Wobbly Williams also knows about 3 part lists, poetics and alliteration!!!

Thank you to NSDesign who took part in the Men's 10k last weekend, see the photos here View this email in your browser

The Wobbly Day Out & The Wobbly Banquet with the cast of Emmerdale... An amazing time was had by all, massive thanks to everyone involved! Check it outhere (there are also more photos here) Thursday 4th September Our annual golf day with a difference! Once again taking place at the beautiful surroundings of The Carrick, we invite you to enter a team into our competition to not only win the round, but of course to win the now coveted Strider Cup. For more details or to book your 4-ball please contact Maisie     Saturday 6th September Glasgow Green Team building with a difference... Your chance to see what fellow participants are really willing to do in the name of helping a good cause! We are looking for teams to take part in this wobbly, wonky and spectacular inflatable assault course. Check out the details here, and email Maisie or call 0141 585 6470 to book your team

Houstoun House Thursday 20th November Not to be missed!!! Find out all you need to know here

You can still buy our Kilimanjaro EP online! To buy on Amazon click here And to watch the video have a lookhere

Wobbly Walk VII: this year we are taking on a section of the Fife Coastal Path from 11th-14th September. To find out more have a look at theevent page or contact Maisie

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Why does the Tory media spend so much time attacking the PM?

In the wake of the hacking trial yesterday, I still don't understand why the Conservative-supporting press and media are so anti-Cameron.

Can anyone enlighten me on this???

3 part lists revisited again!

Today Mendip District Council only collect our recycling boxes, but NOT our green wheelie bins - see the late great Gail Jefferson, above, on 3 part lists (and at http://maxatkinson.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/why-so-many-lists-of-three-mystery.html).

Who'd have thought any local authority smart enough to know about Gail and the power of three part lists?!

Not to mention a pub at Lulworth Cove in Dorset which has a welcoming three part list on its wall that reads:

SLEEPING 
EATING 
DRINKING!!!

Trailer for my new book coming out in 2014 and featuring extracts from this blog

TURN A DEAF EAR

CONVERSE, COMMENT, COMMUNICATE

MAX ATKINSON

By the same author

Discovering Suicide: Studies in the Social Organization of Sudden Death (1978) London, The Macmillan Press

Order in Court: The Organisation of Verbal Interaction in Judicial Settings (with Paul Drew) (1979) London, The Macmillan Press.

Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (edited with John Heritage) (1984) New York, Cambridge University Press

Our Masters’ Voices: The Language & Body Language of Politics, London and New York, Methuen, 1984, (reprinted by Methuen, 1986, reprinted by Routledge, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1994, reprinted and transferred to digital printing by Taylor and Francis 2005)

Lend Me your Ears: All you need to know about making speeches and presentations (2004) London, Vermilion; Random House, New York, Oxford University Press 2005), translated into Russian and Spanish (2014)

Comments on the title and/or anything else about the project (e.g how long should it be) will be especially welcome.

"20 is plenty" in the Somerset village where I live

Readers of this blog and/or any of my books such as "Lend Me Your Ears", "Our Masters' Voices", "Speech-making and Presentation MADE EASY" and/or anyone attending one of my courses will know that poetic elements often play a really crucial part in effective communication by the greatest speakers of all time.

But, thanks to Mendip District Council and/or Somerset County Council, you can forget what so-called experts like me drone on about in their courses. Why else would they entertain us with needlessly expensive  road signs like the one you see on entering Old Ditch:

"TWENTY IS PLENTY"

Time, methinks, I retired, don't you think....

And I did actually retire on 29th April 2014, but am still running courses and writing books!

What's news about meeting and talking to an Afro-Carribean cyclist in deepest Somerset?

Today, during an hour's walk through the beautiful countryside near my home, I was surprised to meet an Afro-Carribean dressed in full kit for a long stint at cycling.

It was a very expensive bike with the latest in gear-changing equipment. 

1. Should I have been surprised?
2. Should I be ashamed? 
3. Should I have noticed?
4. Does the noticing mean I'm a prejudiced bastard because he spoke with an upper-class English accent.

1. But I do confess to being surprised.
2. I do feel ashamed by my reaction.
3. I should not have noticed.
4. I was wrong to be surprised by his upper-class English accent...

