"Wright, Melissa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "The correlation was incredibly tight" was another good line. It makes me wonder. Do researchers who work in this area think in more sexualized terms, or do we as readers know it's about sex and read into it, or...
Or, when a person is thinking about Topic X, all the word associations for Topic X sort of "light up" in the brain (neurology folks please excuse my sloppy descriptions), and it becomes very easy to make these kinds of unwitting double entendres. Bryan Garner, in his exceptional style guide to American English, calls these "miscues." Once you become aware of the phenomenon you see it everywhere. They're a really tricky thing to edit out of your work--or out of other people's. A classic example that I saw was a public-health poster on the subway encouraging people to discuss their sexual histories that read: "Communication breaks barriers." But of course, in the context of preventing STDs, breaking barriers (e.g., condoms) is a *bad* thing. Similarly, I once read an (as-yet-uncopyedited) version of a business mag story about exceptional performance, in which one exceptional worker's success was credited in part to his ability to "keep an open mind." The worker in question was a brain surgeon. As a writer and psychologist, I've been interested in these miscues for a long time--if anyone's got examples, I'd be delighted to hear about them! Robin Notices at the bottom of this e-mail do not reflect the opinions of the sender. I do not "yahoo" that I am aware of. --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
