Legal gobbledygook & a lesson in US history

I don't often find circulated humorous emails funny enough to be worth inflicting on others, but this one is an exception that should appeal to anyone interested in language and communication.

Apparently people who work for the US government never had to take US history!

Part of rebuilding New Orleans caused residents often to be challenged with the task of tracing home titles back potentially hundreds of years. With a community rich with history stretching back over two centuries, houses have been passed along through generations of family, sometimes making it quite difficult to establish ownership. Here's a great letter an attorney wrote to the FHA on behalf of a client: you have to love this lawyer........

A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to a parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the lawyer three months to track down. After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following:

Actual reply from FHA:
'Upon review of your letter adjoining your client's loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral property back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin.'

Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows:
'Your letter regarding title in Case No.189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 206 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application.

'For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Queen Isabella. The good Queen Isabella, being a pious woman and almost as careful about titles as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to finance Columbus's expedition.

'Now the Pope, as I'm sure you may know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; and God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that God also made that part of the world called Louisiana. God, therefore, would be the owner of origin and His origins date back to before the beginning of time, the world as we know it, and the FHA. I hope you find God's original claim to be satisfactory. Now, may we have our damn loan?'

The loan was immediately approved!

P.S. A few hours after posting this, I received this message from Lou Hampton , to whom thanks, via Twitter(@louhampton):

It is funny, but it's a joke circa 1955 (for more on which, see HERE).

Disappointing though it was to discover that it's such an ancient joke, the moral of the story is that my previous policy of not inflicting emailed jokes on wider audiences was (a) correct and (b) should and will be instantly reinstated.

Meanwhile, here are some original posts on gobbledygook:

• Jargon and gobbledygook comedy sketch
• Jargon and gobbledygook refresher course
• Are you ahead of reading this post?
• Guardian ahead of record
• Edmund Stoiber: a charismatic Bavarian?

If you can't remember Vince Cable's best lines, nor can he!

I'm grateful to Martin Shovel for drawing my attention to an interesting article about Vince Cable by Decca Aitkenhead in today's Guardian (via @MartinShovel on Twitter).

As it's only rarely (e.g. in this example from Ronald Millar) that we get to hear politicians and/or their speechwriters commenting on memorable lines from speeches, I was especially intrigued by the following part of the interview:

... I mention Cable's famous joke about Brown morphing from Stalin to Mr Bean, and ask if he knew it would be such a hit.

"No, and in fact I get a bit frustrated, because I'm actually quite good at one-liners, and I've had hundreds of them over the years, and they sink without trace, and I get very frustrated. Every party conference I really work on the speeches, and I always have two or three things I'm quite proud of, and no one ever remembers them. I can't even remember them myself. I think they're brilliant," he chuckles, "and no one else notices. So every week at PMQs I had a very good line, I thought. And yet that's the only one that anyone remembers."

In case you never saw it, here it is:

What made it so memorable?

As readers of my books (and various posts on this blog - see below) will know, contrasts are among the most important and powerful rhetorical techniques in the armoury of public speakers and, not surprisingly, feature in some of the most famous quotations of all time.

But this particular contrast between a notoriously authoritarian leader and a bumbling idiot had at least two added advantages - both of which, I've suggested in an earlier blogpost may be critical in making a line or a speech 'memorable': timing and context.

On timing, it came when Gordon Brown had come increasingly under attack for his alleged indecisiveness - and therefore touched an aptly topical nerve with the audience.

On context, the fact Mr Cable was a new (and temporarily 'acting') party leader who was addressing the contrast directly to Mr Brown across the floor of the House of Commons gave it a chirpy cheekiness - as if a schoolboy were poking fun at the headmaster in front of the whole school.

But...

One of the problems in coming to any definitive conclusions about what makes some lines more memorable than others is that you always have to approach them with the wisdom of hindsight.

Take, for example, the most famous line from John F Kennedy's inaugural speech - "ask not what the country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." A powerful contrast it may have been, but it was hardly noticed by the media at the time (HERE).