I hope that no one will notice and/or come up with better answers than mine in a generation's time (I am 70 years old) - especially when I'm related by marriage to someone as charming as Ade, who moved his family to Australia hoping to escape a life marred by color-prejudice in the UK.

Comments, as ever, welcome!

Blogging begins again

After a few weeks off with depression, a second opinion is demonstrating that it can be 'cured'.

Now finances are looking as healthy as they ever were, I'd like to thank loyal readers for continuing to visit.

Only trouble is that my Mac computer is misbehaving - on which, more anon...

And comments, as ever, are welcome.

Cartooning revisited?

Time to start blogging again - with thanks to loyal readers who have continued visiting since I became ill with depression. A recent second opinion says it won't be long until I'm a lot better...

NHS still employes social workers (and at least one doctor) without a clue

Having had quite a lot more conversations with the social worker discussed in the previous post, I can report that he is worse than ever. Worse still, he pretends to be medically qualified when he clearly isn't.  
And he's now got one of his GPs on board and she's behaving just as badly.

So he's not the only incompetent twit draining the NHS budget. And, if they carry on like this, I may have to ape their unprofessional behaviour by naming them...

Are all social workers employed by the NHS as big a waste of our money as this one?

You'd have thought that all social workers would understand the basics of interaction and/or how to communicate with people they haven't met before.

But the one I've just been interrogated by one who broke every rule of turn-taking that's so far been described by conversation analysts and other researchers -- e.g. absurdly long pauses for no apparent reason, giving no hint whatsoever about what kind of response he might be expecting and randomised facial expressions and non-verbal behaviour, etc., etc.

And 'interrogation' is, alas, the operative word. As co-author with Paul Drew of a book on courtroom language  (Order in court: the organisation of verbal interaction in judicial settings, Macmillan Press, 1979) we learnt about some of the differences between examination in chief and the more aggressive cross-examination.

This particular social worker used cross-exmination continuously and, when asked why he was doing it, confessed that he didn't know there's a difference, let alone what any such difference might be.

I could write a book about him but have neither the time nor or inclination to embark on such a depressing project.

Meanwhile, let's hope he's the only incompetent twit we're paying for...

Regional accents

A fascinating piece on the regional accents of the British Isles. Well worth close study...

Does anyone else have and/or know to whom these books might belong?

Thorstein Veblen, The theory of the leisure class, The Macmillan Company, 1899.

Dale Carnegie, How to win friends and influence people, Cedar Book, 1953.

David Kogan & Maurice Kogan, The Battle for the Labour Party,  Fontana Paperbacks, 1982.

Bertrand Russell,  Has Man a Future?  Allen & Unwin, 1961 (a Penguin Special 2'6).

HINT: From schoolboy to sociologist to ...?

Blogging continued...

First, many thanks to loyal readers who've kept on visiting during my unannounced 'Spring Break' - which is now over.

Second, I'll still be blogging on some of the themes touched on in my previous 1,000+ blog pages.

Third, I'll be touching on some new themes that may sometimes  seem to be verging on the obscure.

And, if you're wondering why there are only three points above - says he modestly - read one of my books and/or watch this space...

Flood defence staff and floating voters

In case you missed last night's News Quiz on BBC Radio 4, the opening newspaper report is well worth listening to for another triggered metaphor worth adding to those mentioned in my last post about people being in the same boat and out of their depth in their comments on the flooded Somerset Levels:

"From the Guardian G2: 'About 550 flood defence staff are threatened with redundancy. Chris Smith hopes that, with an election around the corner, the views of floating voters might well force a change of heart.'"

Metaphors from the flooded Somerset Levels playing field

The Sky News website has been reporting some linguistically interesting comments on the floods on the Somerset Levels (above).

According to Gavin Sadler, a member of campaign group Flooding on the Levels Action Group (FLAG): "We were in the same boat last year and were told it was a one in a 100-year flood - now it's happened again."

Meanwhile,  shadow environment secretary Maria Eagle told Sky's Murnaghan programme "The Environment Secretary appears to me to be out of his depth. He's just not taking it seriously".

'Triggered metaphors' are close relations of 'triggered puns', on which I've blogged previously from time to time and on which you can see more HERE and HERE.

Needless to say, contributions of similar examples are always welcome ...

Capturing details in a speech: a musical reminder of failure

Yesterday, I had my first piano lesson for 55+ years, which reminded me of something I gave up on when starting the research into political speeches that eventually resulted in Our Masters' Voices in 1984 - links to the story of which can be found HERE.

