Ayoub brother dont change the subject, neither me or baashi is against a tribunal commision or what ever you choose to call it per se, but the simple fact is this particular article is a piece of misinformation, as for the tribunal and what have you i would appreciate it if you gave a few examples on how the logisitical and legal issues will be surmounted.

^^^^^ temper temper... kind of annoying when such blatant qabyalad is thrown at you right.... relax yourself and meditate on how pointless it is...na'mean.

oh brother where art thou.......... the room cant be permenant or something? and yes i am a noob in all things technical by the way who is on paltalk right now?

I think guys are giving to much credit to the somali service in what it can actually put in its programs, and how did abdi khasaro manage "to infiltrate" a multi-billiob pound corporation like the BBC that i think is not faced with a derth of talent in choosing it's staff in the somali section.

Apart from the fact that there is really no particular diffrence between the two american parties, and most of the diffrence is over method rather than substance, I thought it would be obvious by now that the Jews influence american foreign policy through economic means and a well oiled propoganda and lobbying campaign, it has nothing to do with the ballot box indeed, man to man the muslim population in america is higher than those that would mark jew in any census report.

Yep, i hope that this is a step in the right direction. All i need to know is if there is anything similar in Australia, because our bro and sis' down under seem to be really unrepresented.

Somalis will choose leadership council - Tuesday, April 06, 2004 at 21:03 Lourdes Medrano Leslie, Star Tribune April 1, 2004SOMALI0401 The creation of an interim Somali Community Leadership Council that will tackle issues important to Somalis across Minnesota will be announced at 3 p.m. today at the State Capitol. Fifteen Somalis from the Twin Cities area, Rochester, Owatonna, Willmar and Mankato will serve on the interim council until permanent representatives are elected, chairman Dahir Jibreel said Wednesday. The council was selected after two months of consultations among various Somali groups, Jibreel said. The interim body must establish guidelines within 100 days by which the community will elect a permanent leadership council. The idea for a group that would serve as a bridge between Somalis and mainstream agencies surfaced about two months ago. Somali leaders also have alluded to conflicts that stem from clan rivalries rooted in their homeland in East Africa, which was wracked by civil war in the early 1990s. Somalis who claim membership in four major clans and several minority clans started coming to Minnesota early that decade. Jabreel said the interim council will be key to getting individuals involved in the democratic process as they vote to elect their leadership. "We will energize the whole Somali community to become politically active," Jabreel said. The council plans to seek help from local government officials to administer the election, he said. "We want this process to be transparent," he said. "We want this group to be recognized as being legitimate both in and outside the Somali community." Although city and county workers oversaw an election for a similar Somali group in Columbus, Ohio, in 2001, officials in Minnesota said Wednesday that it would be unusual for local governments to assist in such an election. "It's not something that we're legally authorized to do," said Joe Manksy, elections manager for Ramsey County. Susanne Griffin, director of elections and assistant city clerk in Minneapolis, said she would have to research the matter further to see if it might be possible to oversee the Somali election. Hawa K. Ali, an interim council member, said she thinks that the council can greatly help Somalis in the areas of housing, jobs and transportation, and that it can serve as a strong advocate within the greater community. "Until now, there has not been a unified voice for the common good," she said. Lourdes Medrano Leslie is at lleslie@startribune.com

^^^^well i guess that is the messed up perogative of every warlord left over from siyaads era.....eh lest you did not get it that includes Riyoode.

Qudhac its not under the jurisdiction of somaliland authority so i dont see where u going with this play acting court, I see this is under the auspices of the U.N mandated court in arusha? First of all the mandate of the court was trying of criminals of the RWANDAN genocide, secondly for it to extend it's mandate it would have to have been through the U.N general assembly, an action that i have not heard a word of. But assuming that this was the case, there must be a system for it to bring criminals to the court, in yugoslavia there is an internationally recognized goverment that it deals with same as in rwanda, who do you propose it deals with in unrecognized separtist entity such as somaliland? Or are you hoping for recognition through the back door, if you are international law would not allow it. Qudhac said: somaliland has had free election according to international election moniters experts from 14 countries but ofcourse you know better Oh brother...... :rolleyes: Qudhac said: and on the SNM point SNM did not commit crimes agains people of somaliland, yes they did kill certain people who commited crimes agains the people and where dumb enough to stay behind and rightly given taste of their own medicine therefore. SNM = MUJAHADIIN Like i said with such attitudes i wonder what sort of war crime definition would be used to prosecute people? Lest peoiple mistake me for an apologist because i am no such thing, i will make it as clear as i can THAT THERE WERE WAR CRIMES COMMITED IN WAQOOYI IS BEYOND DOUBT, THAT BOTH THE SNM AND THE SIYAD GOVERMENT ARE CULPABLE IS ALSO BEYOND DOUBT. As for me bursting, because of somebody wishing that on me,,,, well after 480 posts on the politics section i am quite immune to any sort of habaar. :cool:

The question was simple, Can somalis, and i mean all somalis claim a brighter future with such men at the helm? Riyaale was fully aware of at least the attempt at genocide even if [and i doubt it] he did not take part. Simpo and Ize no need for mental contortions. He is culpable nut he is president of somaliland so the brigade must run to the defence however wrong that would be.

There is a slight irregularity in the setting up of the "court", namely under what jurisdiction does it exist? Also will the court prosecutors be appointed by Riyaale and the other afar-jebleeyal that like him have every thing to lose? Somaliland has had "peace" for 10 years, a freely and fairly rigged election, and controls about only 65% of the landmass it insists on calling it's own. Maybe now if you play act a court and trials of war criminals, every thing will fall into place? On another note will the SNM fighters (that have been raised to the dizzying heights of mujahidin no less) who had taken part in retributive violence be expected to take the stand any time soon. the raison d'etre of a nation goes beyond the setting up of comprimised and comedic institutions, if it were,14 years of declarations of independence, of ignored passports and currency, of kow-towing to the ethiopians and the west would have been more than enough. It has not been, I only ask my self when rer-waqooyi will get it.

Hyena for president!

Sisters, geel-jireenimo is something we will try to wipe out from our posts. On the other hand perhaps it would behoove the ladies to understand that this is a section were worst things will be thrown at you in an effort to make you and your opinion irrelevant and subersive. Either live with it or i can only look foward to a repeat of this post in a few weeks.

So what is new. If it is a political case of brinkmanship or not all it means is the hastening to the grave of a fundamentally flawed process. But i think next time abdullahi yusuf should include a witch doctor in his entourage, with the tea maker, mass muderer and bufoon. Because these warlords must really be investing in good quality "muti" explaining why yusuf could not see what he was signing!. Bari please make it clear but if puntland is a regional administration as you have said previous times, then it would not find a document labelling it as such offensive?

Brother mobb, you should read my post again, mogadishu does not need a group of people that believe that there form of administration is and was the source of all wisdom and clarity. That is a myth we have to puncture as brothers but like i said if you cannot find it within yourself to understand the utter irrelevance and historical distortions inherent in your argument, then bro mogadishu does not need and i wish iskshuban and karkaar all the best. Rahima sis, what i said and what i meant is claer to mobb and jamac, somalis might hope the best of each other and for each other, but hope given with the air of charity and nostalgia for things that never were, i believe are more a burden for those who are on the recieving end of that faux-charity. As for how puntlanders came to dominate in kismayoo or mogadishu i believe is a historical fact clear cut and simple, either the pattern continues and with it the revulsion of somalis or a new mutually agreeable beggining can be made. The hotels and other exploitative establisments that mobb remebers with such fondness i believe have to be forgoten, crying over spilt milk i dont believe is something that can be accepted as a basis for reconcialtion by other somalis, least of all when how the milk came to be acquired is a historical injustice. My defence of mogadishu would be the same as for berbera, burco, bossosa or bilis qoqaani, people either come to the table with an open mindset, or can go on sighing about how there NSS father and cuun laaye uncle had it good in the mog. P.s sis concerning your quip concerning true colours coming out, well even the qoute from the quran you use as a signature will not keep people accusing you of that on this website. It aint politic to start with that question.

Hehehe, at least the puntlanders are right about one thing. Mogadishu does not need you. Neither will the ill gotten gains of some oppressors such as jamac bootans father et al be returned or restituted to them, for restitution implys rightfull ownership in the first place. Although we are thankfull :rolleyes: for the SHASNA's brigades concern for the shabelle and juba regions well being, but i beilieve survival has not entailed and will not entail the cheerleading attempts of mobb or jamac. Mogadishu does not need you or your ilk, that regularly flagelatte themselves over what happened in xamar, it was unfortunate that it occured in the way that it did, but the un-ashamed arrogance and ignorance put on display by mobb and this new fella Jamac, i believe left no option, to any society, more so in our clan riven one. Let us not forget what brought so many puntlanders to the rest of somalia, I mean if i was in their position i would also try to escape from places like karkaar and the rest more so scince being stuck on the colonial italians like a bad case of lice made it ever so easy. But to claim that any other somali benefited from this selfish movement of people is not only hilarious it is redundant post 1991. So lets go beyond this mentality of hurting xamar by going back to bossaso and qardo, all it means is the men who benefit from the balkanization of somalia can only rejoice at such utter ********* . But lest you forget my first assertion, You are right if worst come to worst, Mogadishu does not need you.

