Wednesday, June 16, 2010

The Ubiquitous First Post




Welcome! Please ignore the villagers screaming, and wielding sharp pointy objects, thats just the apocalypse. Yes I have started a blog. Yes the world will most likely come to crashing halt because of this fact. So sit back, relax, roast some marshmallows on the blazing remains of your front lawn, and enjoy!

This is a blog dedicated to two simple things, with a lot of depth, and breadth.
  • Things that piss me off
  • World of Warcraft

So without further ado, lets get to a real post. This first one will defiantly fall under the, "Things that piss me off" category.



That Phrase is Almost Always Misused

I heard that uttered by a character on the television show Bones the other day in regards to Reverse Psychology. This made my eye twitch a little for the sheer fact that saying that anything in modern language is almost always misused is laughable.

You see what makes me so irritable with that phrase is a simple phenomena I like to call, "The Evolution of Language". The way this works is when such a large majority of the populous comes to believe that a phrase means something, than it becomes so regardless of what the original meaning was. The shared understanding of strung together sounds to form words is the fundamental base of language. For instance; when I say the word, "red" your mind automatically conjures up and image of the color. Thus we have language, a shared understanding of the association of sounds, with a meaning. To someone from an as of yet undiscovered civilization or another planet the word, "red" would be nothing more than a sound to them.

Now lets get back to what pissed me off. I asked several people what reverse psychology meant. The general consensus was to say the opposite of what your want in an effort to get someone to what you want them to. This is such a popular definition of the phrase that hundreds of websites list it as the true definition. Whereas in the psychological community it is actually know as Reactance Theory.

So which one is right? Is it what the majority of the population thinks, or is it what a small community thinks? If you chose the former than, congratulations you win. If you chose the ladder, than I'm thankful most people do not agree, otherwise we would all still be speaking the ancient version of German (which is what English evolved from).

Just to drive this point home. If I were to stand up and proudly proclaim I was gay, everyone would think, "oh how nice, he's coming out of the closet." Whereas the accepted definition would state that I am just proclaiming that I am happy.

So what are your thoughts on the matter. Chime in down in the comments section.

See you next time!

1 comment:

  1. I found this very informative and funny, can't wait to see whats next.

    ReplyDelete