Blog News

1. Comments are still disabled though I am thinking of enabling them again.

2. There are now several extra pages - Poetry Index, Travel, Education, Childish Things - accessible at the top of the page. They index entires before October 2013.

3. I will, in the next few weeks, be adding new pages with other indexes.

Wednesday 24 September 2008

Do you still beat your wife?

The Powers That Be at my college are trying to insist that we all work at least one evening or community session. I can't begin to express how pleased we all are at the prospect. (Memo to self: teach class about sarcasm.)
But that's not what I wanted to talk about, I wanted to give another example of words shaping reality. Today my boss walked in to my classroom after a lesson and asked, "Which would you prefer, working an evening session or working out in the community?"

This is a deeply manipulative question. It's a "Do you still beat your wife?" question. There is absolutely no way to answer it without accepting the basic premise and incriminating yourself. I told him so but, apart from raising a smile, it had no actual effect. The question must, he insisted, be answered.

In it's way of course it's quite beautiful. A very elegant and economical use of language. It's a question phrased so that there are only two possible answers and both of them create the reality that I'm going to work at times or in places that I don't want to work. Cunning and devious. Worthy of a politician.

Can words create a reality? Damn right they can.

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