Preamble This is an essay about Neurolinguistic Programming and Psycholinguistics. In particular it is about the way certain types of English language patterns - presuppositions - and in particular a type within the set which are known as counterfeit presuppositions, can be deliberately used to subtly affect consciousness. Although the essay refers to the English language it is, since there is evidence to suggest that all languages are universally patterned, likely to be applicable to others. This essay refers to English usage - not about 'English', 'language', semantics or grammar per se - although specific forms are inevitably discussed since language patterns are the central theme. Introduction Presuppositions - the meaning of the word 'presuppose' is to 'assume beforehand; involve, imply' - represent some of the most powerful of language patterns. They are in common, everyday use by all of us and are built into the structure of the English language; indeed it is probably impossible to utter a sentence of any consequence without making some kind of assumption - and hence without the use of presupposition. Presupposition is the mechanism used implicitly to make assumption in day to day language whereas direct assertion is the means used to do so overtly (although all but the simplest assertions will themselves contain presuppositions). The difference between the two is that the latter is a type of communication that is accessible to direct, conscious processing whilst the former - the assumptions in which must normally be accepted for a given sentence or phrase to have meaning or sense - normally represents subconscious processing. The contents of any given presuppositional sentence will normally have to be assumed to be true 'a priori' in order for the sentence to be even understood as meaningful 'language'. Take for example the nine word opening sentence presented in this introduction: it contains (at least) the following presuppositions: a) presuppositions exist b) they are language patterns c) they are powerful d) there is a scale of power in language patterns e) there are other (powerful) language patterns f) language exists g) language is patterned h) patterns exist i) power exists As will be further discussed, presuppositions may be 'fair and uncontroversial' - based upon knowledge which is common to all parties privy to a communication, or 'unfair', 'counterfeit' or 'controversial' - made upon the basis of covert knowledge by a communicator with a hidden agenda. In addition to discussing the nature of fair and unfair forms, the refutation of the latter, and the illustration of several complex forms, this essay also presents examples of everyday presuppositions in the form of examples/exercises intended to alert the reader and aid in the recognition of some of the typical language patterns and their underlying assumptions. Examples of Fair and Unfair Presupposition Consider this sentence: A. 'The sun shines.' The sentence assumes the existence of an singular object commonly known as 'the sun', and further assumes that one of the attributes of this object is that it shines - and is doing so now by the tense of the verb. By common knowledge and agreement, these facts are 'true', hence the presuppositions made in the sentence are fair, accurate and factual. Now look carefully at this one: B. 'Why did you steal the money?' In simple terms, the sentence assumes the existence of a sum of money, that the money has been stolen and further that 'someone' - in particular 'you' - have stolen it, and that you have a reason ('why') for doing so. Four assumptions in six words (there are more if a complex analysis is carried out - e.g. that the money had a rightful owner, that 'money' exists, that there are notions of property and logic and so on). The assumptions, if true as a matter of widely agreed fact and evidence, are fair and reasonable. If non factual - in total, or perhaps in part - then the series of assumptions, posing as a question, represent a compound, unfair, inaccurate presupposition. Presupposition and Comprehension As indicated above, it is virtually impossible to speak without using presupposition, so - since the language patterns themselves are inevitably part of everyday life - what is this essay all about? The previous paragraphs point the way by demonstrating that there are on the one hand 'fair' or 'honest' or 'non-controversial' presuppositions based upon common knowledge and agreement of observable fact: on the other there are 'counterfeit' or 'controversial' presuppositions which can be, and are, used by the unscrupulous for purposes of propaganda, deceit and the general subtle manipulation of others. The reader might be tempted to say at this point: 'So what? I'll just take on board the honest presuppositions, and ignore the rest.' Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple, not at all. The nature of language is such that meaning/comprehension, as well as depending upon context and syntax, relies upon heavily upon implication, implication which often self refers in an almost circular fashion. Furthermore, a significant proportion of language processing takes place subconsciously - the decoding of syntax, the assignment of the actual meaning of words and the relationships between meanings: to actually understand a sentence we must subconsciously make large numbers of assumptions in order to even make sense of what is being said. To return to the simple example 'The sun shines', as well as actually assuming the existence of 'sun', 'shines' and the definite article 'the', any listener to this sentence must assume, and somehow bring into play, underlying concepts for the words and some means of fitting those concepts into a network of understanding to do with 'sun' and 'shines'. To test this, the reader should examine how the meaning of the simple example sentence changes/or turns into non-meaning - with any of the three words deleted. In the words of McClauchlin [ http://www.cadvision.com/leadedge/alpmbook.htm - see links later]: 'It is clear that anytime we are listening to others speaking, watching TV, or reading, we are for the most part entirely unaware of what we have accepted as presuppositions. Some of these presuppositions may have major consequences of our behaviour, thoughts and actions. This, of course, also means that any time we are speaking to others, we are constantly, and unconsciously, using presuppositions which affect how they perceive the world. In other words, we affect how/what they think, believe, think and act with our speech and for the most part we do this without knowing what we are presupposing to be true for them.' In listening to speech (and note that although this essay refers primarily to the spoken word it, applies equally to the written word - the latter being simpler in that it is both easier to compose and analyse at leisure - is assumed to be covered by default), the listener decodes meaning as a sentence proceeds, using ongoing clues in syntax and context/implied context to converge on a meaning. This all happens very rapidly. Because of the 'real time' nature of the spoken word - the typical listener will be between 200 and 500ms behind in integrating the meaning of 'normal' speech as it unfolds - and, given the often complex form of presupposition, the listener will often be forced to tacitly accept the implied meaning of a given sentence before the next one is upon him and then the next. Given an ongoing stream of presuppositions, he thus becomes progressively 'caught' in a mind set of subconsciously accepting the speaker's point of view - indeed there are those in the NLP fraternity who would have it that, given a set of three or four stacked presuppositions, it is impossible, owing to the way the human brain processes information, for the listener NOT to accept the assumptions/inferences made by the speaker. [see .]http://www.cadvision.com/Home_Pages/accounts/leadedge/ex1.htm]. A further factor mitigating against the reader's 'So what?' approach is, that, without practice, he/she is hardly likely to be able to even identify the simplest of the welter of presuppositions encountered in the course of a normal day, let alone determine which are honest. It is possible, as will be demonstrated, for someone with the proper skills and sufficient motivation to subtly and deliberately distort a speech stream by means of carefully chosen inferences and implications in the form of presupposition. Anyone without sufficient insight will inevitably fall prey - to some degree - to such cleverly constructed schemes of counterfeit presuppositions, the ultimate aim of which would be to PERSUADE and get the a potentially mendacious communicator's otherwise questionable point of view accepted uncritically. 'Fair' and 'Counterfeit' Presuppositions Defined The basis of a 'fair' or 'counterfeit' form of presupposition or its underlying assumption(s) or proposition(s) is defined by May who discusses the two types as being either 'uncontroversial' (true, factual or fair as described previously) or controversial (false, unfair or non-factual) thus: 'It seems to me that a true presupposition is based on an unconsidered assumption by the encoder. That assumption is that the decoder will draw the same suppositions from the non-asserted elements of a message as the encoder holds. Hence the notion of a presupposition being uncontroversial.' ...and on the other hand: 'I propose to use the term counterfeit supposition to describe the kind of supposition that is forced onto a decoder by virtue of a FORM OF WORDS, but which is not shared innocently by the encoder. It is worth studying because where it dominates (for example, in propaganda) the communication cycle becomes corroded by cynicism. Note that the phenomenon differs from a regular proposition [i.e. in a 'fair' or 'true' presupposition - DS] in which unshared information is openly asserted.' [see http://thormay.webprovider.com/tech2.html for full text and examples]. Proposition in the foregoing paragraphs means the proposition(s), or assumption(s), upon which the presupposition is based: the 'encoder' is the speaker, and the 'decoder' the listener: [capitals are by DS]. Unfair, (Counterfeit or Controversial) Presuppositions Following May's definition regarding 'innocence' on behalf of the speaker, the 'unfair' or premeditated form of presupposition can be defined as that used by a speaker to get the listener to presuppose (i.e. assume to be true, as a matter of fact) spurious assertions. This is achieved by burying the said counterfeit assertions in an enveloping and obscuring word form - the presuppositional language pattern - of which more later. The listener's test for the veracity or not of the assumptions or or supposed 'factual' elements embedded in presupposition patterns is: 'On the balance of probability & practical experience, are the assumptions the speaker is making statements of undeniable and obvious fact - or are they baseless or spurious assertions/projections and therefore false?' Note also that sweeping generalisations will fall into the 'false' category by being factually non-specific. A further feature to consider in all this is the motivation of the speaker. In the event that the assumptions of the speaker, which underly the presupposition, have been discovered by the listener to be false, the latter should realise that the pattern of language he has been presented with is quite probably premeditated and that the speaker is unlikely to have delivered it innocently - i.e. there is some underlying hidden agenda. The listener should draw his own conclusions from this and respond accordingly in the given situation. Presuppositions in Everyday Life The following list, which comprises a presupposition form followed by the associated underlying assumption/assertion in brackets (the presupposition may be fair or unfair in that there may or may not be 'correct assumptions' on behalf of the speaker - 'fairness' or otherwise is irrelevant at this stage since these are mostly examples as proposed by the particular 'speaker' in each case), was compiled from material present in everyday speech and UK radio and TV broadcasts. The presuppositions, which are mainly simple - and are generally concerned with the of existence of things or actions - are presented to show the diversity of the form AND to give the reader some preliminary practice in digging out underlying propositions/assumptions, assumptions which are the nub of presupposition. [Where necessary, in order to simplify the content of the statements themselves, and limit the length of this document, the substitution of lengthy noun and verb groups by the terms 'X', 'Z', etc. has been employed. This, quite usefully, both simplifies and generalises the presuppositions.] Although a number of the examples that follow may seem trivial, (some are most certainly not), they are important in that they are representative of, and illustrate the diversity of, the forms in EVERYDAY use. They are thus useful prototypes when it comes to recognising/composing compound forms with natural appearance. Presupposition (Underlying Assumption/Assertion) Note that the terms: 'my', 'I', you, etc. refer to the speaker and the person being addressed respectively. 1. Every time you... (you are repeatedly doing something) 2. Let me address your concerns. (you have concerns: I assume I know what they are) 3. When you look at this the right way... (you are looking at it the wrong way - in my opinion) 4. Every reasonable person knows that... (what follows is universally reasonable according to some undisclosed system of measure - to which the speaker has privileged access) 5. I checked out what X had been up to. (X had been up to something: I have examined it according to some unspecified criteria) 6. You should take this opportunity. (there is an opportunity - in my opinion) 7. I will offer you my vision of X. (I have 'vision' of X: I'm going to inflict it on you) 8. The important thing is that Z... (Z alone is important, and important beyond other things, on some undisclosed system of measure. I am the arbiter of importance) 9. Z has lost his motivation (there is/was motivation, Z once had it) 10. She wants the salesman to leave (the salesman is present: I know what 'she' wants) 11. I will arrange for extra money to be spent on this (money is already being spent on this: the speaker has control over the amount being spent) 12. The number of people eating pies and peas has fallen (there was more than one person eating pies AND peas: someone is doing so now) 13. I want to discuss the issues underlying Q (there are issues underlying Q: there is someone to discuss them with) 14. Of all the issues that cause Q, Z is the most important (there are several issues causing Q: assertion of and arbitration of importance as in [8] above) 15. I want you to propose ways of doing Y (there are ways of doing Y: I assume you know some) 16. The real issues are... (there are other issues deemed not real. The speaker assumes arbitration of reality) 17. To be clear and effective, then we must Z (Z is clear, effective and also unique in the speaker's view. Speaker assumes arbitration of clarity and effectiveness) 18. Nobody in their right mind could want X (X is incorrect: anyone who disagrees is, in the speaker's judgement, insane) 19. How bad were conditions in Byumba? (there were conditions in Byumba, they were bad, Byumba exists) 20. How fast were you going? (you were going fast) 21. How slow were you going? (you were going slow) Note that the last two examples, by presupposing degrees of 'fastness' and 'slowness', demonstrate how a question can be very easily loaded implicitly by using terms at the extreme ends of a relative scale - old/young, fat/thin, tall/short, loud/quiet, violent/peaceful, etc. are similar word pairs. In the example given, a 'fair' question would be 'What speed were you doing?'. Questions, other than the ultra-primitive monosyllabic form of 'who, why, what, when where and how?' (but the latter will have some context), are ALWAYS based upon presuppositions embodied in the question form. The 'question' form of the presupposition is used to complete this list: 22. What is your reaction to that? (you have a reaction to something) 23. How does she feel about X? (she feels something about X) 24. Why do you always Z? (you invariably Z) 25. Where did they go on Thursday? (they went somewhere on Thursday, 'they' as a definable group, and Thursday exist) 26. When will you be coming back from Y? (you are going to, or, at Y, and it is assumed that you will be returning) 27. The government of Byumba is a dictatorial regime of bloodthirsty killers who overthrew the democratically elected administration two years ago: what action are we going to take against them? (the simple presupposition is that 'we' are going to take action against 'them' BUT everything that precedes the colon is also a presupposition - which may or may not be 'fair' - with respect to the question that follows. This type of stacking - sometimes in single leading sentences, sometimes extending to multiples of sentences, is common in radio and TV interviews.) 28. What action are you going to take against the government of Byumba? They are a dictatorial regime of bloodthirsty killers who overthrew the democratically elected administration two years ago. (this is as [27], but broken into sentences with the position of the extended presupposition in a trailing position) 29. Are you sure about this? (There is a state called 'sure' which you may or may not be in. The fact that The speaker is asking the question implies that he assumes the listener is unsure) Preliminary Practice at Detecting Underlying Assumptions Ultimately, the reader will have to be self reliant in detecting the underlying assumptions made in the language patterns of others - and him/herself. Because the decoding of meaning in language is something we do subconsciously and extremely rapidly - and real life doesn't stop and wait while we take a measured look at it - the detection and analysis process will seem difficult to do at first in real time. The task is to practice becoming conscious of a process which is normally subconscious (before letting it become subconscious again - see later) and significant results can be expected in days rather than hours. With practice, it is possible - since the process becomes habitual - and it gets easier with time. Note that as the reader examines presuppositions in the language patterns of others, he is on a journey of discovery and will learn a lot about them (and himself) that s/he didn't know before - their points of view, assumptions they make, their internal conditioning/presumptions/world view being the bottom line. The author strongly recommends the 'start little and build' approach: a suggested scheme is as follows: 1. When listening to any kind of speech, the reader should ask: 'What is the speaker assuming?' Assumptions are the basis of presupposition. 2. TV and radio news, chat shows and advertisements, by virtue of their structure, are a rich source - avoid scripted drama, most of which is simplistically artificial (advertisements, on the other hand, whilst being carefully constructed, do use some clever presupposition). The trick is to IGNORE WHAT IS BEING PRESENTED AS THE CONTENT OF THE MESSAGE/CONVERSATION and observe the assumptions implicit in the language patterns (the real content). It is easiest to start by listening to questions - which are relatively simple to analyse: listen to one question, ignore the answer and work out the presuppositions in the question by asking: 'what assumptions did the speaker just make?' or 'what were the assumptions in that?' The reader should keep asking what the assumptions are/were. Once this is done, the procedure should be repeated again and again and again. Particularly sticky/compound questions might be written it down and assessed at leisure. All questions contain presuppositions - that's why they are an easy place to start. 3. When the reader is are competent at questions, a start can be made working on answers. If 'answers' are long and convoluted, they can be evaluated one phrase at a time: a pocket tape recorder is handy for this. 4. Given some TV radio work, it can be useful to listen in unobtrusively to real life conversation - statements as well as Q and A. This is a lot easier in some respects since vocabulary is usually simpler, as is phrasing and sentence length, and the general public tends not to speak in the convoluted fashion of those who frequent radio/TV news - although there may be a few surprises. The complicating thing is that there are likely to be a lot of direct assertions - overt statements along the lines 'X is Y' mixed in - which may or may not themselves contain presupposition. Most everyday direct speech is richer in assertion than it is in presupposition. Note that at this stage it is unlikely that the reader will be able to identify the majority of presuppositions and underlying assumptions (indeed, the more subtle forms of presupposition haven't been discussed yet & 'ultimate' identification - which lies at the very roots of language and meaning - is impracticable), but there will be a start. Fortunately, most presuppositions in everyday use tend to be 'fair'. The foregoing exercises relate to the spoken word, the analysis of real time 'live' speech being the ultimate objective. Should the reader find these too difficult, a start could be made in analysing newspaper and magazine articles in order to get the hang of things - transcripts of political speeches and interviews (especially unscripted ones) are good sources - but it should be remembered that the written word is often edited several times before it goes to press. Counterfeit Presuppositions: Some Examples in Short Form The presuppositions that follow - and they are referred to as 'short forms' since, in the definition of the skeleton structures shown, the enveloping verbiage has been stripped - are given as examples of how counterfeit presuppositions can be constructed. The structures - which may be used for counterfeit or fair presupposition (but are language patterns more frequently found in the presence of the former) - are taken from everyday experience. In the examples for each, a compounded/extended illustration of the form is provided. 1) Do you want/need/like/etc X before Y? Whatever X is, it is mainly irrelevant & used to misdirect or confuse OR it is given as a false choice (choice being limited to X or Y with all other possibilities deleted by exclusion): the principle presupposition here lies in the Y element. Examples: a. Do you need (another test drive) before (you sign up?) [it is assumed that you are going to sign up] b. Would you like (another drink) before (I take you home?) [it is assumed that I am taking you home] c. Would you like (another Coke or a whisky) before (I take you home?) [as b, but beginning to compound with an 'or' - see later] d. Would you like (another coke or a whisky) before I (take you home, or are you taking me home?) [with further compounding] e. While you are deciding what colour you want, and whether to go for the manual or automatic model, I have to enquire if you need another test drive before you sign up? [as a, but put in a compound form with three significant presuppositions and a lot of either/or confusing information - not quite grammatically correct either, just as is likely to be encountered in the real world] 2) You/I'll Z and/while/if/etc W. (the element that follows 'you' is the principle presupposition) This type verge on commands, almost saying 'you will'. That's easy to see in the short versions, not so obvious in the longer versions, which can be used to hide even more insidious implied assumptions. a. I'll give you my pen and then you can sign just here. [assumes you will sign] b. I'll lend you my pen while you write your phone number here. [assumes you will write the phone number] c. I'll settle the bill while you order a taxi. [assumes you will order a taxi: implies you are leaving... together by context] d. You can say goodbye to your friends while I nip to the men's room. [assumes you are saying goodbye - further implies you are leaving] e. You can go and warm the bed ready for me while I just say goodnight to my buddies and get a pack of condoms from the machine. [compound assumptions - some by implication] 3) Now/Since C, then D. (C is the principle presupposition - and flies past the subject's attention - with secondary 'qualifying' presuppositions often occurring in D, the part of the sentence normally reserved for the implantation of suggestion). This is a causative form with the implicit assumption that C is 'true' somehow causes D in some assumed logical fashion. That is the assumption - but in the general case that assumption is not necessarily true: in the case of the counterfeit presupposition it is usually (always?) false. Note the word 'then' is often unsaid. a. Now, since the car fulfils all your requirements (THEN) we can make a deal. [car assumed to fulfil all requirements and assumption of making a deal: NB the logic of 'C causes D' is false] b. Now we know each other so well (THEN) we can start talking about more intimate matters, like... [assumed intimacy is invoked in order to assume even more intimacy] c. Since I'm the man of your dreams, (THEN) you should be sleeping close to me tonight. [hmmm] d. Now that you have opened up, (THEN) can you tell me honestly how the fire started. [assumed 'opened up': further assumed that 'you' will speak honestly and have knowledge about the said fire] e. So, you want the station wagon with the alloy wheels: I think you've made a good decision - considering the excellent discount we're giving you, and I can see your wife is happy with it. Now you've chosen the model you really want and I've got your credit clearance, (THEN) I need you to sign just here and here. [assumptions, opinions, false causality and fiction mixed with fact: this is how it comes] 4) If X then Y. This is a causal form of logic/conditional statement often seen in computer programming, the difference being that in computer programming the logic is based on fact. It is related to the last form but less definite (form 3. has the first part of the sentence stated as 'fact') and can be further compounded in the form (If X then Y and Z and P and Q and ...). This looks fairly obvious and easy to fathom... but it isn't when the 'If', 'Then', and 'And'' mysteriously begin to vanish. Note that the reader should bear in mind that the implied CAUSALITY in this, and some of the other, more complex forms that follow, is also presupposed by the speaker. a. (IF you) sign up today and (THEN) you get free carpets and kitchen units. [replace the word 'If' by 'assuming': that's what the speaker is assuming ultimately: the second part of the sentence - following the word 'then' - is a presupposition based upon the assumption in the first part of the sentence being true. This is a convoluted form] b. If I said you had a beautiful body, (THEN) would you hold it against me? [replace 'If I said' by 'assuming': second half of sentence, which is a question, contains the presupposition c. If you don't go immediately (THEN) I'll scream AND call the police AND set the dog on you. [assuming you stay, then speaker assumes screaming/police/dog] d. If I give you the jack and (THEN) you can change the tyre. [assuming jack is handed over then assuming that 'you' will change the tyre] e. If you had listened to what I say (THEN) you wouldn't be in such a mess. [you didn't listen, therefore(assumed causality), you are in a mess] 5) If X then Y or Z. More computer logic, but with optional outcomes in the apparent causal chain of events based on condition X being met. This can chain into an extended list of outcomes in the form: IF X THEN Y OR Z OR/AND A OR/AND B OR C OR... etc. although more than three is rare - unless a list is presented. Often used in order to selectively reduce choice by presenting apparent choice from an impoverished set: type 9) is a more general form of this. a. Would you like free carpets or kitchen units (if) when you sign here? [the pattern is inverted - but the logic's the same: assumes that either carpets or kitchen units are available: no other choice: assumes you have to sign to get one of the offered items] b. If you use my pen, you can sign here or here. [this is the more standard form: assumes that you will sign in one of the places using said pen] c. If you want to get into the best part of the stadium, you can use the east gate or the south gate and park by the fountain - you know where that is. [assumes you will use one of the two routes, by exclusion of others: assumes you want to get into the part of the stadium which the speaker assumes to be 'best': assumes you will be driving and that you know of/know where the fountain is 6) You might be wondering (word group = numerical choice) Equally well, you might not have been wondering - but you will be by the time the speaker has finished the sentence. This language pattern is of a powerful type known as 'Suggestive Predicates'. The innocent looking word group is directive and actually leads the listener's attention into the word group shown in the brackets. (see elsewhere on this site for more details). The actual phrase 'You might be wondering' is typical: other phrases of the same essential form are shown in the examples below. a. Have you thought which of your feet you are going to notice first? [assumes you are going to notice one of your feet and that you can/will think about it (you will because of the structure of the predicate)] b. Are you wondering whether to buy three or four loaves at the supermarket? [assumes you are going to buy three OR four loaves at a supermarket: assumes you are wondering] c. Would you say that I earn $200,000 or $250,000 a year? [assumes either/or: assumes you can say] d. I'd like you to consider whether we are going to eat three times or four today, at home or in the Chinese restaurant, in the cafeteria on the ferry or at the burger bar on 41st street. [assuming a. we are going to eat three or four times, b. in one of four places, c. that we are going on the ferry, d. we are going to 41st street, e. that you can/will consider these limiting options - to the exclusion of all others. Since you already have enough to think about, you probably will exclude others!] 