The power of a rigged choice －仕組まれた二者択一の力－

Before you read this blog post, I have to ask you to do a little work.  It is necessary for you in order to understand the rest.  You have to choose either to blink (shut your eyes and open them again) twice, or to stand up and count out loud to ten before sitting down again.  Choose one and do it now please.

Okay.  So did you pick one and do it?  You may be cheating and have done neither.  Since this is a blog for non-native speakers of English, you may not have understood, and be scratching your head in confusion instead.  But my guess is that most people chose to blink twice.

The reason that you probably blinked twice is that it seems a lot easier and less effort than standing up and counting to ten.  I’m sure that you didn’t particularly want to do it, but the choice seemed very easy in comparison with the alternative.  That at least is my theory.  I have found that it is a great technique for getting people to do things that they don’t want to do.  If you simply try to force them to do something then they will naturally resist.  But if you can set up a situation in which they have to choose between what you want, and something worse, then they will likely do what you want without complaint.

I thought about this technique recently when I was trying to get my son to go to his cot at night.  He is two and a half now, and often resists being put in his cot.  I let him lie in my futon beside me for half an hour or so before I lift him out and put him in his cot to sleep alone.  Understandably enough, he prefers to stay in the futon, where he can kick me and roll over on top of me, and get up and run around whenever he wants.

So for a while I had a battle getting him to move from the futon to the cot after half an hour.  I would just tell him it was time to move and lift him into the cot.  He would scream and shout, demanding to stay where he was.  In the end he often cried himself to sleep, frustrated that he had been abandoned in the cot.

So I tried saying to him one night, “You have to leave the futon now, but you can choose where to sleep.  Would you like to sleep in the cot, or in the laundry room?”

Of course I wouldn’t really make him sleep in the laundry room, but he didn’t know that.  So he thought about it and said, “Cot.”  I lifted him into the cot and he went to sleep peacefully, happy that he had made a good choice.

Don’t think that the rigged choice is a technique that is only ever used on children.  In British politics now, it seems to be the only technique Prime Minister Theresa May knows.  She has negotiated a very unpopular deal with the EU, which Parliament does not want to vote for.  The most recent opinion polls show that 80 per cent of people think the government has done a bad job of negotiating, and that 55 per cent of Britons would now vote to stay in the EU.  Almost six million people have signed a petition asking the government to cancel Brexit.  An estimated 1 million people marched in London recently to demand another chance to vote to stay in the EU.  But the only choice the Prime Minister is offering is to agree to her bad deal or to face a huge economic crisis by leaving the EU without a deal.  Mrs. May wouldn’t really leave the whole country to sleep in the laundry room, would she?

Vocabulary:

to scratch one’s head in confusion – not to know what is going on to such an extent that you place your hand on your head and scratch like your head is itchy

to resist – to oppose; to refuse to accept and work against

a cot – a small, raised sleeping place for a baby or small child that is hard to climb out of

frustrated – feeling unable to change things or get what one wants

to be abandoned – to be left alone without help

an opinion poll – a survey of people’s attitudes

a petition – an official letter to the government, asking them to change something

Language mishaps happen －言語のミスは起こりますよ－

There were two funny stories about language mishaps I read about in Japan this week.  I’d like to share these, as well as relate a funny language mishap I had recently with one of my students.

Osaka Metro tried to make things easier for English speakers by translating their web pages from Japanese into English.  Unfortunately, they used an automatic translation programme, and it made a literal translation of everything, including station names.  So The Sakaisuji Line became The Sakai Muscle Line, and the third carriage became three eyes.

There was also a report this week of a language mishap in a Japanese convenience store.  Staff were shocked to see a foreigner walk into the store, take a look in the drinks section and then pull out a bottle of tea and start drinking it without paying.  When they confronted the customer, he got angry.  He pointed to the bottle, on which was written, “Free Tea”.  Free Tea is the name of the brand, the idea being that drinking the tea leaves you feeling refreshed and free from stress or care.  You can see why the customer got confused.

The mishap I experienced was when I was teaching a lesson about school.  I asked my female student what her favourite subject had been at school, what after-school clubs she had been a member of, and so on.  Things were going fine until I said, “Were you good at P.E.?”

She said, “Teacher, I don’t know that word.  What is P.E.?”

“It stands for Physical Education,” I said. “Do you understand now?”

“Ah yes,” she said.  “I understand.”

“So,” I continued.  “Were you good at Physical Education?  You seem to me like the kind of person who would be good at it.”

She made a little noise as if clearing her throat and then said nothing for a long time.  She seemed very embarrassed and I didn’t know why.