SOME PREVIOUS POSTS ON RHETORICAL TECHNIQUES

• Combining rhetoric and imagery to get your point across in a speech
• Vince Cable shows how 'Yah-boo politics' can win victories for the LibDems
• How to improve impact by sequence, repetition and a rhetorical technique
• How rhetorical techniques work: an example from last night's Question Time
• Rhetoric wins applause for questioners on BBC Question Time
• TV Debate Claptrap
• An example or rhetorical virtuosity from rhetoric denier Tony Benn
• Rhetorical techniques and imagery in Hannan's attack on Brown
• Martin Luther King Day - and a reminder of how to use rhetoric to convey passion
• Cameron's conference sound bite: 'compassionate Conservatism'
• David Cameron's attack on the Budget used some weill-crafted rhetoric
• Gordon Brown: the way he told them
• Unexpected poetry in Gordon Brown's speech to US Congress
• When the young Paddy Ashdown surprised himself by the power of his own rhetoric
• Joe Biden's moving tribute to Edward Kennedy
• Moon rhetoric from Neil Armstrong, JFK & Werner von Braun
• Rhetoric and applause in Obama's inaugural speech
• You don't have to be Barack Obama to use rhetoric and imagery to discuss the financial crisis
• Tom Peters: high on rhetoric but low on content?
• Rhetoric and imagery in Obama's victory speech
• Not Clinton, not MccCain but Obama
• Why lists of three: mystery, magic or reason?
• Puzzle-solution formats
• Rhetorical questions and audience involvement

Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government

In anticipation of strange things happening during the first party conference season since the coalition government came to power, Liberal Democrat Voice has just posted some funny bits from Tory Party conferences of yesteryear.

I was rather surprised that they didn't balance them with a few clips from past Liberal Democrat Conferences and/or Liberal Assemblies of yesteryear, which has prompted me to start looking through my archives for gems.

What better place to start than David Steel's final words to the Liberal Party Assembly in 1981 (even though it's taken 29 years for them to come true)?

Another example where 100% of the communication is 'non-verbal'

Regular readers will know that I'm not over-impressed by 'experts' who exaggerate the importance of body language and non-verbal behavior, and especially those who continue to spread the Mehrabian myth that 93% of communication is 'non-verbal' (for more on which, see links below).

But there are exceptions where 100% of the communication is indeed non-verbal, as in the case of a World Cup referee sending a player off for not having hit an opponent in the face that I posted a few weeks ago HERE.

A more elegant example where 100% of the communication is non-verbal is to be found in the way conductors interact with the orchestra during a concert.

No doubt the Mehrabianistas would want to put a percentage on how much of the communication is coming from Simon Rattle's facial expression as compared with movements of his hands (left, right and/or together), body, mouth, eyebrows, face, etc.

But how you'd go about arriving at such measurements is quite beyond me, and I'd be most interested to hear from anyone who could enlighten me on the matter. Meanwhile, I'll just have to make do with watching (and listening to) the music....

P.S. Since posting this, John Hindmarsh, to whom thanks, has drawn my attention to a fascinating TED talk by Itay Talgram comparing the styles of great conductors

Other posts on body language & non-verbal communication:

• How to use video to study body language, verbal & non-verbal communication
• Body language and non-verbal behaviour
• Presidential heights
• Body language, non-verbal communication and the myth about folded arms and defensiveness
• Another body language & non-verbal communication cartoon
• Margaret Thatcher, body language and non-verbal comunication
• Non-verbal communication and height
• Non-verbal communication
• More on body language and non-verbal behavior
• Impersonators as masterful analysts of non-verbal communication
• Mehrabian's moans about the myth
• Linguistic difference and non-verbal behavior: the mysterious case of gestures
• Eye contact, public speaking and the case of President Zuma's dark glasses

P.S. Since posting this, Jon Hindmarsh, to whom many thanks, has drawn my attention via Twitter (@jonhindmarsh) to a fascinating TED talk by Itay Talgram comparing the styles of great conductors:

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!