7) Now A, and while B, then C. A is a past or ongoing event, which may or may not be fictional. B is normally a presupposed ongoing event and C is normally an out and out presupposition: the content of each element may be variable, but that indicated is the norm. Note that the form shown above is relatively simple in that it can be extended along the lines Now A (and A1 and A2), and while B (and B1 and B2) then C ( and C1 etc). This is the realm of the conversational therapist, where compound presuppositions of this type are used to variously pace, lead and confuse the dominant hemisphere of the brain. Note once again the presence of the false causative links, links which emulate the process of logic whilst denying logical content. This type may be split across sentences in the form: Now A. So while B. C and so on - but this is less advantageous for the speaker since the effect of compounding is diluted. a. Now you're feeling relaxed, and while we have a little time, you can tell me about your sexual fantasies. [assumes you are relaxed, that 'we' have a little time, that you have sexual fantasies and that you can tell the speaker about them: four presuppositions in one relatively simple sentence - plus the presuppositions of causality implied by the now/while/you can chain] b. Now you're at last telling the truth, and while the jury is aware of that fact, tell us about the last time you beat your wife. c. Now you have committed yourself to answering my questions, and while you are in a talkative mood, can you tell me why you started the fire? [speaks for itself] d. Since you have now admitted that you quite often break the speed limit and jump red lights, and while we have you safely out of a car and sober for once, you can rest assured that once you've given us the details about that hold up you pulled last Thursday we won't question you about your kidnapping attempts until tomorrow. [compound presuppositions - there are at least ten in the single sentence] 8) As/while/when/etc you M, you N. Another compounding form, but simpler than type 7. M is normally, but not always, and ongoing event, with the presupposition usually being present in N. False causality is again used in this type. Can be compounded in the fashion of When you M (and M1 and M2), you N (and N1 and N2). a. As you sit in that chair, you will immediately feel relaxed. [assumption of immediate relaxation AND if the listener is not sitting in the chair, and assumption that he will] b. As you told me yesterday, you can remember walking your dog, remember perfectly. [assumes you have a dog, you walked it, you can remember it perfectly and that you told the speaker so yesterday c. When you breathe in and out slowly, you will suddenly notice you're blinking. [assumes you are blinking: even more, the speaker asserts that you will notice it AND - since this is a clever circular form - that you will breath in and out slowly. A causal link is set up between blinking - which the statement INSTRUCTS the listener to notice, and breathing in a particular manner] d. When you agreed come back to my apartment willingly and behaved in a seductive manner, what did you expect? You knew exactly what was going to happen. [you agreed to go back willingly, behaved in a seductive manner, you were expecting something, you knew something was going to happen and you knew exactly what it was] 9) R or S? (either/or) By restriction of available choices to R or S, all other choices are assumed to be unavailable. This form is used to set up the 'double bind', a situation in which the same outcome occurs irrespective of which of the (apparently) available choices is made. a. Do you want to go to bed at 8.30, or 9.30? [you want to go to bed: the only choices are 8.30, 9.30. Note that accepting either of the answers accepts going to bed - a double bind. The double bind is common in all these examples] b. Are you going to confess now, or tomorrow? [you are going to confess: you may do so now or tomorrow] c. Are you going to kiss me now, or shall we wait a while? d. Are you going to sign up now, or after another test drive, or after you've chosen the colour? [you are going to sign up: the 'or's' have been concatenated to give three apparent options, but the underlying fundamental presupposition is fixed e. So what's it to be, free carpets or kitchen units with your new house? [you are assumed to be having the new house - part of the deal is curtains or carpets 10) Not X causes Y This can be concatenated in the form Not X (and X1, X2 etc) causes Y (and Y1, Y2, etc). A more complex alternative but similar form is Not X causes not Y - which can also be concatenated. This form is similar to form 4), and is singled out for special attention in that it is both a) powerfully causal and b) the negatives - particularly the in multiple form - make it difficult to process and integrate by a listener, as is demonstrated in the examples. Tunes can be played on this form in that X causes not Y (and Y1, Y2, etc), (X and not X1, etc) cause (Y and not Y1, etc) are also possible patterns. a. Not following my advice will land you in trouble. [i have offered advice which I assume is to your benefit, ignoring it will CAUSE you trouble] b. You can't escape feeling guilty as you look at the facts. [i assume you are guilty, that there are what I assume to be 'facts' available and that looking at them will cause a feeling of guilt in you] c. Not listening and evading the issues will make easy for you not to confess and avoid facing your guilt. [the words 'evading' and 'avoid' are negatives and thus are effectively 'nots'. Failure to listen and evasion, are assumed as is guilt and that a 'confession' for something is available and appropriate. The causal chain is that both of first two are each responsible for each the latter.] d. You are not a shrinking violet and your powerful physique ensures that you'll never be attacked by muggers. [the direct presuppositions are obvious: the presupposed - and partially implied - causality is 'not X and X1 ensures Y'] This concludes the first group. Stated baldly, and shown as skeletons with small groups of enveloping words, as in most of the foregoing examples, the given presuppositional forms might seem simple enough to detect and evaluate both in terms implied causality & assumption. That such is not the case should become apparent from the examples where the presuppositions are stacked together in groups - and there are more difficult forms to follow. The reader should note that some speakers have either 'naturally' occurring presuppositional language patterns (probably learned in childhood - speech patterns are inherited/assimilated from others) or have purposely studied forms of presuppositional speech for whatever reason. Such people are skilled in the day to day these language patterns and their practised and rapid delivery makes the forms particularly difficult to untangle when the medium of the spoken word is involved. In order to test this, the reader should try modifying the nouns and verbs in say forms 7) and 8) above to suit a few appropriate everyday contexts, compounding them and delivering the resulting patterns(s) in spoken form, without warning, to a couple of friends for effect. The test is in checking which assumptions the friends miss. Refuting Counterfeit Presuppositions i) Why Refute? If a speaker makes counterfeit suppositions during the course of a presentation or statement, and such remain unchallenged, then any discussion or exposition that follows is necessarily tainted by falsehood. The 'dialogue' proceeds on the basis of the joint assumption that what is false is true. Note that this is a JOINT assumption and that even tacit (or unknowing) acceptance makes it so. The listener, by not challenging and destroying the deceit, is tacitly colluding and allowing himself to be subconsciously led into an illusory world created by the speaker - who won't relent with the spurious patterns since s/hecontinues on the basis of having the listener's approval. Restating this in the rather more formal language of Walton [1]: "1. At some point x in the sequence of dialogue, A is brought forward by the proponent, either as a proposition the proponent explicitly asks the respondent to accept for the sake of argument, or as a non-explicit assumption that is part of the proponent's reasoning. 2. The respondent has an opportunity at x to reject A. 3. If the respondent fails to reject A at x, then A becomes a commitment of both parties during the subsequent sequence of dialogue." In short, the message is 'Refute or Accept' - and the listener accepts at his peril. [Those who tend to favour the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - that language significantly affects consciousness (i.e. that something which is accepted as fact in word, in consciousness is fact) - will no doubt feel strongly inclined towards the refutation of counterfeit assumption.] This is the relatively formal reasoning behind refutation. A more informal way is for the listener to consider why he/she should allow anyone to put to them, in a premeditated and pernicious form, inaccurate and/or deceptive information? Looked at this way, it becomes a matter for the disruption of deliberate and contrived deceit. ii) Presuppositions in Questions Whenever a question is put, the questioner is ALWAYS assuming something - even single word questions: 'what?', 'why?', 'how?' will have an ongoing context to relate to. The reader/listener needs to practice and learn how to listen to questions - as given previously, news/current affairs shows are useful material - and work at detecting what the assumptions of the questioner are, - and it gets easier with practice. The questions may be based upon 'fair' or 'unfair' assumptions, that doesn't matter for the time being: the purpose of practice is to identify them at the rate they appear in the spoken word. Presuppositions in short questions are usually relatively simple to identify: with a little day to day practice, this becomes easy and automatic. [Aside: presupposition exists in forms other than words.] With longer questions, single or multiple sentence or phrase predicates are usually followed by short question sentence or phrase (although this order may be on occasion reversed). The predicate sentences/phrases - which are in effect statements - will often contain the majority of the assumptions, whilst the phrase containing the question will typically contain one or two. When the time comes to identify underlying assumptions behind questions put in the real world, the listener should pause, take a breath and identify them before replying: if doubtful assumptions are detected then they should be refuted - as the basis of the question - immediately. See following section on one to one encounters for more. iii) Presuppositions in Addresses to Groups This refers speeches, presentations, formal addresses, official statements and the like - any spoken address to a group of people by an individual speaker. Many such situations occur in everyday life ranging from the relatively informal 'pep talk' from a manager or team leader to a small group through corporate presentation to formal events such as summings up in a court of law. The essential ingredient from the listener's point of view, insofar as dealing with such presuppositions are concerned, is that the listener is unable, or not permitted - or perhaps not expected - to interrupt according to circumstances or etiquette: that is the negative side. On the positive side, the listener will usually pass unnoticed as one of a crowd, and it is therefore possible to deliberately not pay full attention to what is being overtly said - other than the key points. More importantly, it becomes possible for the listener to take notes of any fallacious assumptions being promulgated & carefully formulate retaliatory statements and/or questions. Because the effect of presuppositions tends to be cumulative - with earlier assumptions being used as a basis for later ones - particular attention should be paid to the earlier points made in an address. iv) Presuppositions in Advertising This is normally a simpler situation to deal with. The listener will (usually) have time to review the material offered at leisure - with or without notes - and can refute, if needs be, by carefully formulated statement/question as indicated above. Modern advertising is a rich source of presupposition - but note that visual and audio messages often conspire. v) Presuppositions in One to One Encounters These are the most demanding situations of all to deal with owing to the speed and complexity of the information transferral process, the need to pay at least some attention to 'content' (with the ongoing tendency to become embroiled in such), and the need evaluate the assumptions/pressuppositions in real time. This is rather difficult, (the understatement of the year!), since the listener has the job of keeping track of the content and process of conversation as well as visual and other inputs, however, with practice, and a little rearrangement of things as given below, it is possible. Ultimately real time integration (and it is integration - it happens too fast for conscious analysis) is the goal: once the listener has had sufficient practice, it will happen automatically. Tip 1: analysing questions is an easy place to start - it is normal in any dialogue to allow someone time to think before replying, so the listener won't look odd when he pauses to evaluate what has been said. Tip 2: when someone says something, the listener might look away as if thinking (true), PAUSE and work out as many underlying assumptions, beginning with the earliest ones (see earlier), during the pause. Tip 3: if time is required/the listener is unsure of a point, the speaker should be asked to slowly repeat what has been said. Tip 4: the listener should never be afraid to INTERRUPT. If the speaker is going too fast, speaking in too complex a pattern, or there is a suspicion that counterfeit presuppositions are present, then interruption is the order of the day. Interruptions are also useful in breaking mind set (see Interrupts page elsewhere on this site). Tip 5: to create time - and to permit step by step analysis - the listener can slowly paraphrase/repeat what the speaker has said point by point, digging out - and if necessary refuting by question or counter statement - each assumption one by one. vi) Assumptions and their Refutation Since assumptions are the underlying meat of presuppositions they are, in all cases, the ESSENTIAL things to identify (see previously) and then attack. Forget word orders, fancy names, whether it is an interrogative or declarative language pattern the speaker is using, the questions the listener should be asking are always 'What is the speaker assuming. What, if anything, is counterfeit?' In terms of handling presuppositions, that, if nothing else, is the THE message that the reader should go away from this essay with - 'What is the speaker assuming? Is it valid, or false?'. Ultimately, this becomes an exercise in awareness, not logic. The listener can be endowed with the greatest logical mind in existence and will still be overcome by counterfeit presuppositions if he is not alert enough (this is how the college professor gets taken in by the used car salesman - the latter uses an overwhelming battery of prepared and practised language patterns). There is no need to be particularly aggressive in the process of challenging assumptions - although discovering that one has been presented with biased or fallacious information by the speaker might rightly provoke an emotional response. This could range from a walk out to an outright rejection of anything the speaker has said and might say in the future: the author would recommend a 'stay put and learn' approach. Often, the shock of the challenge - by exposing fallacious assumptions to the light of day and putting the speaker on the defensive - is quite often enough to significantly put them on the wrong foot. One way to do this is for the listener to reframe what has been said, overtly stating the assumptions and then vigorously challenging the basis of each in turn. The speaker often won't like the tables being turned and, having to work hard at explaining rather than being glib, will probably wriggle and resist - perhaps making even more assumptions. The listener must not be fobbed off in such an event, and should be determined in getting his/her own case across (by playing the part of ignorance/the fool if necessary) and demonstrate understanding of the language patterns without digressing into any explanation of them. A determined approach is likely to prevent the speaker trying the same thing again: if he/she does, the listener should attack again without let up. In a situation where counterfeit presuppositions exist, it is the speaker who is attempted to mislead, not the listener. Typical word patterns that might be used in refutation are: 'Why are you assuming X, Y and Z (assumptions)?' 'Your presumptions are all wrong', 'You are assuming (assumptions): why?', 'Most of what you've just said is just plain wrong/bullshit (and don't explain why - they said it, not you)', 'I don't agree with your assumptions (followed by silence).', 'Who says that {assumption/assumptions}?', 'Your logic that A leads to B and C is wrong (challenges false causality)' and - if you're feeling charitable and have plenty of time: 'You've made a lot of assumptions there, let's go through them slowly one by one.' If you are not feeling charitable/don't have any time, a blank statement of: 'You're wrong,' is very effective - since you don't specify how/where/why/etc. Ultimately, the reader/listener should work out their own preferred way. Counterfeit Presuppositions: Physical Environments This section concerns physical - time and space or 'event' - environments rather than word or syntactic environments. As given in the introduction of this essay, it is probably impossible to utter a sentence of any consequence without making some kind of assumption - and hence without the use of presupposition. Accordingly, presuppositions - apart from involving convoluted ways of speaking - are not a problem per se. It is when language patterns are deliberately abused to the advantage of a presenter that the difficulties arise, i.e. in the case of a speaker using counterfeit propositions or assumptions and hiding them in the language form. The majority of communications between humans, in both the written and spoken form are 'uncontroversial', to use May's words, and the decoder indeed 'will draw the same suppositions from the non-asserted elements of a message as the encoder holds'. Hence the notion of most presuppositions being uncontroversial. As for the controversial form, the form based upon false assumption/supposition: 'the kind of supposition that is forced onto a decoder by virtue of a form of words, but which is not shared innocently by the encoder', this is likely to turn up in some types of situations more than others. ALL these are characterised by what could be broadly described as a 'power' scenarios - situations where one entity is attempting to manipulate another entity and PERSUADE the latter into some course of action (the communication process may often be nominally two way, but one entity will usually predominate as 'persuader' for extended periods of time). Eeach reader will no doubt be able to imagine situations which match the given criterion: to assist, here are some that occur in everyday life (the list is not exhaustive): a. courtroom b. confrontational debates - political or otherwise c. police interviews d. advertising e. political broadcasts f. 'sales' situations g. seduction h. business meetings j. one to one disputes Further Examples of Presuppositional Forms and Implication A number of the more complex forms - many of them as given by Bandler and Grinder [2] in 'The Structure of Magic' - are presented below and in Appendix I along with examples of use in potentially counterfeit mode. These are typically 'syntactic environments' - more often than not identifiable by the presence of a single keyword - in which presupposition may well be present. Many of forms use the meaning available in some words to imply things which may be left unsaid explicitly - and thus make the listener work overtime in unravelling the complexity of the word form and evaluating some pattern of meaning (or alternatively, and more significantly, failing to identify it). These forms are equally as important as the preceding ones, perhaps even moreso since their often inherent complexity tends to make them more difficult to fathom. To take an example from the earlier pages of this essay, we have the notion of speed. 'Speed' is not an absolute term but a relative: it may, for example, be variously described as 'fast', 'slow' or 'medium', indeed all manner of other appendages may be used - reckless, snail like, full, breakneck, sedate, etc. As demonstrated in the earlier example, when the question 'How fast were you going?' is put, it implies that the person being asked was going at a 'fast' speed insofar as the listener(s) and any observers - like a jury - image and understand the meaning of the word used. The question: 'How slow were you going?' evokes altogether different imagery, and consequently different connotations. The various forms offered below are inevitably interleaved, in part, with those previously given. Ultimately, with presuppositional form, a point is reached where classification into strict 'type' becomes impossible. Similarly, although a number of the forms that follow illustrate the use of implicative words in presupposition, the reader should remember that implication can also be used in the forms that have gone before, indeed it is possible to mix all types into compound hybrids. >i) Adjectives and Adverbs of Opinion Both these will often be found in presuppositional forms of speech. These are words that modify or qualify the primitive form of what is being said, and since they are words selected by the speaker to reflect the speaker's perception of events, will often reveal some of the assumptions the speaker is making. Adjectives modify nouns - the speaker's perception of 'things', whereas adverbs modify verbs - and reveal the way in which the speaker perceives/assumes action, the manner in which events occur(ed). Adjectives and adverbs which describe what would normally be agreed as 'absolutes', or fact, usually fall into the 'fair' category insofar as evaluating the nature of a presupposition is concerned: the ones the listener should be particularly aware of are the words which describe relativity, generality or manner. This is illustrated in the examples that follow: a. The woman in the purple dress behaved badly. [assumptions are that there was a woman in a purple dress who behaved in some manner and that manner was 'bad'. Few would argue with the adjective 'purple' - either the dress was purple or not as a matter of agreed 'fact': the problems occur with the adverb 'badly': good and bad are relative and matters of opinion] b. The ugly woman in the ugly purple dress behaved badly. [as given previously - but in this case we have an additional value judgement in the adjective implying beauty/ugliness] c. You were seen leaving the bank shouting wildly and running at breakneck speed. [implies you were in the bank, someone claims to have seen you leave, you were shouting and running at speed. Further suggests, by adverb and adjective 'wildly' and 'breakneck' - both opinions added to the 'fact'] d. When you had cruelly satisfied your evil, perverted, lusts on this helpless, innocent victim, you callously ignored her whimpering pleas for mercy, didn't you? [cruelly/evil/perverted/callously versus helpless/innocent/whimpering: all opinion, painted in adjective and adverb. Hopefully, you've got a good defence lawyer] e. I am completely satisfied with your performance over the past twelve months. [the manner of the satisfaction - 'complete' is specified by the speaker. In this case, the adverb 'completely' is an absolute and is used fairly] ii) Relative Clauses: WHO, WHICH, THAT. A noun, or phrase ending with a noun, which is followed a phrase beginning with one of these words. The existence of the noun is presupposed. a. Your accomplice, WHO we have yet to capture... [implies you have an accomplice - i.e. accomplice exists and you are implicated: the assumed accomplice is still at large] b. We have the axe, WHICH you used as the weapon... [we have 'the' axe - 'axe' exists: note that it is 'the' and not 'an', yet another assumption about a specific axe - which it is assumed was used as a weapon by you] c. We have recovered the car THAT you used in the getaway. [a car, that has been 'recovered': specific 'car' is assumed to exist and is assumed to have been used, by you, in an assumed getaway] iii) Time Clauses A versatile set. These can readily be arranged to contain implication - every 'before' implies an 'after' in a sequence of actual ongoing (or assumed ongoing) events - and are demonstrated by means of example below. By now, the reader should easily be able to extract the assumptions, hence little commentary is provided - the patterns are shown in quotes. a. AFTER: What will you do 'AFTER you give up housebreaking'? [implies you are currently engaged in housebreaking] b. BEFORE: What did you do 'BEFORE you became a bank robber'? [implies you are now a bank robber & that you did something else previously] c. DURING: 'DURING the robbery', did you not think of your victim? ['during' - plus the trailing phrase - implies you were involved and victimised someone, etc.] d. PRIOR: Tell us what you were doing immediately 'PRIOR to robbing the bank'. [etc.] e. SINCE: Have your feelings of guilt subsided 'SINCE you stopped beating your wife'? f. WHEN: What will you do with your time 'WHEN you are in prison'? g. WHILE: What were you doing 'WHILE your accomplices were stealing the money'? So much for the first set in this category. The second set - and a double dose of examples is presented since this is a powerful and flexible form - are a little subtler and more directed at double binds, personal feelings and (often vague) ongoing experiences. Accordingly, because they are more difficult to decode, they appear to be slightly more convoluted in form. One or two fuller explanatory notes are offered: h. Would you like to take your shoes off 'WHILE you unwind'? [double bind - the action of unwinding is implied with shoes on or not: note, as an aside, that 'unwind' is a non specific term] i. How do you think you are going to react 'DURING your realisation' that you are free of guilt? j. Would you like a whisky or a gin BEFORE you go to bed? [double bind: you are going to bed whichever drink is chosen] k. I hope it will make you happy 'WHEN we go to the Zoo'. l. 