Misspeaking, mistaken and misleading

In case you missed the sequence in which, according to Downing Street sources, David Cameron 'misspoke' when he said that Iran has nuclear weapons, here it is:

Misspeaking

Until Hillary Clinton came up with the word 'misspeak - when trying to explain away her (false) claim to have landed in Bosnia under sniper-fire - I'd never heard the words 'misspeak', 'mispoke' or 'misstatement' before. And I remember being vaguely amused at the way both she and an Obama aide used the new word to create some quite neat contrasts, which were reported in The Independent as follows:

'"I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things - millions of words a day* - so if I misspoke it was just a misstatement," she said.

'But an Obama spokesman, Tommy Vietor, noted she made her claims in a scripted speech. "When you make a false claim that's in your prepared remarks, it's not misspeaking, it's misleading."'

By Mr Vietor's critera, David Cameron can at least invoke in his defence the fact that this was not a 'scripted speech'.

Mistaken

But an even bigger mistake than the PM's gaffe arguably came from the Downing Street 'source' who decided to borrow and use this newly invented word, even though it had been created for such a dubious purpose and did little or no good for Mrs Clinton's reputation.

After all, as it said in The Independent, she was 'well ahead in most polls' at the time but her misspoken words had 'eclipsed coverage of her scheduled appearances and threatened to undercut her foreign policy experience message'.

Misleading

All of which is to warn Mr Cameron and his aides that, when it comes to explaining away a mistake or misdemeanour, misguided memos can cause miscellaneous mishaps, mistakes, misconceptions and misfortune, not to mention quite serious misgivings about your 'foreign policy experience message'.

* "Millions of words a day"?

Mrs Clinton's claim to have been saying "millions of words a day" was also an example of 'misspeaking'.

Assuming she was working an 18 hour day at the time and spoke continuously during her waking hours at 150 words per minute (i.e. half-way between the speed of conversation and speech-making), 2 million words (i.e. 'millions', plural) would require a speaking rate of 1,852 words per minute.

Or, to put it another way, delivering 2 million words at a more normal speed of 150 words per minute would take 222 hours - i.e. 12 eighteen-hour days of non-stop speaking without pausing for a moment.

600 Blogposts: thanks, reflections and requests

I’ve just noticed that the previous post was the 600th since I started the blog in September 2008.

Without a steadily increasing number of visitors, I doubt if I’d have carried on for this long – so many thanks to all of you who've given me an incentive to carry on (at least for a bit longer).

Reaching this landmark prompted me to look more closely than usual at the results from my hidden visitor counter.

Return visits

Particularly encouraging was the discovery that 17% of the visitors to the blog are 'returning visitors' - among whom I should record special thanks to the record-holder, who's now made 478 return visits to the site.

I should also put on record my thanks to leading bloggers like Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes, and John Rentoul - links from whom always result in a spectacular increase in the number of hits.

Google search terms
I've also been reasonably encouraged by what people have typed into Google to find their way here. As you'll see from this list of the most recent ones, they lead people to some of the recurring themes of the blog:

• Obama 2008 victory speech rhetorics
• Have you ever been denied a U.S. visa or entry into the U.S.
• neil kinnock height
• ceremony Acceptance Speeches
• cartoons about body language
• brown book
• barack obama inauguration speech techniques
• imagery in speeches
• debunking body language experts
• rhetoric + obama's victory speech
• communication statistics percent body language vs speech
• does the taller candidate win in UK elections?
• communication cartoon blog
• award ceremony speeches in public speaking
• queen's speach at un july 2010
• margaret thatcher public image
• inspiring speeches
• ronald reagan and teleprompter
• peter sellers speech about nothing
• Nelson Mandela Release Speech
• body language cartoon
• personification in barack obama inauguration speech
• statesman speeches
• margaret thatcher charisma
• obama;s victory speech analysis
• lists of three
• communication is 50% tone,40% body language and 10%
• rhetoric techniqus used in obama this is our time speech
• non verbal communication videos
• "little miss muffet" "dudley moore"
• margaret thatcher voice training
• labour leadership candidates in order of height

What's missing?

One thing I notice that doesn't appear in these recent Google searches are words like 'PowerPoint' and 'visual aids', both of which are discussed at length in my recent books and in quite a few blog posts. Also absent are words relating to research into everyday conversation.

So perhaps these are areas on which I should do some more blogging in the weeks and months ahead.

But most important from my point of view would be to hear of any suggestions that you might have about how to improve the blog, and especially about which kinds of post you like the best.

I'd also welcome any ideas about how to attract (and retain) more new visitors to the blog.

Gordon Brown's book of speeches

On 1st April, I recorded my surprise that a publisher had (a) thought it worth publishing a 300 page book of Gordon Brown's speeches The Change we Choose: Speeches 2007-2009 and (b) decided to publish it on April Fools Day (HERE).

So I suppose I shouldn't really have been quite as surprised as I was by the news of of how many copies of the said book have been sold since then, as revealed in this week's Private Eye - which reports that it 'has sold a grand total of 31 - yes thirty two - copies' (Private Eye,1268, p. 25).

Bad news, perhaps, for publishers still competing to sign up any remaining memoirs by former Labour cabinet ministers - but very good news for less well-known authors like me, who can take heart from the knowledge that, compared with Mr Brown's latest tome, our own books have all been outstanding best-sellers!