Following on from my theme from yesterday, language now plays a huge role in my working life. These days the sort of market research I get involved in can involve close scrutiny of what people say and how they say it.

Even when doing ‘numbers’ research, the way you phrase a question can play a huge role in the outcome. For example, if you were to ask ‘how much do you hate cricket?’ There is an implication in the question that everyone hates cricket and that can be compounded by giving a list of responses that go from ‘a little bit’ through to ‘a lot’ with no option for a ‘I don’t hate cricket at all’. It’s one of the traps people designing questionnaires fall into frequently.

Learning to listen and watch what people say and the way they say it has led me to change my life completely. These days I hate using the telephone (because I can’t watch the body language of the person I’m speaking to) and I try to always think about the wider implications of what I say to people face-to-face. I also spend a great deal of time working with my colleagues to make sure that what we say in print has the right tone.

The sentence that titles my photo today is a great example of how a single sentence can be construed in many different ways. This simple sentence of seven words can be interpreted in at least seven different ways……

*I* don’t want to sleep with you…….might well have the subtext ……but that person over there does!

I *don’t* want to sleep with you …..could be really saying ….you may think I do, but you’re wrong!

I don’t *want* to sleep with you …..I’d *give my right arm to*

I don’t want *to* sleep with you….because I already have!

I don’t want to *sleep* with you……I have something else in mind entirely!

I don’t want to sleep *with* you…..I’d rather sleep alone.

I don’t want to sleep with *you* ……..I want to sleep with someone else entirely.

See what I mean? It’s all the same sentence but the emphasis makes it absolutely different if it is on each different word.

That’s why I love to read…….I might take one meaning from a paragraph in a book while someone else reads something entirely different in the same passage. I can remember spending ages debating exactly those sorts of things when I was studying English Literature. I reckon a writer that can have different meanings to different people but still engage and thrill different readers is truly a writer of worth.

That’s also why we spend hours at work thinking about the body language of our respondents and the way they punctuate or emphasise their speech.

It’s not just what you say, it’s the way that you say it……in fact, accepted wisdom is that the way that you say it is significantly more important even than the content of what you say.