I talk too much, but at least I don’t have tattoos

“Knock, Knock…”
“Who’s there?”
“Interrupting cow.”
“Interrupting c…”
“MOOOOOOOOOO!”
Today,  I finally finished analyzing the data for my teacher training BA thesis. The data was a videotape (an actual, old-school videotape – I’m not kidding!) of a 75-minute process drama session I taught a few weeks ago. Despite the fact that I wasn’t analyzing my own behavior as such, I [...]

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Directness vs. Indirectness: Mind Reading

If it’s the Psychic Network why do they need a phone number?
Robin Williams
Interpreting what a speaker means from what they say – not always an easy task. Pragmatical interpretation has sometimes been dubbed a relative of mind reading in the sense that we use hints and clues from the other person’s behavior – verbal or [...]

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Directness vs. indirectness: Speech Acts

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.
“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least–at least I mean what I say–that’s the same thing, you know.”
“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I [...]

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“You’re stupid.”

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Ever since the past fall, I’ve been paying attention to my inner dialogue. First of all, it’s bilingual – Finnish and English both feature in a happy chaos. Second, I recognize different personas speaking. Not in a multiple personality [...]

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Perfectionism, pessimism, and fear

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Winston Churchill
I have one or two acquaintances who are self-proclaimed pessimists. As in, whenever they encounter a new situation, they promptly declare that it’ll never work because of this, that and the other reason. And whenever someone challenges their negative [...]

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