People tell you more than they realize.  Maybe more than you realize they’re telling you.

Listen to the subtleties of the terminology they use, and you can easily determine their relationship to a person or idea, their opinion, even their age—and they won’t even know they’re giving it away.

A few nights ago I was on a late night flight out of Denver.  I was on my way home after hop-scotching around the Western US for a few days, and I’d ordered a cup of wine (sounds funny, doesn’t it, but they don’t trust us with glass anymore) about midway through the flight. 

I got up to stretch my legs at the back of the plane for a few minutes, and when I returned to my seat, my wine was gone.  When the stewardess (I know, I know, it’s flight attendant now, but I’m rebelling) came along, I asked her if she’d seen my wine.  She told me she hadn’t taken it, but pointed to the front of the plane and said, “That blonde girl must have gotten it.”  I looked ahead and about a dozen rows up saw the other stewardess.

It was no great loss, I’d gotten it free with a frequent flyer voucher, and it was half empty anyway—or so I thought; maybe more than anything else I wanted to be sure I wasn’t losing it.  It was late, and my wife’s told me that my memory is going bad.  But I was sure I’d had some wine left… but maybe I didn’t?  Sometimes you just want to double-check your faculties, right?

Anyway, it struck me the way she referred to her counterpart.  “That blonde girl” was a pretty detached way of referencing someone she worked with.  What it told me was that they weren’t well acquainted, or even that they weren’t on the best of terms.  Naturally, I had to verify this, too, so I asked, “How well do you know her?” 

“Ah, not very,” she answered, “She just got on in Phoenix–”  She caught herself and topped it off with a forced smile.  Restrained by good judgment.  Enough said.

So my suspicions were confirmed on both points:  1-the last of my wine had been stolen, and 2-the perpetrator was not well liked by the witness.

For some more evidence of what I call “The New Theory of Relativity”—which may not be so new—let’s consider a couple of phrases that you may have heard:

“50 is the new 40″ 

What does this simple line reveal to you about the people who are saying it?  That they’re over 50, right? 

And who do you think coined the term?  Is it even possible that 40 year olds came up with this?  No, they’re too unhappy about being 40 to view it with this kind of optimism. 

Michelle Pfeiffer even takes it a step further, saying that “50 is the new 30″.  Talk about being ahead of the curve; sounds like Michelle’s already laying the groundwork for being considered 40 when she turns 60.

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”

Some would call this relativism, but regardless the name, this line embodies the fact that perspective changes between people, and some things differ only because they’re viewed differently.  A Muslim extremist considers Osama Bin Laden a hero, while the average American views him as a villain.  He remains the same in either case.  What he is to people only changes depending upon who views him. 

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”—and so is everything else.

So notice the words people use when they refer to a person, idea, or subject.  Even as they speak in generalities, the specifics of their words will reveal their like, dislike, or relationship to what they’re talking about.

Oh, and take your wine with you.

Tags: relativity

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 4th, 2009 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Word Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.