Comments on: Santorum’s Slipping Tongue: What Do Speech Errors Really Reveal About Inner Thoughts?

By: Bill Deef

Bill Deef — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 10:32:20 +0000

Freud used a metaphor to discredit attempts to weasel out of psychological explanations of behavior by using mechanical ones. Saying that mistakes occur because of external conditions like the difficulty of processinjg language (back in the old days it was because of fatigue, distraction, a second language etc.) is like saying a burglary took place because it was dark. There are quite a few things that could happen when a place is unlit, but the question is why was it a burglary that occurred and not something else?

Just present other errors that these mispeaking politicians make that are not motivated unconsciously, show that those errors are just as frequent and voilá, you’ve disproved Freud scientifically. In the meantime, I’ll stick with Freudian introspection and honesty, thanks.

By: Brian Leach

Brian Leach — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 09:03:51 +0000

Noel Kurtz says that no other word starts with nig, how about niggardly, which means stingy? I don’t think that was the word Senator Santorum intended to use in this context, but it does refute the assertion that no other word starts with ‘nig’.

I used to participate in Toastmasters, where we weekly practiced impromptu speaking. I can tell you that more than once, a third word came out while I was deciding which of two words to use as I was speaking. It is very easy to do, and sometimes has quite comical consequences.

If Senator Santorum were a racist, I am certain people would be coming out of the woodwork at this point with examples. We haven’t heard from them, let this one go.

By: Steve Morrison

Steve Morrison — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:05:29 +0000

no other word starts with “nig”

Better not let David Howard hear you say that.

By: Kevin NYC

Kevin NYC — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 16:42:26 +0000

nih? he was talking about Obama BEFORE he was elected, not about negotiating with the Russians.

and “government nig***” sounds like some black guy who collects welfare, unemployment, food stamps and free abortions for his baby mommas..

Sanctorum is pandering to an audience of old white males and a few old ladies. They think the blacks are stealing their social security. seriously.

By: Bud Wood

Bud Wood — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 03:46:24 +0000

Sticks and stones may break my bones and words can get me fired.

By: jeff dillon

jeff dillon — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 03:37:30 +0000

wow! you actually defended Santorum at every turn, despite some of the most insightful comments. you leave yourself plenty of wiggle room. what is my opinion to the many eloquent speakers herein? yes, we often say funny things, like “hard-on” instead of “hard hat on”, nevertheless, on personal analysis, we do find personal associations. i liked the chewy cookie comment relevant. i would have trouble with words I was not well familiar with in pronunciation, such as the character in StarWars, Chewbaka? that’s enough wild associations. what Santorum is doing is almost pure evil. He is driving a psychological stake in the heart of America to try and divide the republican vote, with a plan to defeat the incumbent. he is doing this with baiting, using language carefully, not slips, and subliminal, albeit, he admits it is deliberate, advertising. all of this is meant to separate the wheat from the chafe, and bring out the voters. at the very least, he is Romney’s man to get out the vote. it always looks better if there is more than one contender in a democratic process.

By: Ulrich Flemming

Ulrich Flemming — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 02:07:00 +0000

Here’s what I am interested in: There can be two reasons for the lack of evidence that attitudes influence speech errors: (a) The evidence is not there because it was never looked for; i.e. there were no experiments set up to find this out; and (b) the experiments were conducted, but failed to produce evidence. Reasoning based on (a) leaves me unimpressed, based in part on my own experience: I am German, and when I speak rapidly in English, a German word may slip in with the same meaning of the English word I should have used. Now, I admit that this is different from the “nig” example, but it does illustrate that past experience (read “attitude”) can account for speech errors–where does it end? Reasoning based on (b) is far more convincing.

By: Wayne

Wayne — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 22:19:57 +0000

Upon listening to it, it sounds pretty incriminating. With an attempt to cover it making it worse.

By: Acilius

Acilius — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:23:32 +0000

The reaction to Mr Romney’s 2007 slip, in which he referred to then-Senator Barack Obama as Senator “Osama,” intrigued me at the time because of its contrast with the reaction to Ted Kennedy’s response to a question at the National Press Club in January 2005. Asked about Mr Obama’s electoral success in Illinois, Mr Kennedy said he thought that the question would better be put to “Osama bin Laden- uh- Osama Obama- uh- Obama.” That remark didn’t elicit more than a few friendly chuckles, since no one could plausibly argue that Mr Kennedy was willfully attacking his close political ally Mr Obama. The fuss and bother when Mr Romney made a much less elaborate speech error two years later suggested to me that many of his hearers were primed and ready to hear him make a sneaky attempt to conflate Mr Obama with the much-loathed Osama bin Laden.

Likewise with the response to Rick Santorum’s words. Many observers are highly prepared for Mr Santorum to make racist remarks, evidently believing that the emotional life of someone of his political persuasion and affiliations must be shot through with hostility towards African Americans. As for me, I think Mr Santorum’s habit of making an exaggerated display of disfluency after a speech error, which is what he claims he was doing when he produced the syllable that sounded so much like “black” in “make ["black"? or "bleaugh"?] people’s lives better,” is so dangerous when the ground rules of communication are as the post above describes them that I find it surprising, almost bizarre, that a politician as experienced as Mr Santorum continues to engage in it. In that sense, it serves him right that he encounters controversies like these, even if the objectionable words were nowhere in his mind. As a professional politician, he should know better than to insert that sort of babble.

By: Jeff Carney

Jeff Carney — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:06:21 +0000

Before making the gaffe in question, Santorum had JUST been discussing Obama’s ill-fated remarks to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Namely, that after Obama won the election, he would “have more flexibility” to meet the terms of Vladimir Putin.

That is to say, Obama was talking about being about to *negotiate* with an entity the GOP does not want to negotiate with. (They’ve never fully gotten past Reagan’s “evil empire” attitude.”)

So it seems at least possible that Santorum was preparing to call the president a “government negotiator.”

Further, the schwa in “negotiate” is easily fronted to an “ih” sort of sound. I hear it all the time.