“Hold on a minute,” I said.  “Are you sure you know what Physical Education means?  Tell me how to say it in Japanese.”

“It’s karada no kyouiku,” she said.  In other words, “Education about the body.”

Physical Education of course means learning to play different sports, and learning to run and jump and use your body.  But she thought I had said to her, “Were you good at sex education classes?  You seem like the kind of woman who would be good at that.”  No wonder she went quiet.

And if you make such a mistake, my advice is not to worry about it.  Mishaps happen.

Vocabulary:

automatic - working by itself without direct human control

a literal translation – a version of something changed from one language into another language word for word, exactly as it was originally written

to stand for – of an abbreviation, for the letters to represent (eg. BBC stands for the British Broadcasting Corporation)

Britain’s lost fingers －イギリスの失われた指－

Unless you’ve had 12 pints of beer, you are probably able to touch the end of your nose, even with your eyes shut.  This is apparently because the brain creates a powerful image of the body, and can judge where different parts of it exist in space.  If you are unfortunate enough to have a piece of your body cut off, you may feel itchiness or pain from the phantom body part because the brain refuses to believe that its image of the body is wrong.

In much the same way, citizens of a country develop a powerful sense of their country’s “body”, or self-image.  Thus, people believe that “British people drink tea,” or “British people wait patiently in queues.”  But this may just be a phantom image in the minds of the country’s citizens.  These body parts may be shrivelling or have long since fallen off.  Britons may no longer love tea so much or wait patiently in queues.

“British people are pragmatic, not radical.”  Britain has long had an image as being very stable, politically conservative, and a little boring.  If French people are unhappy about something, they come out onto the streets and protest.  Italian prime ministers change so often that it is hard to remember their names.  Britain, by contrast, has been seen as pragmatic.

But is this still true?  We voted for Brexit.  And now the British Parliament cannot find a compromise.  Perhaps British politics has become as radical as French politics.  Perhaps soon British prime ministers will change so often that we can’t remember their names.

It is not so bad to be politically boring.  The last three years of political instability, in-fighting and chaos has been interesting.  I wonder if it is too late to stick back on the fingers we have cut off?

Vocabulary:

a pint – a unit for measuring liquid – a large glass of beer is drunk in a pint glass in Britain

itchiness – a tendency to feel an uncomfortable sensation on the skin

phantom – ghostly; not real

to shrivel – to wrinkle and become smaller, especially due to a lack of moisture

pragmatic – dealing with things sensibly and realistically, not on ideology

radical – extreme; advocating fundamental or complete change

in-fighting – conflict within a group

chaos – a lack of order; extreme uncertainty

Why Romantic love is for Italy, not Britain ーなぜロマンティックな愛はイタリアのために、イギリスではなくてー

Why do the Italians have a reputation for being passionate lovers?  How easy it is to imagine a man in Italy standing in the garden of his lover, calling up to her as she sits by her window above!

And why do the British have a reputation as calm, tea-drinking people who wait patiently in queues and try not to show their feelings?

Maybe Lord Byron, a British Romantic poet of the 19^th century, had the answer.  He thought that it was all to do with the weather.  I recently read a poem of his, in which he complained about a lady who expected him to wait for her in a garden in the cold British winter.  I thought it was very funny, so I have printed some extracts below.

From, “To a lady who presented to the author a lock of hair braided with his own, and appointed a night in December to meet him in the garden”.:

“[Why should you]

Doom the lover you have chosen,

On winter nights to sigh half-frozen?”

“Shakespeare set the precedent.

Oh, would some modern Muse inspire,

And seat her by a [warm] coal fire?”

“In Italy I’ve no objection,

Warm nights are proper for reflection.

But here our climate is so rigid,

That love itself is rather frigid.

Think on our chilly situation,

And curb this love of imitation.” 

*
So Byron blames Shakespeare for setting scenes of love in a garden, as he does in Romeo and Juliet.  He wishes that British women would stop trying to imitate these romantic scenes, which are not suitable to our climate.  And he wishes that another great writer would set a scene of love indoors, next to a warm fire.

Vocabulary:

to present something to someone – to give something to someone

to be braided – of threads, hair etc., to be woven together into a decorative pattern

to doom someone or something – to ensure that someone or something meets a terrible fate

a precedent – an example which will be followed or copied

“Oh, would some modern Muse inspire” – If only some modern Muse would inspire

a Muse – a Greek goddess responsible for inspiring artists

an objection – an expression or feeling of disapproval or opposition

reflection – serious thought or consideration

rigid – hard and unbending

frigid – very cold in temperature

chilly – uncomfortably or unpleasantly cold

to curb something - to restrain or hold something back