Books

Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean
By Michael Erard, Pantheon Books, 2007, 287 pp.

Michael Erard reduces Marshall McLuhan's adage "The medium is the message" to its most basic terms: the ways we manage to garble our own speech.

The varieties of clumsiness we commit in our oral medium could convey lots of messages — glimpses of the subconscious, spasms of creativity, neurological misfires or mimicry of cultural convention.

But Erard's book is less a taxonomy of verbal missteps and their meanings than a volume of personal essays on "applied blunderology" — a quirkily appealing mix of scholarly thought, diverting anecdote and catchy prose.

The author covers the spectrum of possibilities concerning the origins, types and significances of speech errors (he even provides a glossary), and punctuates this with pertinent stories of individuals and events.

Here's where readers may find particular enjoyment: amid Erard's meanderings in rhetoric, psychoanalysis, cognitive theory and popular culture, he offers deft and witty interludes, accounts of this or that character or episode, that enlighten as well as divert.

From classical rhetoricians like Aristotle and Quintilian, we're taken to Reno, Nev., site of Toastmasters International's annual public speaking contest, the self-proclaimed "World Series of Public Speaking, the Olympics of Oratory." Here, we meet a gaggle of boosters straight out of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt.

A bit more linguistic commentary brings us to the story of TV producer Kermit Schafer, creator of the original "blooper" franchise — 30 blooper records, a dozen blooper books, many more blooper television shows, and a movie entitled Pardon my Blooper. With Erard, as with any gifted essayist, much of the fun is simply in watching the striking movement of a bright mind.

As he examines possible meanings of humankind's tendency to verbally foul up, the author is concerned with laying out alternatives rather than arriving at definitive conclusions. He's skeptical of Freud's notion of speech errors solely as glimmers of repressed urges or fears, though he doesn't dismiss it outright.

He's more open to other possibilities: speech errors as reflections of a creative urge to expand the lingual envelope, as cognitive or neurological malfunctions, as unconscious expressions of emotion, as reflections of socioeconomic status.

This tendency to acknowledge all positions is most apparent in his accounts of the verbal blunders Americans look at especially closely — those of our presidents. Of course, our current leader and his linguistic boondoggles, from "terriers and barriffs" to, "It's hard to put food on your family," garner particular examination.

Yet Erard wonders if Bush's verbal glitches are truly worse than those of some of his predecessors — for instance, Eisenhower, whose ramblings during press conferences often left reporters at a loss; or Jefferson, who delivered both his inaugural addresses in a halting whisper; or Coolidge, who wouldn't allow reporters to quote him directly.

Then, too, the exact words of recent presidents — gaffes and all — are far more available to the nation than those of our earlier leaders. Nevertheless, Erard suggests that the urge to regard Bush's verbal clumsiness as reflection of his "authenticity" or his ties to the common man may constitute an abandonment of standards.

Um is a surprisingly enjoyable book on what might sound dike a tull lopic—I mean, tike a lull dopic — I mean …

Bill Hug is a professor of English at Jacksonville State University.