'AFTER you have calmed down and come to your senses', we'll discuss the implications of all this. [you are going to calm down, etc.] m. I don't know what you were thinking of 'PRIOR to sitting down here relaxing with me', but now you have calmed down, I'd like to talk about it. n. 'SINCE you've accepted my opinion on this', I'd like you to explore the issues further PRIOR to you signing a confession. [you have accepted the speaker's opinion: you are going to sign a confession] iv) Words Indicating Repetition ALSO, AGAIN, BACK, EITHER, TOO, LAST These words may be used to imply that an event is/has already happening/happened and is being/can be repeated. a. You can do what Tom is doing TOO [implies that something is ongoing and you have the ability to do whatever it is] b. I'd like you to go over your confession AGAIN. [you've already confessed at least once: even if you haven't 'confessed', the implication is that what you have done is being defined as a confession] c. EITHER you got it wrong last time, or you've got it wrong now. [there exists a 'last time' which it is assumed should be identical to the present, and there is something assumed that is 'right'] d. If you answer incorrectly AGAIN then you'll be in trouble. [implies you have answered 'incorrectly' before - whether you did or not, the assumption is that you did] v) Use of the Definite Article This is the form often used in the 'leading question' so beloved of courtroom dramas. By using a definite article - typically 'the' although there are other ways, it is implied that a particular object or actions had or has existence. a. What was your reaction when you saw the jigsaw? [implies that you saw a PARTICULAR jigsaw and you had a reaction to it] b. What did you do when you saw the defendant rob the bank with the shotgun] [implies you saw particular person at particular bank with particular shotgun - i.e. that the 'defendant' did as implied - and that you did something in response] c. Which of the three defendants pulled the trigger? [one of them is implied to have done so] d. I want you to take charge of the project and sort out the trouble makers. [the specific identity of the project is assumed to be common knowledge between speaker and listener - as is that of 'the' trouble makers, whose existence is implied] e. Go down to the stores and fetch three welding masks. [three welding masks are assumed to exist in the stores: this is also an Ordinal Numeral type presupposition - see Appendix I] vi) Verbs and Adverbs Indicating Repetition of Event(s) Those beginning with RE-. REpeatedly, REpeating, REstore, REplicate, REtell, REplace, REnew, REiterate, REstate, REwork, RE-establish and so on. a. I am pleased to REnew our acquaintance. [speaker assumes 'we' have been acquainted before] b. You are going to have to do something to REstore my confidence in you. [i once had confidence in you] c. If she REturns, I want to talk to here. [implies she has been here before] vii) Change of Time Verbs and Adverbs ALREADY, BEGIN/BEGUN, END, STOP, START, STARTED, CONTINUE, YET, STILL These words are often used to imply that some kind of ongoing process is in place - even though it isn't: because of the implicative nature of the words, the inference will more often than not slip past the listener's attention. In the examples below these look easy to detect owing to the capitalisation - in the real world, they aren't. a. I wonder whether or not you understand that you can CONTINUE to feel comfortable and relaxed. [the implicit assumption is that you already have been feeling comfortable and relaxed] b. Now you have STARTED/BEGUN to see the sense of what I'm saying, we might be able to get somewhere. ['sense' is assumed and it is implied that the listener is already seeing it] d. I want you to STOP looking at things from that angle, and reconsider. [implies that you are already 'looking at things' from some angle] e. The way to END your discomfort is to confess. [ongoing discomfort assumed: assertion that confession will end it] For more of these presuppositional forms - and examples - see Appendix I. Note that the forms shown in the appendix are equally as difficult to unravel as the foregoing and are worthy of equal attention by the reader. They are only separated out in order to contain the main body of the text of this essay within manageable proportions. Closing Remarks In this essay the nature of genuine and counterfeit presupposition has been presented along with some examples of the language environments in which presuppositions are likely to be encountered. As the reader will by now realise, presupposition in language can take many forms, and it is well nigh impossible for anyone - however alert and well trained - to integrate a continuous, fast moving (spoken at 150/200wpm), set of compound presuppositions more than say a dozen items long. The exact number is arguable - if some in the NLP community are to be believed. (evidence?) it is perhaps impossible to effectively decode presuppositions in a continuous string more than three or four items long - but there is no doubt that at some point, the language processing system of the listener will overload, cease to fully process what is being said, and 'lock up'. Beyond, and around this 'lock up' point, the listener will become tacitly, and subconsciously, 'committed' to the world view being assumed/presented by the speaker and, insofar as behaving according to his own rational system of volition with regards to the matter in hand is concerned, be lost. This is the way literature, drama and movies work: given a sufficiently credible opening to capture consciousness, the story takes over and we become entranced by the scenario presented by the images. [the Word Interrupt page, elsewhere on this site, can be used to experiment with 'lock up']. As an aside, Milton Erickson - father of conversational hypnosis - used presuppositional form extensively in his inductions. Having said that a continuous stream of presuppositional speech cannot be integrated, it can be dealt with in other ways thus: a. General Practice: continually asking oneself what a speaker is assuming - and challenging assumptions in 'real time' encounters - definitely helps. b. Environment: being aware of the type of environments in which counterfeit presuppositions are likely to be encountered - and being particularly alert in such environments. c. Keywords: learning the keywords that are commonly used in making presuppositions - opinionated adverbs/adjectives, change of time, change of place words, etc. d. Structured Practice: taking one form from each of those given and using it oneself to actually make presuppositions/listening out for it for two or three days at a time (the technique advocate by some NLP schools). e. Vehement interruption: especially when the first counterfeit presupposition in a potential stream is encountered. Of these, a. and b. are likely to be the most practicable aids. Accordingly, therefore, it is important - particularly during the early stages of any encounter - that the listener tests the ground and pays particular attention to the presuppositions (plus direct assertions) of the speaker and IMMEDIATELY interrupts so as to prevent a breach once any counterfeit presupposition is detected - the interruption should be such as to contradict the false assumptions and disrupt the speaker's flow and his/her view of the world. For the reasons outlined in the previous paragraph, no listener should allow ANY speaker to rant on endlessly and every spurious presupposition should be met by a corresponding challenge at, or close to, the time it is uttered. Once embarked upon, interruptions should be as vociferous and regular as needed: pleas for 'time to finish' should be entirely ignored when a speaker has been discovered (deviously) to be using counterfeit presuppositions. Counterfeit presuppositions should NEVER be allowed to compound since they will adversely affect the listener's point of view, or consciousness (see Sapir-Whorf theory), and cause the listener to commit to an illusory view an already vague world as presented by the speaker for the latter's own unspoken reasons. To each of us, the world 'out there' is not as it is, it is as we think it is - and, like it or not, because we 'think' in words, what we think it is inevitably influenced by words. If necessary, in extreme circumstances, the listener is advised, without reserve, to fight fire with fire and deliberately use honest complex forms of compounded presupposition in order to disrupt the speaker's position. There is enough ammunition in the present essay to enable any reader of average intelligence to do this by developing some pro forma configurations - but remember, since these are likely to be complex patterns, they will need practice. Epilogue: Learning by Doing In this essay, much emphasis has been placed upon the need for the reader to PRACTICE the process of identifying the assumptions underlying presuppositions and to become accustomed to listening out for, and challenging, counterfeit presuppositions in various environments. There is good reason for this. On the one hand - since presuppositions are normally structured in a complex manner and can come so fast as to be inaccessible to the conscious mind - this is futile advice. On the other, the practice will actually alert and train the subconscious mind in the identification of counterfeit presupposition: one that is achieved, the process will become automatic. the practice therefore is the most important element: once some degree of conscious competence is attained - by learning by doing - the reader need do no more, except but perhaps being aware of an uneasy feeling that something is wrong in certain situations & reapplying his conscious learning: destructive subconcious behaviours can only be reintegrated by making them conscious once again - and then reassimilated by forgetfulness. Appendix I: More Presuppositional Forms & Examples These forms are equally as 'valid' or 'effective' as those given previously insofar as the delivery of counterfeit presupposition is concerned. Each one is worthy of in depth examination in its own right - i.e. of observation of operation in the day to day world. >Change of Place and State Verbs ARRIVE, COME, DEPART, ENTER, GO, LEAVE, SPLIT, APPEAR, ASSUME, BECOME, CHANGE, METAMORPHOSE, SHIFT, TRANSFORM, TURN INTO, MODIFY, MUTATE and such. By inferring change, these verbs imply that something was in one place/state and is now in another place/state - in other words that, as well as change having occurred, other places/states exist. For the purposes of example, place and state are split into two groups. Place Change Examples: a. When you LEFT the bank vault, where did you go next? [you were in the bank vault & you went somewhere else] b. Where are you going when you DEPART? [you are/will be somewhere, are going to depart & you are going somewhere] c. Before you ENTERED the arena, what was the last thing you saw? [you entered the arena: you saw things in the place you were before you did - more than one thing as implied by 'last'] State Change Examples: a. If Joe ASSUMES the form of a toad, that would be a surprise. [Joe is not at present in the form of a toad] b. I'll give you two minutes to CHANGE your mind on this. [your mind is fixed in some particular state: it can change] c. When you look at things in dim light, the illumination can be such as to MODIFY perception so that you don't quite see exactly what's taking place. You start to fill in the gaps and ASSUME things. Don't you think you could have done that? [The presuppositions predicated in the first two sentences set up the question in the third: this is more like a real life form - the assumptions are that the place was dim, the listener's perception was modified and was him/herself assuming or making up things.] Tactive Verbs and Adjectives ODD, AWARE, KNOW, REALISE, STRANGE, PECULIAR, REGRET, WONDER, etc. A strange bunch these - and note that all of them are expressions of some opinion on behalf of the speaker. As well as implying, this group divert attention. from the primary purpose of the sentence, to a secondary issue set up by means of using the particular verbs. This is best demonstrated by example: a. Isn't it ODD that you should plan such a perfect robbery and yet make a simple mistake? [the principle presuppositions lie in the second half of the sentence - yet there is a secondary, attention diverting one which makes it appear that the essential question is one about 'oddness'. The listener who responds by debating 'oddness' is bound by the trailing assumptions and is sunk.] b. You have made several mistakes in your analysis: I wonder if you are AWARE what they are? [the presuppositions lie in part 1: the matter of awareness is a secondary, diversionary one] c. Do you not find it STRANGE that you have not REALISED yet that the more you attempt to mislead me, the more entangled in your own words you become. [matters of (potentially false - at least opinion) strangeness and lack of realisation are at first implied - and an ongoing a process by the word 'yet' - followed by the main assumptions] d. Some people might find it PECULIAR that you left your house at 3am. [you left your house at 3am: this is implied as being peculiar in the speaker's view] Commentary Adjectives and Adverbs LUCKY, FORTUNATELY, HAPPILY, INNOCENTLY, WONDERFULLY, GRIMLY, etc. As suggested in the title, these words incorporate comment - and therefore opinion - on the part of the speaker. They operate in much the same fashion as the tactive modifiers, and accordingly only one or two examples are given: a. UNFORTUNATELY for you, and LUCKILY for us, you left a key piece of evidence behind. [you left a piece of evidence which the speaker regards as key: misfortune and luck are the speaker's personal opinion. It is implied that whatever the evidence is, it is good for him and bad for you.] b. It is WONDERFUL that you can become aware of these experiences. [you can become aware etc. The rest is the speaker's opinion - trying to imply the experience is good for you] Rhetorical Questions Questions that the speaker asks without the expectation of any answer. a. Who cares if you jump in the lake? [implies that nobody cares] b. What's the point in me giving you all this information if you don't use it? [implies there is no point: implies you don't use the information] c. How are you going to discover the answer to the last question? [implies there is a question and a means of discovering the answer] Complex Adjectives of Time EARLIER, FUTURE, FORMER, LATER, NEW, OLD, PRESENT, PREVIOUS and so on. Each of these implies that some other generic state of time can/does/did exist in tandem with certain (possibly) non-specific events. a. I'd like you to remember your PREVIOUS experience of this now. [present experience is implied in addition to the past one] b. Your NEW outlook is for the better. [you had an old outlook which wasn't 'for the better'] c. You didn't perform as badly as this, even when you were fired from your FORMER job. [you are presently performing 'badly': you have a present job in which you are assumed to be performing worse - all relative/matters of judgement] Comparatives MORE, LESS, LONG, FAST, RIGHT, WRONG, BEST. Words ending in -ER/-EST and their roots. These words, and there are a whole host of them, imply relativity of some feature - even though such might be misrepresented as some kind of absolute (the words represent speaker's assumption/opinion remember) AND they are non-specific. If there is 'more' of one thing that another, the implication is that the other thing is 'less'. If one thing is proposed as 'right' then the implication is that all others are 'wrong'. Similarly with longER/long/shorter, fastER/fast/slower, greatER/lesser, smallER/larger, tiniER/bigger, tallER/shorter and so on. a. There aren't many bikes that are fastER than a Mazouwki. [the Mazouwki is a 'fast' bike] b. You took MORE than your fair share of the robbery proceeds. [there was a robbery, and you took some of the proceeds & what is assumed 'more' than a 'fair' share - this implies that the proceeds were split and someone, or others, got 'less' than a fair share.] c. You may find that leaning back in the chair makes you feel LESS uncomfortable. [you are feeling 'uncomfortable'] d. It'll be for the BEST if you confess. [not to confess is for the 'worst' & your state can be 'improved' by confession. Note the non specific definitions of 'best' and 'worst'] e. How LONG have you been suffering from heartburn? [you are suffering from heartburn] Comparative A AS< X >AS B A and B are being compared, but in the comparison something is implied about the nature of A and/or B. a. I hope you aren't AS screwed up AS your wife. [your wife is screwed up - so are you by the implication provided by 'AS'] b. Bloggs is about AS funny AS and open grave. [an open grave, by common agreement, is not funny: hence Bloggs is not funny] c. When you are AS convinced by the evidence AS I am, then you will convict. [the speaker is convinced by the evidence - so is the jury, but not AS much] Ordinal Numerals FIRST, SECOND, THIRD, UMPTEENTH, ANOTHER, ADDITIONAL, ALTERNATIVE, NEXT The statement that there is one (or more) numbers carries with it the implication that there are other numbers. a. If you can find an ADDITIONAL nut to fit this bolt then we'll fix the engine. [presuppose the existence of at least one other nut that fits the bolt] b. I'm asking you for the THIRD time: 'Did you steal the cake?' [you have already been asked twice] c. NEXT time I come here, you'd better be gone. [i am coming back here and intend returning] d. ANOTHER thing to consider is your rate of breathing. [there is/are some thing(s) to consider other than your rate of breathing] Quantifiers (ALL, EACH, EVERY, FEW, FEWER, LOTS, MANY, MUCH, NONE, SEVERAL, SOME, etc) These indicate number and can be used to generalise plurality, totality or absence. Examples are thus: a. All the cheer leaders ate ice cream after the game. [this implies there were a number of cheer leaders present after the game and then generalises that 'all' without exception ate ice cream: totality is implied] b. Each of the cheer leaders ate ice cream after the game. [again plurality is implied and totality generalised] c. A few of the cheer leaders didn't eat ice cream after the game. ['few' is non-specific and thus a generalisation: the word also implies that more than a few - i.e. a majority - ate ice cream after the game] d. None of the cheer leaders attended the game. ['None' is absolute - and implies by generalisation that they were not there, supporting any side, nor observing] e. I won't be getting under your feet MUCH longer now my new flat is almost ready. [implies that the speaker has 'been getting under your feet' for a long time] Marking (by Voice Stress and Otherwise) Used in isolation or in conjunction with the foregoing forms to place special emphasis on some particular word or group of words and thereby indicate, that in the view of the speaker, they have a particularly important meaning. This is often done in a supposedly 'knowing' way - as if the speaker were sharing some special, inside information with the listener(s). The most common means of marking is by voice - the word(s) to be marked are uttered at a different volume, at a different pitch, are drawn out or heavily inflected, etc. Alternatively, some other means of analogue marking might be used - rolling the eyes, nodding the head, hitting a table, tapping a foot, and so on. a. I'll let you off for it THIS time. [implies there have been/will be other times] b. Do you mean your drove down here in the RED car? [there are other colours - you could have used one of them] c. I'm going to give you THREE REASONS why we need this contract. [there may be other reasons: by emphasising - and calling them to attention - the speaker infers they have pre-eminence above all other reasons] d. This is your LAST CHANCE. [implies you have had other chances, also implies finality/importance] Cleft Sentences These begin with the words IT IS or IT WAS - followed by a noun argument: the form can be concatenated. a. IT WAS next door's cat that dug the forty foot hole in our lawn. [there is a hole in the lawn: unless there is evidence to demonstrate that the said cat dug the hole in the lawn, then the first part of the sentence is an out and out assumption by assertion] b. IT IS next door's cat that is responsible for digging the forty foot hole in our lawn OR IT IS that dog from across the way. [concatenated form] Pseudo Cleft Sentences These are arranged in the form WHAT IS . The form may be concatenated. a. WHAT next door's cat needs IS dousing with a bucket of water to keep it out of here. [again the assertion that 'next door's cat needs something' is a total assumption: it is further assumed that dousing with bucket of water will keep it out of here AND that it has been in here in the first place] b. WHAT next door's cat needs AND that dog from across the way IS dousing with a bucket of water. [concatenated form] Complementary or Copulative Verbs The copular or copulative verbs indicate a special case of relationship. They are used in a statement to allow an entity to be qualified in potentially elaborate manner and not to express a formal relationship. Notwithstanding this, these verbs do qualify their complement's existence. [definition from http://www.csi.uottawa.ca/tanka/files/complexities.html#RTFToC26 ] Verbs of this kind will use adjectives rather than adverbs as qualifiers. A reasonably exhaustive list of copulative verbs is: subjective complements: `be', `become', `grow', `get', `feel', 'stay', 'turn', 'speak', 'keep', `seem', `appear', `taste', `sound', `smell', `look', `remain', `act', `go', `turn': objective complements: `make', `prove', `imagine', `consider'. In the majority of cases verbs of this class will be discovered in direct assertions - assertions which, although they might contain controversial assumptions, are generally simple to decode. The verbs of this type used in presuppositions are more likely to be verbs related to change - 'become', 'get', 'grow', 'turn', 'stay', 'remain', 'keep', etc: some of these have already been discussed in earlier forms. That being said, some of the other verbs, a few of which signify that non-attributable opinion is being/about to be expressed, also need to be considered.. a. When did you become frightened of the consequences? [assumes change from non fear to fear by means of the verb of change 'become': implies current state is 'frightened', and that consequences exist] b. How do you manage to appear so young? [assumption is that you 'appear' young: that is an opinion, but note it is not attributable to anyone] c. That sounds incredible. [an assertion, but something sounds 'incredible' to someone: credibility is a matter of persuasion] d. How is it possible to imagine that he is innocent? [this question carries an implicit assumption of guilt - with the person imagining being neatly removed] e. It is considered that Smith may be a liar. [this is an assertion: who is 'considering' and by what measure are hidden assumptions] Appendix II What follows is a note by the author relating to conscious and subconscious communication in word and how words and meaning relate to 'things' in the broadest sense. This is closely related to the present Presuppositions page, indeed it was written in parallel with it, and is published here in its more or less original, speculative, rough form in order to provide interested readers with some food for thought on the topic of general language use, meaning and understanding. The note as written refers to communications in words between two or more parties: since a signifcant proportion of what we call 'thinking' takes place in words (i.e. in 'Internal Dialogue' also known as Audio-Internal-Digital or Aid mode in NLP terminology), what is presented will also have implications for how words connect with meaning in 'thought'. Words and Meaning: The best we can come to a 'real' meaning for anything in words is by a precise/concise 'scientific' description wherein all superlatives/relatives are dropped and the words and word forms used are, as far as possible, simple, unambiguous, and what everyone involved would agree to be 'fact'. (a lot of this is coming from work on the presupp paper wherein the implied assumptions in a communication - true or counterfeit - are transmitted as 'subconscious' or apriori fact.) The further one moves away from this stale 'fact', the further the 'word pattern' becomes detached from what we might agree to be its 'real' meaning - AND THE MORE ASSUMPTIONS/ PRESUPPOSITIONS THERE MUST NECESSARILY BE IN THE WORD SYSTEM. Hence, the more presuppositions there are in a communication/the more complex they are, the greater the proportion of/the greater the depth of the message transmitted at a subconscious level. Divergence in Meaning: More presuppositions means more assumptions made about the commonality of meaning between transmitter/receiver. These assumptions in 'fair' cases - which comprise by far and above the majority of communications - are subconscious. Because it is impossible to transmit in words 'all' that is known about the content of a particular message/utterance, (ultimately, 'all' becomes the language system of the parties and how it relates to itself and the subject matter under consideration), every transmission made - and received - is necessarily incomplete and may be divided into conscious (semi-'deliberately' chosen/spoken) elements and subconscious (unspoken/implied) elements, the former residing in the surface wording, the latter in the nested presuppositions within the wording. The more presuppositions (=assumptions) the sender makes, the more assumptions the receiver has to admit in order to decode the message - all subconsciously (in the normal, fair case). Because of differences in understanding of word/concept, and differences in the linguistic/image reference systems in general between the two parties, what is sent will not be what is received - and the discrepancy will be compounded in proportion to the number of assumptions (=presuppositions) made by the sender. Referring back to what is written above about words and meaning: "all superlatives/relatives are dropped and the words and word forms used are, as far as possible, simple, unambiguous, and what everyone involved would agree to be 'fact'." Combining the last two sentences and re-stating: THE CLEAREST COMMUNICATIONS ARE THOSE CONTAINING THE FEWEST PRESUPPOSITIONS. That is one property: others could be stated. How we Communicate in Word (This is partially a reiteration of the previous paragraph - included since it does throw light on A to B communications and explains things in a slightly different way). The speaker 'chooses' the presuppositions (although this is usually a subconscious process), and the listener is presented with the task of 'understanding' them: this again is generally a subconscious process. In other words, the principal means of spoken communication is from subconscious to subconscious by means of implication carried in the language pattern. Accordingly, owing to differences in the coding systems that exist between various participants in a communication (e.g. meanings understood from various words/word groups, etc. - all of which are accessed automatically/subconciously), there will be differences in understanding between the sender and the receiver. Cheating: Counterfeit presuppositions cheat and short circuit the natural communication process to the benefit of the sender. In addition to the normal conscious to conscious, subconscious to subconscious messaging that takes place in an ordinary communication, a new element of conscious to subconscious direction takes place: this is a manipulative process introduced by the sender in order to deliberately influence the receiver subliminally. Slang: Slang, cliché, generalisation, sentence fragments and aphorism all rely heavily upon implied meanings, which the speaker - and the listener (unless he challenges) - subconsciously accept: a) as presupposed fact and b) as being common in their systems of understanding. Since a) above depends upon b) - and b), owing to the different experiences, images, memories and hence different language conditioning of the participants, can never ultimately be true - the assumptions made in a) and b) are false in all but the broadest, lowest common denominator sense. Thus all but the very simplest communications in 'slang', or similar loosely defined systems, are likely to be fraught with misunderstanding at the subconscious level. D.H.K aka LIQAYE

