It is how you interpret what your modalities give you, that the world we live in is understood.
We have seen in previous entries (click) we have five (5) senses, V,A,K,O,G, being Visual (seeing), Auditory (hearing and speech), Kinesthetic (touch, feelings, both internal and external), Olfactory (smell), and Gustatory (taste). We receive information of our around us by these five modalities.
Then we have to go on a transderivational search, go back through our past experiences, our memories, to make sense of the information that we received via the modalities V,A,K,O,G.
We put our Cat on the Mat, we Delete, Distort and Generalise as described by George Miller in his 7 +/-2 model.
This morning I awoke early and listened to my favourite radio program, BBC Radio 5 Live. It is a news, sport and information channel with little or no music, and can be listened to on the internet.
The sports reporters started talking about the UK football team Manchester United and their team manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
It is known that Sir Alex has banned the BBC from any interviews he may give, as he believes that the BBC does not like his football team Manchester United, and misreported something a longtime ago. Of course this does not stop the BBC from report what he or his team says or does, and they still report on the matches.
Recently Manchester United played a football match and the BBC sports report said something to the effect, “and “X” and “Y” player romped up to take the goal”.
Sir Alex has complained to the BBC that this is a bad comment referring to an incident over the Xmas and New Year period, where a woman accused a player of raping her at a party.
A definition for the word “romp” is given as:-
To play rudely and boisterously: to leap and frisk about in play. Webster’s Dictionary
or
An easy victory. or Run easily or fairly fast. NetWord Dictionary.
or
To win easily. or An effortless victory. Dictionary.com
So how did Sir Alex get the link to the incident involving the footballer at the party?
The word “romp” is sometimes used to describe the act of making love, if it is or was fun and enjoyable.
I can see the connection Sir Alex made, and how in his or his advisor’s minds the word “romp” could bring back the memory of the incident. It took a lot of work to follow the linkage.
In NLP we use Slight of Mouth, ambiguity, words that have two meanings, but I think in this case Sir Alex took it too far.
How often do we read into something someone says, and take a different meaning from it than that what was intended?
How often do you choose the wrong words, say the wrong things?
How often do you not give enough information so that the listener has to put their own understanding on the meaning?
How often do we jump to the wrong conclusion?