It was easy enough to collect tapes of political speeches, but many of the most significant findings from conversation analysis had come from detailed transciptions of recordings of actual conversations (for more on the methodology of which, see Structures of Social Action (1984).

So the first challenge was how to transcribe the lines spoken just before bursts of applause in the speeches. Variations in intonation clearly mattered, not least because the way speakers talked in speeches featured more (and longer) pauses and much more marked tonal shifts upwards and downwards than is typically found in everyday conversation.

I started by trying to capture such details by trying to transcribe syllables, words, sentences and phrases on the different lines and spaces in the staves of blank musical manuscript paper. But two obstacles stood in my way.

One was that it was far more time-consuming than doing the transcripts in Our Masters' Voices - which took well over an hour to transcribe each 10 seconds of speech.

The second one, as I realised again yesterday, was that I was never much good at sight-reading music anyway, so my attempts to capture details of the beat, timing and positioning of words on the lines and spaces of a stave were doomed to failure.

I'm hoping that it may not be too late to improve my sight-reading of music - but have no illusions about my chances of ever being able to write music, let alone to transcribe speeches, on manuscript paper...

Does English really work as a common language of communication (?) revisited...

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog asking 'How well does English really work as a common language of communication?'.

Today, I received an email from a senior executive of a leading international research company in the UK with advice to staff on the same issue.

It doesn't say anything about where it came from, but one can't help wondering whether John Rentoul's Banned List had anything to do with it (see also @johnrentoul on Twitter):

If you are working on an international project on in a cross-cultural team here are a few things to consider:

WHAT THE BRITISH SAY	WHAT THE BRITISH MEAN	WHAT FOREIGNERS UNDERSTAND
I hear what you say	I disagree and do not want to discuss it further	He accepts my point of view
With the greatest respect	You are an idiot	He is listening to me
That's not bad	That's good	That's poor
That is a very brave proposal	You are insane	He thinks I have courage
Quite good	A bit disappointing	Quite good
I would suggest	Do it or be prepared to justify yourself	Think about the idea, but do what you like
Oh, incidentally/ by the way	The primary purpose of our discussion is	That is not very important
I was a bit disappointed that	I am annoyed that	It doesn't really matter
Very interesting	That is clearly nonsense	They are impressed
I'll bear it in mind	I've forgotten it already	They will probably do it
I'm sure it's my fault	It's your fault	Why do they think it was their fault?
You must come for dinner	It's not an invitation, I'm just being polite	I will get an invitation soon
I almost agree	I don't agree at all	He's not far from agreement
I only have a few minor comments	Please rewrite completely	He has found a few typos
Could we consider some other options	I don't like your idea	They have not yet decided

A 'backie' of Miliband's speech about bankers?

Ed Miliband's speech today had been trailed by the media and social media all week, so what he had to say about the banks hardly qualified as news. But where and to whom he was speaking remains a bit of a mystery.

Some, like ITV and the Daily Telegraph, were helpful enough to tell us that he was speaking at the University of London. But at which of its many colleges or at which of its even more numerous departments did this happen? It might, of course, have been at a political club somewhere in some college of London University, but no one bothered to tell us that either.

Blue tie to the front
Nor did anyone note or comment on why the Labour leader was wearing a blue tie and we were left wondering whether he or his aides thought that dressing up like a Tory would be a subtle ploy while confronting the banks.

Audience to the back
And no one will be surprised that I was also left wondering (yet again) why our leading politicians are so obsessed with speaking with their backs to part of the audience. I'm still waiting to be told which of their advisors think it's such a good idea - not to mention why they recommend it.

A defence sometimes made is that it's a neat way of showing what a mixed bunch of supporters they have (if supporters they were). Yet women seem rather poorly represented in this particular audience (at about 3:25), as too are youth and the elderly (0).

But, however uninspired they may look, no one yawns or goes to sleep. At least one - in a grey jacket on the lower left of the picture - had brought along his tablet to distract him (and viewers like me).

At about 26 seconds in, he starts to take a photograph of Mr Miliband's back, after which he spends quite a while admiring his efforts.

A backie?
So one question arising from the Mr Miliband's speech is whether 'backies' have started to replace  'selfies' or are merely yet another new word for pictures made possible by innovations in portable technology...