Language Abuse and Human Consciousness Keynote: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis 'Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication and reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.' This passage from the American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir (1884-1936)'s 'The Status Of Linguistics As A Science', written in 1929, is what has come to be known as the 'Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis' Related Quotations This is but a world of illusion (Guatama Buddha) 'He gave man speech, and speech created thought, which is the measure of the universe' (Prometheus Unbound, Shelley) '...misleading symbols were everywhere treated with a wholly unwarranted respect...' (Aldous Huxley: introduction to 'The First and Last Freedom' 'Hear, and understand; not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.' (Matthew 15;11) 'The description is not the described.' (J Krishnamurti) Introduction And so to the topic of Language Abuse. Let me say at the outset that this does not refer particularly to the use of so called 'abusive language' - swearing, cursing insults and the like - although, as with most English word pairs, the two are inevitably related with one being a subset of the other. I shall attempt to define language abuse as follows: 'Accidental, habitual (subconscious) or deliberate (conscious) use of language patterns that are non-specific and which either a) do not relate directly to matters in the observable, real world or b) refer to such matters in an ambiguous or vague manner.' This is a rudimentary definition, which I am sure can be improved upon (suggestions please!), but it will do for now. I hesitated when I wrote it, wondering whether or not to include language patterns which refer to the past (memory) and future (speculation) since, by observation, such seem to occupy a significant place in everyday conversation {I was, we will, when our, she said, do you remember, etc.}. Being aware of what I intend to write, I will certainly (future = speculation!) be touching on time related misrepresentations - indeed, such are implicit in a lot of what follows. This paper should be viewed as a first attempt to address this topic, and I do not claim to have covered everything (indeed, there are certain forms of advanced language pattern that are so rare in everyday life that they been deliberately omitted). The reader might well ask 'What's the point of all this?': I shall attempt to elucidate thus: 1) language, in both written and spoken form, is one of the greatest 'inventions' of the human species: some would say the greatest. The only other known way Nature has ever discovered of passing on information in time is DNA 2) without language, there would be no science, no technology, no serious art, no history and the (much depopulated) human race would be reduced to living in caves, daily pitting their being against an apparently hostile, uncontrollable environment 3) language then has practical, beneficial uses. Although it can be argued that some technology is non-beneficial, language, like most basic technology in itself is neutral: electricity can be used to warm or electrocute, to lighten the darkness or torture - its ultimate application depends upon the HUMAN user 4) on the other side of the coin, we have the not so useful - except to the individual 'users' - applications of language, the kind this page is all about. Amongst these are the uses (abuses) for demagogic purposes, deceit, to persuade people to 'believe' in unlikely falsehoods, political purposes, con-tricks and the rest. (although there is light in the darkness in that there are some positive means available to employ even this 'abusive' aspect of language in therapeutic settings) Language then, provides us with the gift of a vehicle for rapid, flexible symbolic communication. Like any vehicle, it can be used properly - for practical purposes - or abused to create confusion, chaos and ultimately devastation, at the whim of the individual driver. We have already had two horrendous World Wars on this planet in recent times, both of which can be traced back to selfishness and language abuse. This matter needs to be seriously addressed: if we ever have WWIII, we shall surely be back in the caves: the rulers and wealthy might think they can escape and seek sanctuary in deep mines, but then, what is a mine other than a man-made cave? {Notes: 1. Several of the elements in part 1 of this paper have been adapted from Bandler and Grinder's 'The Structure of Magic: Vol 1', although there are a number of significant original additions 2. Since it is far more predominant in everyday life - and since it is the most flexible, rapid and difficult medium of language to analyse - I have couched this paper in terms of the spoken word, referring generally to the speaker and listener: the paper also refers to the written word) What follows is broadly constructed along the following lines: Part1) analysis and explanation of some of the commoner elements in language abuse Part 2) analysis of compound examples from everyday life Part 3) analysis of compound historical examples Part 4) presentation of some means to recognise and challenge abuse Language Abuse Part 1: Elements 1) Nominalisation a) The essential process at work in nominalisation is that a verb (process word) is presented as a noun (event). Examples of this are: 'The woman is angry' (anger being the verb conversion), 'Phil has a lot of interest in this.' (interest being the verb conversion), 'The president issued his denial yesterday.' (denial being the verb conversion). Nominalisations are fairly easy to spot - once you begin to look for them: the test is 'can I put the 'object' referred to in a wheelbarrow?' b) The use of the past/future tense of a verb to disguise, and partially delete the events that occured/are expected to occur in a process is a commonplace form of nominalisation. Examples are: 'I met someone else' and 'I am going to meet the woman'. In both cases, the verb 'meet', which is shorthand for a complex process - which might involve handshakes, reciprocation, lunch, exchange of business cards, earnest or light discussion - is presented almost as an event. Other examples are 'I drove the car', 'I shall walk to the shop, 'I will rule the world'. Since this form is common parlance (unqualified verb inferring event), it is difficult to catch & is often used as a form of deletion. 2) Deletion a) General case. Noun groups are deleted from a sentence and replaced by vague verb groups. That sounds complex, but in practice it is very simple to do, and very simple to detect as the following examples will illustrate: i) The table was broken. Now tables don't spontaneously combust, neither do they suddenly break themselves - so there has to be an agent, which is not mentioned in the sentence, that actually did the breaking: 'The table was broken (how?) by George putting a heavy weight on it.' Putting the question 'how?' or 'by whom', restores the deletion. ii) I'm terrified. Terror does not exist in isolation - it must have an object, so asking the question 'by what?' restores the deletion to: 'I'm terrified of big dogs.' iii) 'I find you disturbing' Disturbing who/what? The restoration might lead to 'I find you disturbing to me.' iv) 'Fred gets angry sometimes' Angry about what? The deletion could typically be 'about his wife gossiping with the woman next door'. b) Need operators Some element of 'need' is implanted in the sentence, typically by means of the words NECESSARY, NEED, MAY, ABLE, UNABLE, CAN, CAN'T, POSSIBLE, IMPOSSIBLE, SHOULD, HAVE, MUST, MAY, all of which depend upon some (de facto) hidden, hence deleted, logic on the part of the speaker. Example: 'I must go to the shop today'. The reasons, the logic driving 'must' are deleted. Including the (deleted) phrase 'or else we will have no milk to drink', restores the sentence. 'I shouldn't be doing this': again the reasons are deleted. >c) Comparatives Such words as longer, shorter, taller, warmer, colder best, better, worst, most, least - which occur in adjective groups -- are MEANINGLESS without a system of reference. To say that 'A is better than B' deletes the system of measurement or comparison, in that the listener is not informed about the basis of measurement between being implied. Ultimately, any meaningful system of measurement must be scientific and agreed by all concerned - including the listener- otherwise the statement is entirely arbitrary and subjective. As a silly related example of this, I can quite cheerfully say that a foot is longer than a yard - and cause controversy because people assume a frame of reference where it is not given: had I said that a large dinosaur's foot is longer than and Imperial yard (giving reference frame), there is no dispute. d) Non-Specific Adverbs, Especially those with 'ly' tails These are often semi-comparative and/or do not have a specified object (I.e. reference system deleted or object deleted). Many of them, but not all, end in the letter dyad 'ly'', hence its singling out for special attention. Examples: 'He's a great guy.' (great to whom, in who's eyes, great measured how?), 'She's the cleverest woman you'll ever meet' (in who's opinion, how is her cleverness measured, clever in what way?). 'Unfortunately, it's too late for another drink' (unfortunate for whom?), 'Obviously, my boss dislikes me' (obvious to whom?). In many of these cases, the speaker may, or may not be stating his/her personal opinion, the important thing is, is that there is a significant deletion in that opinion is stated as fact: if it is, it is a subtle form of assertion (see later). e) Singular/Plural The speaker, who will always be singular, takes upon him/herself the mantle of speaking on behalf of an undefined group. The definition of the group is unspoken (and is thus a deletion), and is varied throughout the verbalisation. Sometimes the singular and plural terms are used contiguously - even in the same sentence. Examples: 'It's a pleasure for me to welcome you all to the show, and I know we will all have a good time tonight.' 'We will not tolerate import duties, and I know that you will all agree with me on this - the dockers, the weavers, the miners, all of you: we will fight for our rights.' The device is adopted so as to give the illusion that the speaker and listener are aligned as part of some (often shifting) inclusive group & infer common purpose. Keywords: WE, US, ALL, THEY, THEM, YOU. 3) Generalisation All language, by virtue of it being a symbol system & set of rules for organising the symbols, is inevitably general. The description is never the described and, since linguistic processes MODEL the actual, the more closely related and specific the model with respect to 'what is' in the real world of experience, the less general that model becomes. Generalisation diminishes language models by deleting and/or distorting links with experience AND translates the specific into the general. Some techniques of generalisation (for which read model depletion) are presented below. a) Twisting & Generalising by False Logic The Aristotelian system of logic comprising two premises and a conclusion along the lines of: a) Problem: Mary doesn't like me b) Fact: Mary is a woman c) False Conclusion (huge problem): Women don't like me. Note the nominalisation of the word 'like' in lines one and three, and the false logic in arriving at the conclusion in line three. There is also a generalisation (no referential index - see later) with respect to 'women' on line three (all women, women of Mary's type, old women, young women????) That is a relatively straightforward use of syllogism: now consider the following: a) All dogs have four legs b) My cat has four legs c) My cat is a dog A remarkable false conclusion! Related to this is the general mechanism of false logic 'A causes B', which although it might appear ****** and obvious occurs time after time in everyday life. Examples: That dress MAKES you look ten years younger Sitting in this car WILL CAUSE you to feel like a millionaire The look in your eyes says YOU WILL love me forever A further twist on this is the implied causative, but since this is more a form of presupposition, it will be dealt with later. b) Cliché The assumption is made, by the speaker, that the listener has access to - and exactly the SAME UNDERSTANDING OF - the same set of clichés as him/herself. This is an act of thought reading on two counts: even if the listener does know the cliché, it is highly unlikely that his/her interpretation is the same: consequently, speaker/listener agree on basis of shared misunderstanding. Furthermore, since clichés are trite generalisations in themselves, cliché use is a form of model depletion per se. Examples: 'Keep away from old George, he's as thick as two short planks.' (the cliché itself is meaningless - -are short planks any thicker than long ones - and comparing George, who may or may not be '****** ' [deletions] with two pieces of wood may be a colourful way of speaking, but it is a gross generalisation). 'Life is a bowl of cherries' ('Life'??? Does the cliché mean it is tasty, one can pick and choose, a small bowl, a large bowl, etc. The cliché is meaningless - but again colourful as a figure of speech: it attaches a [meaningless] visual image to itself). c) Common Knowledge Characterised by statements such as 'everyone knows that', 'we all know that', 'it's common knowledge that'. The speaker assumes, often implicitly, a shared, agreed knowledge base and a shared understanding of said base: it is a sweeping assumption that any two people's views about anything are alike or even nearly alike. This form of model depletion works in the same manner as cliché, except that there are no stock phrases used. d) Absent Referential Index Whilst cliché and 'common' knowledge might spuriously claim some shared, general form of referential index, the general form of generalisation is characterised by the absence of referential index. This is achieved by: i) deletion of frame of reference for noun and event words ii) improper/inadequate specification of reference frame for verbs and process words >This may sound complicated, but it isn't - the listener's task is to establish and challenge the non-specific words used by the speaker. Examples: 1) The *******s push me about. (who are they? how do they push you about?) 2) Mary pushes me around. (what do you mean 'pushes me around'?) 3) Let us not get bogged down in detail. (Who is 'us'? What is 'detail', what do you mean by it?} 4) One should always be aware of feelings. (Who is 'one' - you, me, someone else? Who's feelings? What kind of feelings? How is 'one' to actually be aware - sight, sound, taste or what?)) e) Universal Quantifier These are present in vague, gross, sweeping statements and hence non-referential. Typical words are: ALL, NONE, EVERYBODY, NOBODY, NEVER, ANY, EACH, EVERY, ALWAYS, NO ONE, NOWHERE, EVERYWHERE, EVERYONE. If the listener detects these words, he/she can be sure the speaker is generalising. f) Clipped Generalities These are bald, 'need' type statements in which the speaker generalises the generalisation into a type of shorthand. Examples: 1) I have to take care of the church 2) I must do as I'm told 3) I can't > g) Incompletely Specified Verbs The verb has the subject removed or poorly specified, and/or the predicate poorly specified. Examples: 1) I was cheated (how, out of what, by whom) 2) I was kissed ( " " " " ) 3) I was kissed on the left cheek (how, by whom?) 4) The woman in the red dress kissed me affectionately on the left cheek) h) Generalisation in Multi- Person Processes This is a special case of subtle deletion by generalisation wherein the speaker attempts to erase him/herself from the panorama by inferring total passivity. This is unwarranted, since interactions between two or more people are always reciprocally causal and are PROCESSES. The passive person, despite using word forms of subject 'acting on' object to indicate the contrary, is always involved in the process in some way. Examples: 1) Joe is always arguing with me. (and he does it all alone?) 2) Matilda never stops humping me. (I just lie there like a stone) 3) Barry scares me. (even though I don't do anything) > i) Euphemism This is a favourite of politicians, public service employees, the military and media, it is singled out for a special mention. Strictly, it is a form of method d), (depletion of referential index), although the word 'depletion' is a gross understatement in the case of many euphemisms. Examples: a) a major battlefield cock up occurs which results in the soldiers of the speaker's army attacking each other and creating carnage amongst themselves: euphemism 'friendly fire' b) a senior civil servant gets caught weaving a web of intrigue & is ultimately accused of lying: euphemism 'economy with the truth' c) a builder makes a mistake on a structural repair: a wall collapses around his ears & almost demolishes the house he is working on: euphemism 'We'll have to re-point that wall I'm afraid' > 3) Assertion a) Direct Assertion Although this is relatively easy to detect, the speed of events - particularly when the medium of the spoken word is involved - can allow it to slip by unchallenged. Direct assertion is more common than presupposition in unsophisticated speech patterns, and vice-versa (although closely related to assertion, the more complex subject presupposition is dealt with as a separate topic in this paper). The basic form of direct assertion is: 'X verb Y' where X and Y can be almost anything the speaker chooses, and the verb can adopt any past/present/future form. Adjectives and adverbs are all allowed as is the (common) use of pronouns and names. As always, there is a minor complication here: assertions (statements of opinion) and statements of generally accepted 'fact' can get confused, indeed this is the power of assertion whereby the wolf, in the guise of the speaker's opinion is portrayed in the sheep's fleece of fact. Examples: 1) Wood has grain (fact) 2) I am the best woodcutter in England (assertion/opinion) 3) Brick is hard (fact) 4) This cheese tastes horrible (assertion/opinion) 5) I am the greatest (assertion opinion) Note the presence of generalisation in the assertive statements represents the common case. All pretty obvious stuff, eh? Well go into a bar near your home this evening and listen in should you think all this has no bearing on the real world. There is a simple test which will detect whether or not a given statement is an assertion or a statement of fact: the test is to negate the statement and then consider if, on the balance of probabilities, it could still be true - if it could, then you have an assertion. Examples: 1) Wood has grain ['Wood does not have grain' does not match experience - the statement is factual] 2) I am the best woodcutter in England ['I am not the best woodcutter in England' - no evidence either way, the statement is an assertion] 3) Brick is hard ['Brick is not hard'. Although I have seen Styrofoam bricks, 99.999% of the bricks I have seen are hard - the statement is factual on the grounds of probability and experience] 4) This cheese tastes horrible ['This cheese does not taste horrible' - I have not tasted the cheese and I just don't know: statement is an assertion] 5) I am the greatest ['I am not the greatest' - huge deletion (greatest what?): no evidence to judge on and I just can't tell: an assertion] b) Tag Phrases Tag phrases are commonly used by some speakers at the end of assertive statements in order to reinforce the speaker's point of view by getting the listener to agree. The tag phrase can masquerade as a question, a gentle reassurance to the listener - it is not: it is a subtle form of assertion reinforcement, and that tag phrases are ALWAYS VOLITIONAL. They say 'reinforce my assertion, make it twice as strong'. Examples: 1) You like this, don't you? 2) You can go to the shop, can't you? 3) This soup tastes good, doesn't it? 4) That's all right, like. 5) She's a good woman, you know. (+optionally 'what I mean') 6) I can do this job, you understand? (+optionally 'what I'm saying') 7) This is a good game, isn't it? 8) I'm a good looking gal, ain't I? c) Lead Phrases The opposite of tag phrases, but with the same effect of reinforcing the assertion: these begin to border on repetitions (next). Some common types are shown below 1) I said, I said that was heavy rainstorm 2) Can you, can you, pass me the salt. 3) You, you, you'll have to call me tomorrow 4) I'd like you to, I'd like you to call me Frank. > d) Repetition 'Say it three times and it will be true'? Well not quite, but say it two times, three times, four times or even more, and the speech pattern will fire off more or less the same neurone patterns in the brain of the listener(s) and tend to ingrain the 'truth' of the assertion. The listener's mind is the listener's means of perceiving reality: if his/her state of mind is affected, then so is his/her perception of reality. I repeat a line from Sapir-Whorf here to reinforce this: "The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group" - so the speaker attempts to impose his/her language & make the real world the world they want, by affecting the way the listener perceives it. Get together with some friends and say 'Zeig Heil' (or 'Hot Dog') a hundred or so times in unison: see how you look at things after that. Repetition is the general stuff (in prosodic or rhythmic form as well as word) that slogans and catch phrases are made of {see separate paper} - and repetition is also surprisingly common in everyday speech. e) Speakers with Occult Powers One particularly amusing form of assertion (a particular case of the direct form) is when the speaker, in all seriousness, assumes the role of fortune teller/mind reader. The reader might scoff at this, but this type of assertion is all too common (the refutation of this type of assertion, given later, is quite amusing). Some sample statements are: 1) I can tell that you ARE getting interested in this (mind reading) 2) I know that you WILL really enjoy this (fortune telling) 3) You and I ARE really going to get on (fortune telling) 4) I DO understand how you feel (mind reading) >Notice the typical key verbs (upper case) and generalisation used in statements of this kind, notice that, joking apart, 'will', 'do', and 'are' are all powerful directive words and the absence of qualifying words such as 'perhaps', 'maybe', 'might' and so forth, are normally absent in this kind of statement. Just to lay things bare here, how would you feel if someone came to you and gave you the direct commands (You will enjoy this, etc.) embedded in the foregoing examples? f) Command Questions See also section on presupposition. These are a peculiar breed, questions which are put without the expectation of any reply in words, BUT the expectation of a reply in action - which is invariably the case. It's almost as if the first two words in the question are spoken in reverse order (such that 'will you' becomes 'you will' and so on). Examples: Can you pass me the salt? Will you open the door? Do you follow my meaning? Have you got a minute? > g) Hidden Will The dictionary definition of the word 'will' is lengthy, so I shall present only a taste here: 'Faculty by which person decides/conceives self as deciding upon and initiating action' 'control exercised by deliberate purpose' 'deliberate or fixed desire or intention' 'energy of intention' 'what is desired or ordained by the person'. So that's the approximate meaning - and the majority of English speakers talk about it every day - but in a very subtle and abbreviated manner by means of words such as: I'll, we'll, they'll, he'll, she'll, won't. Every time one of those words is spoken, volition is being expressed: in the case of first person statements, the volition is assertion - 'I will', 'I will not'. In the case of non-personal statements, the speaker may or may not be expressing personal volition (the test is 'does the speaker refer to a matter of fact or self asserted opinion?') h) Hidden Existential As with hidden will, we have hidden 'is' (and it is interesting that these two fundamental statements of being have evolved forms where they are - whoops there's another - neatly and discreetly hidden away as tags on the ends of other words). So, in addition to the '-ll' suffix, we have the '-s' suffix and the '-re' suffix and their variants. Examples are: it's, that's, he's. she's, you're, they're, we're and a peculiar slang/dialect variant I's. it's = it is he's = he is she's = she is that's = that is you're = you are we're = we are they're = they are These innocent, almost unnoticeable tags are of the utmost importance, especially in the case of spoken language. Every time one of those words is spoken, and if the statement is not factual, volition is being expressed by the projection of opinion as fact: the volition is the assertion of state, of being - 'X is so', 'Y are Z' and so on. Care is needed here in discriminating, since the speaker may or may not be expressing personal volition (the test is "is this a statement of undeniable fact, e.g. 'this is a table', or opinion, e.g. 'she is an ***** '?" If undeniable fact is too strong a test for the situation you have, try balance of probabilities.) Presupposition: This section has been re-written in a more refined, extended form (February 2000) and now appears as a separate 'Presupposition and Consciousness' page. For access, follow the link at the end. Quotes Speaking in quotes (i.e. telling jokes and stories, which in a written form would be enclosed in quotation marks) provides the inventive speaker with a powerful mechanism to influence the listener by all of the techniques presented in this paper & additionally provides opportuntity to influence by allusion and metaphor. The mechanism of 'quotes' itself is a form of presupposition in that it assumes that the, often fantastic and larger than life, characters and goings on portrayed in the story/joke exist and have meaning: it is a subtle way of leading the imagination. Conversational Postulate (see also section on command questions) These are commands and suggestions disguised as questions. The question is a front end tag, typically: 'Can you,' 'Will you,' 'Can I ask you to,' 'What would happen if,' followed by the suggestion or command e.g. 'think of your nose,' 'imagine owning this car,' 'pretend I'm in bed with you,' 'be honest with me.' A typical question would look like 'Can I ask you to imagine owning this car?' Stated baldly, and shown in small groups of like wording, the given presuppositions and presuppositional forms might seem simple enough to understand and evaluate in terms of meaningful sense & underlying assertion. Unfortunately, that is not the case since presuppositions tend to appear stacked together in groups (some speakers have either 'naturally' occurring or learned forms of presuppositional speech) & the rapidity of delivery makes them particularly difficult to untangle when the medium of the spoken word is involved. As an example of stacked presuppositions, I've taken a number from the examples given above and pasted them together in an exercise called 'Honest Jake's Car Sales Script': pity any poor customer who comes under an onslaught like this. Honest Jake's Car Sales Script I've been doing this job for years, you know, and a question I often ask my customers is: 'When did you realise that you are going to buy this car?' Always intrigues me when that turning point comes, when he realises the car fulfils all his requirements, the price is right and we can make a deal. Would you like to sign up now, or after another test drive? Before you sign, would you like another look under the hood? Maybe not. So, shall we discuss the finance, take another look at the specification, have another test drive or do you just want to sign now? Can you just imagine yourself owning this baby? Beautiful, isn't it, and we can leave the credit check until after you've signed. Happily, I can give you 5% off if you buy today. Have you ever signed one of these contracts before? Yes? If you use my pen, you can sign here or here, or do you need another test drive first? No? Excellent, so I'll give you my pen and then you can sign just here. D.H.K aka LIQAYE

