spoken Spooner story style syllable talk tape television tell tence there's thing tion Toastmasters told tongue transcribers transcripts types umlessness University utterance verbal blunders voice vowel writing wrote Zwicky