A part of the recording in a recent news caught my attention. I don’t much care about the political implications behind the news except perhaps as a generic background to a language phenomenon. I am more interested in the exchange as a language phenomenon and what it says about our human mind.
Here is the transcripts of the part of the recording which I am interested in:
Taiwan Coast Guard:
“Philippine Coast Guard, This is Taiwan Coast Guard and This is Taiwan Exclusive Economic Zone. We are Now (Not) leaving. We are Now (Not) leaving. Over”
Philippine Coast Guard:
“Thank you, Thank you, Thank you very much”
But after some time, the Philippine Coast Guard realized that the Taiwan Coast Guard was not leaving, and the following exchange happened:
Philippine Coast Guard:
“What is your intention? You said you are now leaving. Why are you still here?
Taiwan Coast Guard:
“We are Not leaving. We are Not leaving. Over”
Okay. So the Taiwan Coast Guard has bad English pronunciation. What’s the big deal?
Was it just the pronunciation though? If we look at the sentence structure, we’ll realize, there’s no need for “now” in that sentence. If the Taiwanese intention was to leave, a simple “We are leaving” would have sufficed. Even if they wanted to add in the now, a more natural way of expression would have been “We are leaving now”. (Although, grammatically speaking, “we are now leaving” is not wrong).
Okay, maybe the Phillipine Coast Guard’s English was not so good as well.
Was it just a problem of misheard? Let’s look at the context. The Taiwan Coast Guard had just iterated that they were in their Exclusive Economic Zone. How likely was it that they immediately declared they wanted to leave? The logic didn’t follow.
The point is, this has nothing to do with language proficiency, though the bad pronunciation probably didn’t help. This is a phenomenon I’ve observed countless times on other people: they hear what they want to hear, regardless of logic. The only condition they need is plausible doubt (the bad pronunciation in our case).
It is one of those things which you find ludicrous and ridiculous when you observe it on someone else, but when it happens to you, you either cannot understand it, or refuse to acknowledge it.
We all do it. Because it is not a weakness or defect of the language faculty, it is a feature. The human language is not only in the words and sentences, but also in the tone of voice, the gestures, the situations, and everything else which can be best summarized as the “context”. When we hear a sentence which may produce ambiguous meaning, our brains automatically “fill in the blank” with contextual knowledge. This process is automatic, and it’s sometimes so powerful that it overwrites the actual words spoken.
A very important part of that contextual knowledge is a person desires or beliefs. That’s why in almost all speaking technique training you’ll encounter the technique of “framing”. Unscrupulous people often use this technique to get others to hear what they did not say. Self improvement gurus use this technique to make their followers feel good. The bottom line? Always examine your own beliefs and desires, and know that they will always be part of what you hear. And then try to listen beyond that.