The following passage (from: Griswald Gnome)uses word journey, anagram, alliteration and rhyme (and a few other things) as literary devices, is offered as an example of such: in particular the word journeys create some rather tangential and amusing effects. For those that do not reach the end of this passage and i know there will be many, the question raised is as follows: Ask yourself now, and after all the fun and party games, know this is deadly serious: does the use of cliché, sound-bite and stock phrase assist, or obscure communication? Do our minds work in patterns? Are our thoughts conditioned; what part does word, and language play in all this? Ask yourself. For a treatise on humanity read on. "I am a Peristaltic Basaltic Cabalist," began the magician gnome, "A reformed deformer, searcher for research, a regrind grinder, one who once faltered, but reflated and did rejoin as a joiner. If I might presume, I'm going to lecture you. This statement is my testament: my supreme objective is to preserve the perverse. In my time, I have been responsible for orientating integration, sorties in stories, porterage, reportage, matters relating to alerting and altering the integral triangle, repulsed preludes, bear-cat cabaret, and for discretion in directions on how to process corpses - my seminar on remains. I have also worked as a slayer of layers of relays, and once sang in a porous chorus in a band on Centuarus, designed a petorus, and wrote a ferrous thesaurus. My work in progress is often anonymous, sometimes polyonomous, even pseudonymous, but can never be onymous, since at times I wonder who I am myself. Fact is, I've had my finger in most fringe places where desire might reside, I even ambled into bedlam and got blamed when someone inserted a sintered tube in a resident. I'm currently working as a pine-tar painter, who repaints pantries in purple repulp with all that that pertains. I also prepare and re-paper, paint reposts on posters and signpost such postings, respray prayers and predators teardrops, and predate tapered red-tape. Both my parents were panters. My mother initiated the reproduce procedure. She distracted father from his organist roasting, put a rope around the dope, leapt a petal, and hauled him away to re-section the erections after secretion.I was fathered by an earth-fed, parodic picador, who used to smother mother's spare-spear in pears. That's when he wasn't paring posh shop pears or raping a Satanist's assistant in the Mansion of Onanism - the padre's spread, with eight rooms, on the moors. Of royal blood, Padre Drape still reigns in his own house, but had to resign as a singer. Father knew a federal mackerel and cockerel, a liberal general, and a mineral admiral, who all spoke in guttural, scriptural doggerel; so perhaps now you see where I'm coming from. My mother, father's shafter, was a red-head who, in public, adhered to the name Teresa the Reset Teaser. In private, she was known otherwise, as White Rose. She was a poet, mathemagician, and a mater's master chef. Amongst her works are: Rimes of the Emir's Miser; Passed Over Eavesdrops; Diametric Matricide; Reset, and Steer through the Terse Trees, and Pasted Adepts ride Spinal Plains with Tons of Snot. When father wasn't out paring or raping - and that would be after he got banged up and became a remanded demander, a meander, renamed as an amender - he ran two factorise factories employing operators on poor rates. Products included: refill-filler, spew-pews, rectal claret, replicas for calipers, rescale cereals, resins and rinses for sirens, bared beard-bread, a form of battle-tablet, carp crap, and devices to calibrate bacterial bean-bane. He sold negative effect chemicals backing down the river of time, saying it was now or never say die. Production dropped when he permitted flexible working, so he resorted to restoring rostering. As well as being a nostalgia analogist, father was an innovator, always philosophising and on the lookout for ways to make money. He would spend hours plotting with his bantam batman, discussing insatiable banalities, the re-interprets of interpreters, how to censor crones and disable baldies, ways to retrace the terrace caterer, and where to obtain a baritone obtainer. Although a rough, practical man - indeed, clad in one of his ******* tabards, he once reared a dearer, re-read reader, and tarred a retard trader in my very presence - he had great intelligence. In middle age, he wrote a thesis on heists, sithes, who was shiest and several other things. He had to incorporate procreation and dipoles of course, and I think that spoiled it. He had some wise sayings as well. Three I remember particularly are: If your Lock Needs Lubrication, Act: Rub Oil in it, then: Distillation? Do it in a Still, and the best: Eternity is Entirety. He once bought a fleece codpiece, from the Chief of Police, for one silver piece, dunked it in grease, and gave it his niece, on a lease, to scare off the geese. When mother wasn't doing anything else, she beavered with the bereaved, drank endless cups of throb-broth with Bertha the Breath Bather, studied lumps in plums, worked as a prickle pickler and counselled relapsed pleaders. Sometimes, she would go to the Sodwo Woods, seeking to regain an earing which she lost as a girl. Once, she rescued and secured a seducer, who had tried to fondle and enfold her, to a limestone milestone. She hoaxed the ox-head, felt him, and left him there to sparge his grapes. She was bright, my mother. She loved guiding fresh shelf flesh to trance nectar, hiding sidling sliding-mesh from a nosy inspector, providing a crèche in a law-abiding corset sector, confiding afresh in each sceptre spectre prospector, and riding alone with an elector's director selector protector. I am now one of the blessed bedless. I wander the country at random, beseech beeches, scrub curbs, stare tears, shear hares and aweless weasels, unstrip turnips, and will be warned by no warden or rodman to move on. I despise the predictiveness of vice-presidents, have suffered only the manliest of salt-mine ailments, (indeed I've only ever sneezed once, at an art exhibition - and that was largely due to gallery allergy), serve verse and resist resits. I've played the flirt, dug the dirt, dished out hurt, truth and confusion - and I can't apologise to most of them that got it - because they don't happen to be here and now. Indeed, had they been so at the time, there would be no need anyway. I have expertise in optology and topology, options and potions, pathos and potash, trashed hatreds, parties for pirates, outspring sprouting, prices of précis, steering integers, warder reward, the ardent red-ant and all the basest beasts. I've worked in government, as minister of environment, suffered abandonment and displacement - through shipment of equipment from the basement to the emplacement - imprisonment, and the fire of enlightenment in a tenement. (With regard to that, let me say that your safe conduct in this world wide web of deceit depends upon your innate ability to stand alone in a crowd, study the subject matter under mind your steppe, and save as you learn the hard way out. I don't want to see you later in the mourning dew as a shadow of your former self sufficient, or as an insecurity risk at a sing-sing along, or a soul-mate to the shifting sands of time and space - even as a single parent saddled up with debtor's prison speak easy.) No. I say to you: know the moment of truth serum, scan the surroundings and zoot suit yourself, remembering always and forever young that: * Each and every nail that stands above the floorboards will be measured by the inflexible iron-rule of thumb and treated accordingly * Economy with the truth is stranger than fiction * Each dog that turns on its own master race shall be turned again in turn on the irresistible force of the snarling lathe of vengeance and control * People who ply selfish games usually cheat * All things are fixed. Other things may pass: but this, as written, is in violet. By Order. Should you consider any of the foregoing incredible stories, I would say to you in response 'look around'. As for the art of the possible outcome, ask the Apathy Society. See if they'll commit themselves, see if they'll even bother replying to your begging letters of credit, voting yes or no comment, complaining, organising a party balloon, getting off their fat backsides or coming out to play ball. Try to find their form of address or book mark a public speaking engagement with them - if you can. Remember, they are the silent majority view: perhaps they have little or nothing worthwhile to say after all in all.I am a legislator and an allegorist, a satirical-non-racialist, a teacher and a cheater. I am an instructor in Rattan Tartan Tantra. Know now, that as I stand before you in this moonlight, this thin gloom, I've had a thousand hand-outs, learnt antler-rental from a reed-deer friend and I know Freya the Frigg Faery personally, I'm heirless and harmless, eat tea-radish relishes and have worked ten-summers as a re-order orderer and repetition petitioner. I patented the reboil-boiler, and a spray that repels lepers. I've had a go at all the seven deadly sins, and a few more. I could put them all in order of personal preference, but I won't, since that would only encourage some of you.I don't have any kind of greed bug (e.g. red bug), won't be buggered - but don't begrudge debugger who want's to do it somewhere else (e.g. rug, bed), with somebody else, and I hope that reveals several leavers. I can tabulate, confabulate, strangulate and triangulate in decorative, figurative, alliterative and narrative ways. I simulate, stimulate, stipulate, manipulate, copulate and populate at will; it's all the same to me, or so I calculate. I might toady today - to tread-trade as I seminate matinees - and make amnesties tomorrow. Then again, tomorrow never comes. It has been written that they who live by the swordfish shall die of boredom, smitten by the frost-bitten, Puritan skeleton. Not a lot of people know that, but I do as I happen to have written it. You know now, as I indicated earlier, as well, so in the limited space of two sentences I have increased your knowledge and made you into one of them. I was taught this particular fact of life by someone or other you are about to hear about, but I don't necessarily agree with it, or most other things either. I was under duress at the time to remember, remember when you were young ones, long ago, long suffering desire, I worked out in a long time dead-centre of hidden knowledge called the Who Me Fair City of Life, and did some porridge walking the talk with a street-wise man of letters. His name was Ernst Stern - a senor lecherer - the kind of man of the world who makes laughing stocks and shares this with you: 'Cast your bread upon the waters waster, the waters of life in the fast lane of pain. Lay down the law and order the drinks are on me. Always remember, remember, ladies might perspire, but hot women will make you sweat blood and tears.' I was stunned, lost for words of wisdom of the ancients when he first put his strange ideas to me, and answered with a few monosyllabic grunts and groans. He could see I was confused; chuckled, and pointed at the looking glass ceiling: 'Above and beyond, low morale is at an all time high, high roller, roller coaster ride on man - and man the pumps.' I shook my weary head, wondering if I had been bitten by the bug of brain damage limitation exercise books. I booked a return visit to the doctor's surgery hours. Then, slowly, like an open book worm turns the screw, to screw it all up, I began to realise the hanging loose morals of the tales. I let it sink in feeling content. 'I see through your looking glass bead game of chance your arm, Stern. You are a long time dead-centre party pooper, and if you dare draw a line in the dirt, one day you'll have to dig it; man of letters. Just you wait until the grime roper straps you on the boulder.' This seemed to impress him a lot, so I decided to carry on regardless. 'Live music is dead, a dead man's chest of treasure hunt the thimble, and you can leave it out and about, about equal opportunities in sales. Indeed, I suggest you look on the bright side, like me and my shadow boxing ring of roses.' 'I liked the one about the grime roper,' he said slowly dying away, 'but you won't think it's funny when the grin creeper knees you in the boulders, or the innkeeper traps you with a hairy moulder, a shirtfolder, a bolder older freeloader, and wooden stake holder - all great big fellas - in his cellars. They'll give you what for all it's worth. The dim peeper will slap you in his folder for sure enough said.' I couldn't keep up with all this, and that, and the other side of the coin a phrase shaper and his joined up thinking. He was far too clever for me by half of it. He elected a lame duck administration stance, and terrified me with camp fire tales of mystery and imagination is imaginary, the piebald pomp eater, the hump lumper, the flat spin doctor bleeper sheeper, and the bin and gone heaper and his rat-eyed wife - The Umpire of the Somme. Most electrifying of all, my love, was the saga of the slim limb gamekeeper of sin, who could get it in deeper, armed with nothing personal but a bottle of gin and sweet lies for Miss Prim and Proper behaviour self. The name of the keeper was Perwas Wapers. He still plays noughts and crosses anyone he comes across - and he comes across a few. He used to go to a night club called "The Reptile's Head Teacher", where he ate nitty-gritty navy-cake, sniffed nerve gas through a sweaty sock it to me and read naughty but nice full magazines on brand new age thinking of the implications speculatively. I had to admire Stern's satire, stoutly stated my desire to retire in old age of consent and departed - leaving him undone with a homespun one about the The Vampire of the Pun.Out on the rod I gain, looking for someone or other alternative medicine men at work study, I observed many things. I got a light touch of 'flu out the window dressing down and out of context, got beaten up at The First Shall be Last Chance Saloon, attended an all night party political ball game of chance encounters of the unkind, and went to a live show: 'Shore me the Whey Toga Om Sweat Ohm on Derange'. I discovered, as I slipped on the icing of the cake walk, and walked the talk and talked the walk of life is but a dream on. In an odd moment, I participated in a tug of war babies bottles of beer and skittles match. The rest of the team were top heavy weight boxer's shorts, travelling light headed as transit camp followers of fashion shows in Hull. (They say the toads in Hull are paid with wooden pensions.) We lost the no contest, and went off to celebrate the anniversary waltz at the nectar cavern club on the Head Bangers and Mash road. One of our team had a top secret, tattered and torn, tight trousers press card index system of reckoning. He was a tough nut case who cried the tears of a clown, told tongue twisters off and on, and was fond of the odd Technicolor yawn. He happened to be a two-timing, moon-shining, hillbilly mother's son of a gun on heat exchanger design techniques, a bank teller of make-believe in yourself - if you want anyone else to do - stories, and a former fish juggler. At one time he had walked on the waters of wantonness and plunged in again and again, until he ended up half his normal weight and totally exhausted. I forget his name now, but it's right on the tip of my two edged tongue tied cottage industry - somewhere near the back door on a piece of paper weight lifter. Then I moved on and met the Iron Man. The Iron Man with an iron will, an iron constitution, who ruled with an iron fist, had teeth like rusty nails, and did his ironing out doors in the rain dance. This steely-eyed man had a bold as brass neck, a copper bottom, a leaden heart, feet of clay and played bowls and blew his tin horn every full moon. He married an iron maiden, with a silver tongue, who pumped iron on an iron range and sang ironic folk songs of innocence. Iron Man, whose first name was Ferric, (his wife was known as Ferrica), did not possess a velvet glove puppet, had an impeccable record breaking scrap, and told me of a secret initiation ceremony held only on Indian Summers days without end of the day of reckoning. I asked why. He stared at me awhile, howled at the moon like he was an axe murderer, said he didn't know and wasn't going to stand there telling me he did. I stayed over the top of several sunsets, working as his apprentice boy friend, and finding out quite a bit about him. He was a keen naturalist whose motto was 'Live and Let Die Out'. He also let it slip out that he believed in the survival of the fittest and fastest ones can dry run away. As he said this is different, he was holding his outsized scrap-breaking hammer and tongs, and staring strangely. I ignored him eroding and redoing me. He then told me he used to be a spider map reader in ancient literature and glossy magazine articles of faith, hope and charity begins at home is where the heart is. Needless to say, I didn't understand on ceremony, and let it drop. Dead lucky for me as it happened.He had an irrational number theory of incredible stories, gave me tuition in the impossible question and answer session, showed me an intellectual lost property office of state your purpose in life, taught me the immune system of weights and measures of one sixth of a gill, put me in an identification parade along the main street lights, and said if I plead guilty about my ill gotten gains and illicit relationship, I would be let off loudly with an infectious disease ridden black rat.One of his constant gripes of wrath was 'There will only be one Monopolies Commission, until such time as we set up another to investigate them - and then there won't be one.' Whenever he voiced this statement, I would usually listen, stay silent as tinsel, and enlist the behaviour of a nodding donkey in a carrot patch doll. One daydream, right out of the lube blue sky, he said to me earnestly, 'Is is, is? Or is is, not is?' 'It is what it is,' I replied. 'If that is so, what does mean, mean?' Again, I didn't like the way he was looking at me. He could have meant average, parsimonious, nasty, sense, or something completely different. 'It probably has an average meaning, unless you're a miser' I finally replied. That seemed to stump him; he reverted to his original topic. 'If what is, is what is, what is... what is?' He gave me a penetrating look. 'What is the question?' 'What do you mean,' he scowled, 'what is the question? "What is", is not the question, but the answer.' 'I don't know: I am what I am.' He laughed and turned a blind eye away. 'you don't spell book very well off do you? It should be a 't', not a 'w'. I'll catch you later today in the show me, at the next turn of the wheel of fortune cookie.' As you might guess my weight, I left it at that. That's the way to do it over and out of the woods. I went up the road, down the road and show me the road out of here and now is the hour - over and out, Iron Man, man. Something must have happened to me back to basics at the Iron Man's place of worshipping graven images of famous people. I found I had become public enemy number one, two, three, four, five, once I caught a fish alive alive O dear what can the matter be alert. And I had to be, I was on the run. I took a walk on the wild side, hiding out in small towns and village fetes where I played the numbers game set and match, felt the nick of time on my hands, held a nurse's apron strings on a violin, used up nine lives in gold necklace killings, and stood on ceremony at a satisfied customer relationships counselling session. I discovered that life is hard and fast women in love letters. I watched an able bodied typeset, thickset asset stripper long jump a red light, as an act of love, and pull together ageless wisdom on a public assembly line manager's role of honour.I saw a strange devil woman in a rine stone circle of intimate friends, dancing naked and crying, 'Double your money is the square root of all evil intentions.' I became convinced that all, around and around me, was one of the cosmic comic's comic jokes. And the joke's on you too - courtesy of said demonic comedian. You can't afford it, and you can't afford to ignore it either. It might rain one day soon, when the cat's out of the bag of snakes under the door stop the music of the spheres. I once had occasion to for liaison with an even-handed Earth Mother who lived on Easy Street, in an earthquake zone, and specialised in erotic fantasies. Her real name was Pole Position Pauline. Although I couldn't translate her body language, I took the bull by the horns of a dilemma, brushed aside my brain washing machine mentality, and asked about eastern mysteries. She just stared at me. 'Whoops,' I thought again, 'easy does it better late than never nobody,' and decided on evasive action, man. She held up two half portions of empty vine glasses, looked at me hard on, and muttered, 'This one fully contains an economic slump. On the other hand is an ego trip through the flowers of the valley of death: do you understand the consequences?' I pretended to pretend to exude confidence tricks of the light fantastic visions, vainly hoping for an eclipse of the sun and moon shadows in the cellar so I could make good my escape committee. But it was not to be, or not to be. By some extraordinary coincidence - which is rarer than an ordinary coincidence - she bull whipped out her explicit photograph album of greatest hits, which showed me, easy going even handed me, in several compromising positions of power mad dog in a manger roles. This was a high explosive situation comedy of errors of judgement. Here was an experienced woman, eating out on an extortion racket, ready to give me extended coverage if she couldn't extract a confession. Once again I decided on evasive action, and asked to examine the evidence for the prosecution, all the time expecting an emotional response and my compassionate leave papers. Pauline flatly refused, closed the book of remembrance, smiled like an open grave, and told me she had no cause for complaint. 'That was a hard lesson for you,' she grinned sheepishly. 'I'm a cool headed, cold hearted, coin operated cover girl, who cries crocodile tears of laughter when the chips are down and out of order. In future incarnations, I suggest you cover your tracks with this.' She handed me a crucified signpost that said 'I am the way,' telling me she found it along Evolution Road. I looked hard as nails at the sign post, and then at the post office clerk to the council tax inspector, who had just walked in the door and hurt his nose. He shrugged his shoulders, and pointed out the window display. 'There's the time window,' he said mournfully. 'If you have been denied the raw courage of your convictions for undetectable lies, deceit, cheating at cards, one and a half-truths and misleading statements for the defence, I suggest you go now or never return.' He sat on a chair-person on the corner flag it up, and proceeded to play around with a twelve-string guitar string along, theme tune up, long song medley. His first time shall be last prime number was two faced, followed on in rapid succession to the throne by three wise virgins, four of a kind face, and five fingers. I asked him whatever happened to number one. He replied that everyone's looking out for number one, so why should he? This clerical cabaret star turn on and off played: "That Fast-Track Ferris Wheel is Rolling Down the Road," followed by, "Quiet Words, Big Clubs Blues," and "Rub that Rock Salt in the Wounds of Self Abuse." Pauline the Earth Mother turned on me again. 'Before you go,' she whispered, 'remember there is only one way out, only two alternatives, three steps to heaven, four tunes, five pointed stars, six faces of the cube root, seven rays or raze, eight balls, nine Gnostic Gnomes and tenderness. That classified information might prove useful one day. Take care.' I followed my broken signpost, and headed the ball for the way out sign on the dotted line fault finder. Outside, I wondered what on earth Earth Woman meant when she looked through her glasses, and what he was singing out about turning the tables. I decided the simple truth game isn't what it seems, and that the clerk was but a shady character assassination trick or treat travelling circus freak show who just came along for the ride of his life. In one adventure story, I met the Innocent Creature Preacher, a cold blooded, warm-bellied vegetarian womaniser, who ate huge steaks of raw mutton dressed as lamb chops behind closed curtains for you. Preacher, whose real number name game might have been Swallow Hook Sid, was a pink eyed, wall faced, blue clad Mister Nice Guy with a smooth lizard line, an earing through his left lip, and one through his right frontal lobe. The tattoo on his right hand said 'LOVE', the one on his left breast 'PEACE', and the one on his tongue 'DECEIT' - but he usually kept the latter, and the licker, well hidden in the dark tropical region between his hydraulic jaws. He offered to show me how best to do it. 'Do what?' I asked. 'Charm the birds,' he reptiled with a grin. 'I can snake charm bracelet anything.' It might have been the earing, or perhaps the shape and orientation of his mouth that made him talk like a count - but then again I'm not sure about his genealogy, or my spelling. One thing I do know, is that Swallow Hook Sid was so sneaky he could limbo under a latrine door wearing a hot tap and a big top hat with a brim full bucket of bilge pumps, and never spill a drop in the ocean wave. He took me to the banks of a pond, a pond where many, multi-coloured, plumed birds were gathered. 'That's your first lesson,' he slimed. I raised my eyebrows but he just grinned. Next, he plucked three flowers from a shell like, sidled up to a bird, presented the slim bouquet and whispered softly softly lies and sob stories in her ear we go tweety pie. The bird jumped, jumped on his shoulder and whispered back to front. He took her to a quiet glade, made surety sure nobody was watching, and hit the poor creature on the head with a huge stick of humbug rock, smashing its soft body into a bleeding pulp with a bleeding heart.The sad little bird brain's head over heels was still moving. 'I thought you loved me.' she croaked mournfully. 'I just did for you didn't I?' he replied with a sneer. 'Let that be a lesson two for you too. You won't fall about for a smooth talker like me again who'll devastate you, will you?' He spat, squatted down on the dying bird's head, broke wind and gassed her fatally. 'What's the lesson for me?' I asked nonchalantly, looking at the candy striped red-river rock in his hand written with love is the answer. 'Same one as for her. That's the way to do it,' he chirped, washing the blood off his hands over the sea. 'Snaky sneak in. Flowers. Flatter, flatter, flatter, then it's flutter, flutter, flutter of the eyelids in response mode. Next question, you tell 'em a sob story or ten. Once you have them sky hooked on it, strike hard times and fast as lightning, take them for all they've got and more or less; then do it again. It never fails to find favour.' 'Isn't that mercenary, selfish, dishonest and insincere?' I asked. He stared at me as if I were ********* incarnate. 'Insincere? I get insincere later - or maybe not. The rule is to stay on top, take whatever you want, and let nothing stand in the way out. Now, if that sounds selfish to you, I suggest don't know the meaning of life force the issue notes. Strongest rules, weakest loses, full stop. If you don't understand that you need your lumps feeling.' He looked at his huge rock, then at my head.It was too early warning to tell outright if this full potential threat to the rest of us would be hog washed away in the long run. I could see terms and conditions of serious neglect, and had to act my part as a gate keeper of the world stage door stop. I asked could he charm any innocent creature of creation. He replied affirmatively at first leg, thought awhile, then said 'Yes'. I wagered he couldn't. I took him down to the U-bend in the river side by side ways, where the crocodiles snooze with a peaceful easy feeling, ever on the alert for a passing snack bar stool. I pointed them out to him, and him to them. 'Simple,' he boosted, on seeing his intended bride prey. 'They look a softly soft touch, lying there like logs. Even have tears in their eyes, which is a sure sign on for the likes of me. I'll listen to their sob stories for a while and sympathise, then tell them what a bad deal they've had in this cruel, cruel world. That's my way in.' I am pleased to report I won the wager, but sorry to say Sid never paid up. What he thought was his way in, turned out to be his way out. I swapped the signs over inside and outside above the door.I went back to visit Stern, who I should perhaps mention had a razor like nose, eyes like an outhouse rat, and a mind to match. He even had the nerve to try to re-educate me and convert me to his wicked wayward practices. He thought he could turn me into a necrophiliac - like himself - a philanthropist, or a brown pointed toad. But he was dead wrong side of the tracks. Nevertheless, he did impress me with some of his advancements in learning, and in other strange ways. He happened to be a dedicated structure restructurer, who even devised techniques for changing one of the very building blocks of language - the alphabet.Here is one version he taught me, and if you think it's confusing, then just imagine being there like I was while Stern stared at me: hay for ism, beef or chicken, sea for sailors, de-formation, e ffer vescence, ef-fervescence, chief or leader, age for pension, I for get, jay for walker, Kay for car, hell for sinners, 'em for pathy, n for mation, over there, pee for urinate, queue for everything, half for Arfur, ess for estimate, tee for biting, eu phe mism, Vee formation, w for two sheep, x for exclamation, wife or husband and zeds for sleeping. When he first showed me out on this, I was dumbfounded, wondering aloud what it all meant. 'Eih gb istmn,' Stern declared in a loud voice - I didn't catch his drift net at first sight - In fact I don't know how he ever managed to pronounce it. I stared at him vacantly, then his alphabet (he called if a haybeefer), which he had chalked up on a black bored in his study, then back and forwards again. Slowly, the light of the world situation came on, and I understood. He grinned as I gaped at his written in joined up writing exposition. I argued it was impossible, and that if we were to apply these rules, we would end up talking gibberish. He agreed, smiled and watched my reactions slyly as he casually sharpened up his incisors with a big ******* file. 'Yes, but it would all be the same gibberish and, although we would all have the same collective form view of all the world stage, it would not be the same as it ever was. We talk gibberish now anyway: all I'm proposing is a restructuring. If we see through different spectacles, we create a different world: wouldn't you agree?' That went deep. I thought, and thought , and thought. I thought I could find a way out man out of it, but I couldn't. Stern was right on the head. He had discovered a great universal truth dare, but I couldn't see how, or why, he could ever implement it, and whether it would change the course of things for better or worse if he did. I told him so. He disargued. 'But change is the natural order of things, as is organised chaos, necrophilia and daemonology. My proposal also provides the a potential key to organised memory loss. With it, you can drink the waters of the Leith Police and never get your lips wet or your tongue twisted.' He put the file away in the filing cabinet office, and returned wearing a black leather robe and carrying a brand-new glove puppet on each opposite hand over. 'What are you doing tonight then?' said the puppet on his left hand, a grotesque female caricature clad in pink lace, with huge ears, warts and a pointed nose. 'I'm going to go-go to the senior conman room, sit at a table alone and talk to myself,' replied the male, nervous looking puppet on the right - who was clad in a black leather robe complete with peaked cap and silver chains. 'But you can talk to me if you like, Mr Hunky.' Hunky nodded: 'That's what I meant.' The puppets stared at each other awhile. Then began to argue heatedly about the nature of individuality, whether all forests were one, whether trees can grow without earth, and if earth can exist without sun. 'The same goes for words and ideas,' squawked Ms Anthrope, the right hand puppet, 'concepts are built out of words, and words are made from letters. But what are letters made from? You can't judge a woman by talking to her brother you know, nor the smell down a drain by looking at the cover.' 'Is 1 and 1, 1, 0, 2, 11 or 10?' replied Hunky, totally ignoring her question - or so I thought. 'Yes, the same way that Dame Edam is made in mead, and a lot of other things. It all depends upon the way you look at it, this way, that or the other others.' I dimly understood that Stern was reiterating his point, using his stooge puppets as puppets, but not on a string. He seemed to realise that I had realised. 'We are all puppets,' he said darkly. 'If you like, you can lift my robe and see who's manipulating me, just like I'm giving it these two. But you won't find anyone. Nor under your robe, or anyone else's either. Our manipulator is a fully formed phantom who flies fleetingly through the forest. His name is Nicton G Noidid, and I know where he lives out his fantasies.' 'What kind of name is that?' I asked incredulously. By now, I was more or less convinced that Stern had become entirely detached from the ship of reality. He looked at his puppets... first one, then the other one. 'How many kinds of names are there?' Hunky squawked, lowering his head in a threatening manner.That happened to be a very good question - for a puppet - and I didn't happen to have a very good answer either way. I remained silent as the grave stone. The three of them stared at me as if I were some kind of bleak sneak freak show. 'All right then,' I replied eventually, 'where does he live out his fantasies?' 'In the Magical Forest.' 'What about the forests of No-Most, Avalot, and the rest period: does he not go there as well as?' 'He lives out his fantasies in the labyrinth of the Magical Forest.' Ms Anthrope voiced her words slowly and clearly. 'All forests are one. Look for him there on the well trodden paths to glory - that's where he's easy to find out. He's crafty, cunning and subtle though. He has unctillions of hiding places, but one thing is for sure - he's always there.'' How will I find him?' Stern stared sternly and slowly began to lift his robe. 'There is only one way, only one. Be alert.' Ms Anthrope and Hunky spoke the last two words with him in unison.Stern swiftly removed his regalia, dropped the puppets on the floor level, hard stamped his mark viciously on their heads and tails, then vanished into his back passageway and bolted the door from the inside. I've never seen him since. As I left, I gazed at the crushed remnants of the two puppets, thinking about the words of wisdom they had uttered in their short, sad lives, wondering how I would ever find Noidid in the woods, how I would know I did if I did and how I would manage the situation if I did? Hidden amongst these few indiscreet words is an iridescent magical invocation, an invitation to the foolhardy souls amongst you. If you want total, absolute personal power, seek it, find it and use it if you dare. It will open the flood gates of perception all around the houses. Your intelligence, self esteem, bank balance and all round abilities will increase to incredible proportions. You will acquire vast wealth with little or no effort. You will be able to walk on water, the sunny side of the street and on by. You will forever sing a happy song, meet new friends and influence people. But when the waiter brings the bill, which I guarantee he will, can you afford to pay?To close, let me say that the fruits of the Magical Forest are manifold, as are the trials, tribulations, pleasures and pains of the inhabitants - who are the observers of the observed. Beneath every flower, there resides a snake in the grass, by every dew-jewelled web a sentinel spider, in every decomposing composer a latent butterfly, around each silver lining a cloud. Each, however humble or repulsive, has its place in the overall scheme of things that are, have been and are yet to come. All men are borne equal: as are all women, and babies even moreso. As for the rest, who knows what they are talking about anyway. There is nothing that has ever been written, nothing ever been spoken, no sweet music played, no patent granted, no plan ever planned, no good or evil deed ever done, that has not been first manifest in the forest. I assure you that all forests are the same, differing only in geographic location and specific arrangement of flora along the pathways. The archetype - and I reveal this word to you outside its proper time and space place - is one. It is unified. It is one, I am one, and you might think you aren't one - but it doesn't matter, you will be sooner than you think you are.This, here and now, in time and place, elves of Bleaf and others, is your initiation. I am opening pathways in the woods which, until this particular moment - the moment of your arrival at this time cross-roads - have been secret and hidden. They have always been extant but unknown to you, although you may have occasionally sensed their presence vaguely. Very soon, I shall provide a new map to all kind, indicating the exact location of the Magical Forest itself. When you become aware of the precise location, you will know precisely what it is, its nature, and potential. You might wonder what to do with this knowledge, whether to arrange outings, walks, mushroom picking expeditions and so on. I tell you now: don't worry, be happy, let it be... for it is. Whether you like it or not is irrelevant. I may have obfuscated and confused you so far so long time in this address book, but it has been necessary to do so in order to bring you to this point. This realisation which I have brought about, and as I speak, am still bringing about within you without you, is the objective and the object in one. I have used the searing white fire of the Magician's Rod of Power. This rod has many forms, many colours, and manifests in diverse ways. The forms of this particular manifestation are light humour, anagram, alliteration, rhyme, caesura, cryptogram, paronamasia, simile, epizeuxis, dialyton, assonance, catachresis, dissonance, and the rest. By the rod, I have also merged and distorted score upon score of rigid figures of eight speech, figures entombed within the long suffering structure of language and everyday parlance. I have exhumed many of them and exposed their rotting copses, but there are many more for you to discover, for you to meld together, to toy with and wonder. Wonder how they came to be and why. Consider what purpose they might serve and how they have managed to persist down the ages. I shall leave you with one last engram, before I close with several questions and commence the rearrangement process. The purpose of my address so far has been to awake you, to nudge you, to make you alert, to bring you to this point. When I say Big Brother is Watching You, know that he who came before knew precisely where he was coming from. When I say Big Brother = Big Sister, understand that. When I say to you that Big Brother is Watching Now, that Big Brother is Alert, and that Big Brother is going to Sort out all this Mess in the Magical Forest, know that I do far more than play with words. The previous sentence is an incantation, an invocation, spoken sincerely from one brother to another: I am certain he will see, understand, and act appropriately. Each of us is blessed with such a brother, one who carries a lamp with which to illuminate the dark forest pathways. The hour is nigh brothers, hear the call. Ask yourself now, and after all the fun and party games, know this is deadly serious: does the use of cliché, sound-bite and stock phrase assist, or obscure communication? Do our minds work in patterns? Are our thoughts conditioned; what part does word, and language play in all this? Ask yourself. Then ask yourself what you are going to do about it. Invent your own questions, for there are many to be asked. Ask yourself, don't ask me. I'm just an ordinary gnome. I prefer to remain anonymous, and I shall. Now there will be the rearrangement:" [snip]

A person cannot maintain any standard of morals when they has no ordinary means of living (Kenkò Hoshi, 14th century Japanese Buddhist spiritual leader Do you agree, that an individual's enviroment presupposes the level of morality he attains, for instance is a senegalese woman living on half the minimum need to SURVIVE expected to attain and be held to the same level of morals that an arab doctor maintains? Nature or nuture?

I am tired with neo-nonsens atrribution to nationalism. Whilst you dream about your ummah and qoute the scriptures let me follow my own star for an islam and democratic nation of somali encompassing the lands of all somalis. It is really that simple.

Is not a du'a but amiin all the same. RETRIBUTION

Kowneyn, i guess you have seen the product of your revolution in nasir , clannist sentiment, but then again how can one believe in the division of a people with one culture, religion and language can occur on any other lines. Nasir is more honest, nothing holy about his propoganda.

Brother horn afrique i see that we have come full circle. Now perhaps you can see why i consider this whole comedy of idiocy called puntland and the campaign to propogate a "kinder gentler image" of beer-hindi as irrelevant to scincere somali poltical discourse. Anyhoo the confrence will fail, with or with out abdullahi yusuf or his comedic minions protestations other wise. The peace process has been in more deeper shambles then it's current stage, yet you have been the foremost supporter, the number cheerleader. Now you are calling it a fraud A question that i dare any of this jokers to answer And you Samurai. First your little facade is past gone. There won't be another time when you use us true Somali nationalists at the expense of reer Waqoyi folks I would call it pathetic, but then i fear it will be worn as a badge of honour. Like i said a mutual conclusion has been drawn.

What Women Think about Modern Manhood The American Enterprise recently invited six spirited women to come to our offices to talk about the condition of the male species. For comparison’s sake, we asked many of the same questions we posed to the male panelists in our previous symposium (see “Men on Men” on pages 24-27). Karina Rollins moderated the discussion. The participants: Mona Charen, nationally syndicated columnist and author of Useful ****** Jessica Gavora, author of Tilting the Playing Field and new mom Charlotte Hays, editor of The Women’s Quarterly Kate O’Beirne,Washington editor of National Review Naomi Schaefer, fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center Erica Walter, at-home mom and Catholic writer KARINA ROLLINS: What is your overall assessment of masculinity today? KATE O’BEIRNE: Generally positive--as it always has been, despite the efforts of the elites. And September 11 made it more difficult for liberals to criticize traditional male characteristics and virtues. ERICA WALTER: Manliness has experienced a renaissance for two reasons: The Bush/Cheney administration has set the tone for the political culture. And 9/11, of course. Why did America fall in love with soldiers and firemen and traditional male occupations? Because we realized we’re at risk. The comeback of manliness is here to stay as long as national security is an issue. JESSICA GAVORA: I am distressed by the degree to which feminism still carries political weight. Even under the current administration there is a continuing belief that groups like the National Organization for Women speak for women. And men are discriminated against in public policy, as in federal legislation like Title IX, the program to bolster female athletics in college. In the private realm we’re in better shape. MONA CHAREN: Women used to rely on gentlemen to protect them from louts and predators. Then feminists decided that sisterhood will protect women and give them power in the world, and they dumped all men into the “bad” category. That made it much harder for men to perform their traditional role of protectors of women. I was in college when feminism was reaching its apex. In the1970s at Barnard College, the kinds of young men one met there were confused. They had no idea what they were doing or supposed to be doing in regard to women. After college, I went to work at National Review and found that conservative men were not confused. CHARLOTTE HAYS: The modern-day loss of respect for manliness is an aberration. Men and their virtues have always been prized. The great epics aren’t about women and their virtues. The post-9/11 love affair with police, firemen, and soldiers is a return of normal relations between men and women. Most people today never needed to be carried out of a burning building. But once they see 3,000 people that need to be rescued, they know it takes men. O’BEIRNE: We were reminded on 9/11 and again during the military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq that we depend on manly characteristics to keep us safe. Every single one of the dead firemen heroes on 9/11 were men. This was one group where liberals didn’t ask why there wasn’t a more pleasing gender balance. Because the Upper West Side is not fireproof. What happens in combat in some distant field is abstract to Upper West Side liberals, but they can understand the need to have strong, brave, reckless men in their fire department. WALTER: When it comes to role confusion among men themselves, though, I believe the damage of the ’60s and ’70s has persisted. During my first pregnancy, I rode the Washington, D.C. subway every day. I was amazed at the number of men who didn’t offer me their seat, didn’t lift a finger for me. A Marine friend of mine, who is a normal, manly man, got so angry that he rode the subway with me, and in full cars pointedly asked men: “Would you please give up your seat for this young lady?” The request meant: “Will you do what you’re supposed to do?” GAVORA: Is that actual confusion, or simply what the feminist deal sealed for women? Our “equality” has come at a price. Truly equal standing in society for men and women might require the sacrifice of chivalry. How can men treat women in special, flowery ways, yet walk into a boardroom and face them as hardnosed equals? I’m not sure that’s a balance men are capable of. ROLLINS: So are traditional manners necessarily linked to some sort of inequality? HAYS: There are things you simply lose if you have as many women in the workforce as we do.A man’s not going to stand up every time a woman walks into the room at a board meeting. O’BEIRNE: I don’t think there has to be a trade off. Men will behave however women demand they behave. I don’t spend time with male boors, so I don’t think most American men lack manners. British men are terribly mannerly, but they’re all wimps. I think well-raised American men have the ability to be thoroughly masculine and mannerly at the same time. CHAREN: Feminists used to agonize over questions like, “Can you be an executive and still wear skirt?”We realize today that, yes, of course you can. You can still be feminine, look pretty, and have a high-powered job. You can still enjoy the attentions of men and yet be taken seriously. It’s just a matter of maturity on everyone’s part and I don’t see any necessary inconsistency. GAVORA: Women are perfectly capable of that balance, but are men? After watching the movie Titanic, I was wrenched by the image of all those men dying simply because they were men. The notion of allowing all women and children into the boats first--I think most men today would ask, “Why? Why should I die?” WALTER: They do ask themselves why, and that’s why the phenomenon of 9/11 heroism was such a revelation, especially to men. There have been recent articles in the press about how the war in Iraq caused many middle-aged men to look at the heroism of young Americans, and ask themselves: “Why didn’t I join the military?” It made them feel quite inadequate. I think that men lost their way. CHAREN: It’s part of men’s nature to want to take that role--they want to be heroic, to be the saviors, the self-sacrificers. Just as it’s part of women’s nature to want to nurture children. This society has been groping around in the dark, pretending that those basic elemental things aren’t true. But nature doesn’t die.Many men felt guilty for avoiding the draft during Vietnam, felt their manhood had been diminished in some way. ROLLINS: Can women who are CEOs or helicopter pilots in the military really expect men to treat them differently because they are women, not as one of the guys? Would that even make sense? HAYS: If I were on the front line, or a helicopter pilot, I would still expect the same politeness I would anywhere. But that’s why women shouldn’t be there: If a woman and a man are in combat together, the man, if he’s been brought up right, will sacrifice his life for the woman. And that’s the way it should be--which is why we have to define roles and keep women out of certain ones. WALTER: An equality that slips into androgyny, with interchangeable men and women, just doesn’t seem true to human nature. There are certain things that a woman can’t do as well as a man. There are certain things that a man can’t do as well as a woman. Feminism refuses to confront that basic bedrock. HAYS: In a rich, frivolous, fat society--ours, pre-9/11--you can play around with roles. You can say you want women to do all sorts of male jobs. But when you’re attacked, you don’t want to rely on a woman to rescue you from a burning building. O’BEIRNE: It’s the difference between the gender makeup of the New York City Fire Department--where out of 11,000 firemen there are fewer than 50 women, because there’s no such thing as peacetime for the fire department--and the gender makeup of the American military, where right after the Cold War it looked like we’d never go to war again, so we could fool around with lowering the physical demands of the military. ROLLINS: Will modern cushy lifestyles turn us all into wimps? CHAREN: Not only men but also women have lost some of their fortitude. All of us are part of this more therapeutic, whiny culture where everybody wants to file a lawsuit instead of showing courage in adversity. I read the Little House on the Prairie series to my boys. The books are about frontier life, and you learn that those girls and women were tough as nails. They had to be; it was a matter of survival. Laura Ingalls Wilder describes waking up in the winter to find her blankets covered with snow. She would get up and crack the ice in the wash bowl. But September 11 showed that we still produce people who are courageous and strong. Ordinary businessmen could pull it together and overwhelm terrorists, despite all the years of cushy life. It’s easy to get soft and the trick is to not forget those virtues and not allow yourself to become a pushover. WALTER: Modern urban life itself is especially hard on males. Where in the modern world can men be men? The frontier’s gone. We’re all so alienated from nature. If all people grew up on farms they would know instinctively that there are differences between boys and girls. But modern society, with all its conveniences, makes it very, very easy to deny nature. O’BEIRNE: Anyone married with children appreciates why children need fathers. The typical mother of a second-grade boy is destroyed if he’s not invited to a certain birthday party. Mothers would wrap sons in cotton. It’s the fathers who instill the sense of risk-taking, of the stiff upper lip. NAOMI SCHAEFER: But what about daughters? They often need to know how to keep a stiff upper lip, too. Whatever the problems with feminism, I guess I’m sort of glad that it all happened. CHAREN: It would be wrong not to give feminism some credit for improving women’s place in the world. But I believe many of these changes would have happened organically anyway--with rising prosperity, labor-saving devices in the home, and widespread education. You didn’t need a bunch of bra-burners for that. GAVORA: My main complaint against feminists is that in the name of choice, they have taken away so many choices. They have demonized motherhood and traditional masculinity. ROLLINS: Why are there so many wimpy male journalists? CHAREN: Because they’re liberals. Not to say there aren’t some conservative wimps. But conservatives never really bought into the notion of androgyny or into feminism, and so conservative men never felt the need to abandon their manliness. Liberal men, on the other hand, thought that was being enlightened. So, since most journalists are liberal, a lot of them are wimpy. O’BEIRNE: It goes back to how these journalists spent their high school years, which I assume was being stuffed into lockers by other males. This also explains the whole media love affair with John McCain. He created a fighter pilot ready-room in the back of his bus and told off-color jokes and brought these former high school nerds into the circle of the cool guy. They were so thrilled that one of the jocks was finally paying attention to them that they just swooned. ROLLINS: Are today’s parents raising warriors or wimps? SCHAEFER: When men aren’t inculcated with manly virtues they don’t become wimps, they become hoodlums. Recently I found myself walking around Manhattan in the aftermath of the Puerto Rican Day Parade: hordes of post-adolescent men wandering around, leering at women, making rude comments. That’s what happens when you don’t have fathers. It’s not that boys become gay and effeminate and go work for the New York Times. O’BEIRNE: Pat Moynihan warned us about predatory males being raised by single moms. ROLLINS: What is your definition of virility? Does it have a role in political leadership? WALTER: It’s a nebulous quality for a political leader. Bill Clinton was virile--in a very sleazy way. There’s also the sex appeal of someone like Don Rumsfeld. President Bush possesses this intangible something--you really saw it on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Testosterone and camaraderie--many people responded to it. In George W. Bush, people see a contained, channeled virility. They see a man who does what he says, whose every speech and act is not calculated. Bill Clinton showed a lot of outward empathy and he was very articulate but I don’t think many of us would have trusted him with our daughters. GAVORA: If virility equates with strength, then there is no question that Bill Clinton lacked it completely. Bush has shown that he has it. His willingness to go after terrorism root and branch despite the widespread opposition among our European allies and even some at home, and to withstand that pressure, is strength. Bill Clinton made surface gestures. He refused to go against the media, popular opinion, the pinstriped boys at the State Department, because he lacked that strength. HAYS: The most masculine man I ever knew was my grandfather, who supported seven children and never failed to stand when a woman came into the room. Bill Clinton is virile, but he’s not masculine or mature. He never became a grown man. O’BEIRNE: When I heard that he grew up jumping rope with the girls in his neighborhood, I knew everything I needed to know about Bill Clinton. There’s no contest between Clinton and Bush on masculinity. Bill Clinton couldn’t credibly wear jogging shorts, and look at George Bush in that flight suit. ROLLINS: But why do so many American women love Bill Clinton? SCHAEFER: You can learn a lot jumping rope with girls. It won’t make you sexually attractive, but it will make you a more effective, patient listener. O’BEIRNE: Bill Clinton did understand, from the matriarchy he grew up in, how to appeal to women in that modern way. HAYS: Clinton could feel your pain like one of your girlfriends. But he could never make a decision like Bush has had to make. He would still be trying to negotiate with the terrorists. The use of force, which until recently was passé, has come back. Clinton couldn’t use force except in a motel room. ROLLINS: Who has been hurt more by the confusion of sex roles? HAYS: Men. Women now predominate on college campuses. Women are moving into men’s jobs. Masculinity is under attack. It’s men who are being shoved out and hurt more. WALTER: Men, definitely. In the 1960s, equality rolled over America like a steamroller. That was terrible for men. It was bad for women too, but women gained a lot: equality in the workplace, a place at the table, especially women who didn’t want to have babies or get married. But men lost. Men got the right to become louts, to prey on the new promiscuity of feminists who where touting sexual liberation. CHAREN: You could argue that women who were highly career-oriented and did not want to have children gained. But women who wanted to be wives and mothers and were looking for a man to marry them and provide a home and stability, they lost really badly. I have enjoyed having a career as well as being a mother, and I actually think the ideal situation for most women is to have both. But the fact that men were freed from all traditional responsibilities has hurt women and children extremely badly. ROLLINS: How open do you think today’s young people are to the concept that identities are linked to sex? O’BEIRNE: They have been sternly told that that’s not the case ever since they can remember, despite all the evidence and common experience from the playground on up. But when these weird education efforts so conflict with human experience and nature, they typically are not successful. The Soviets found that out. CHAREN: Why are people so afraid of reality? All the studies of girls’ and boys’ academic performance show that the boys’ curve is more shallow and longer; there are more at the very bottom and more at the very top. Girls have a steeper bell curve, they are more clustered in the middle. There will be more geniuses and more ****** among men than among women. Good or bad, it’s a fact. ROLLINS: Is the popularity of reality shows like “Survivor,”which include a lot of physical survival skills, evidence of a desire to see masculine traits in action? HAYS: “Survivor” isn’t really about male survival traits. O’BEIRNE: It’s about interpersonal relationships, which makes me think it’s got a female audience. Men are bored with that stuff. HAYS: It’s basically a gossip thing: Who are we going to vote off now? And the guys who’ve won have been light in the loafers. ROLLINS: What’s behind men’s interest in guns, truck racing, wrestling, etc.? Are these positive masculine traits, or just gross? WALTER: They are truly masculine things and a mystery to me. GAVORA: These interests show up in tiny little boys.When my little brother was a baby and could barely sit up, he loved nothing better than to sit on my dad’s tractor. CHAREN: As a mother of three sons, I have learned to accept and go with the flow. I no longer shudder at the sight of a snake. I say “boys come and see the nice snake.”I’ve even learned to love trucks. O’BEIRNE: The same interests find expression in men’s aggression, their risk-taking, their respect for power. It’s all those same characteristics that make them good husbands, providers, fathers, soldiers, and firemen. I don’t see anything wrong with liking monster truck racing. My husband once brought our boys to one of those events and I held my breath the whole time they were gone. I was so afraid there would be an accident and for the rest of my life I’d have to explain to people that I lost the three of them in a monster truck rally. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. Look at the guy with the Mercedes,with the zillion-horsepower engine--it holds the same appeal to power and speed. ROLLINS: Is there anything people can do to get the male-female relationship back into balance? How do we keep the post-9/11 rebound of traditional manliness going? CHAREN: The uniqueness of men and their contribution to the world needs to be recognized and celebrated. Men need to be reminded that their most important functions in life are within the family, not in the marketplace. As fathers, they teach girls what it means to have a man treat them well. Girls who grow up without fathers tend to get abused badly because they have no model for a man being nice to them. Fathers teach boys to be gentlemen. Sons learn from how the father treats the mother. WALTER: Encourage marriage among young people. One of the worst demographic trends in this country is the marriage rate, which has been plunging for decades. I also really hope that the renewed interest among men in serving in the military will continue. Armed service allows men to test themselves. It gives them worthy ideals and lets them emulate honorable, strong men. The military is also one of the only places left for men to be in an almost exclusively male atmosphere. Women need female friends and men need male camaraderie. It brings out the best in both. And there is one arena in which men can still be men, and still find lots of opportunities to exhibit heroism--fatherhood. HAYS: Masculinity will come back from its recent eclipse for two reasons: We live in a more dangerous world where we need strong men. And most of all: biology. It simply can’t be denied. SCHAEFER: I think there’s a role for religion to play. Men’s involvement in churches over the last few decades has decreased. At most religious colleges, the environment is much more tipped in favor of women. I wonder whether churches couldn’t do more to encourage manly virtues. O’BEIRNE: I’m pessimistic about the role of religion given that most of the mainline churches have been so feminized. HAYS: Religion is always under attack from feminizers, and too many of today’s religious leaders don’t have the guts to stand up and talk about how men and women are really different. SCHAEFER: Churches could be a plus if run the right way. O’BEIRNE: Right. But I don’t think that groups like Promise Keepers are very helpful. I’m not encouraged when I see a stadium filled with men hugging each other. Just go home and be a man. ROLLINS: Do today’s women really not want more modern, equality-minded, sensitive men? O’BEIRNE: No.Women don’t want a guy to feel their pain, they want a guy to clean the gutters. WALTER: God save us from modern men. Published in Real Men: They're Back September 2003