Let’s begin with what may well be the most awkward line of supposedly realistic written dialogue, ever, in any published book from any legitimate publisher:
“The lecture I had from my boss sure tightened my sphincters!”
I’m not going to name the book or the author because it wouldn’t be kind: The book in question is a practical guide to pain relief, not a novel or work of literary non-fiction, and the author is a compassionate professional healer, not a battle-hardened professional writer.
So why cite this bizarre bit of dialogue, which sounds like it was badly translated from Hungarian into Esperanto into Turkish into English, at all? Because it’s one of a series of equally ponderous “common expressions,” along the lines of “I’m experiencing such unusually high levels of stress these days it could very well be that my head is likely to explode!”, that the book lists as examples of how our words and our thoughts not only express, but actually affect, how we feel physically.
(Incidentally, I say “along the lines of” because I didn’t actually buy the book, and the only line I jotted down verbatim, as I sat in a Barnes & Noble flipping through it, was the one about “sphincters,” and then only because it was so unintentionally funny. I mention this — and, specifically, the fact that I was sitting rather than standing — for reasons that will become clear in a moment.)
In any event, according to the book, if we say “she’s a pain in the neck” often enough, sure enough we’ll soon get a pain in the neck, which in turn will lead to chronic headaches.
But how this theory applies to chronic knee pain, for example — to the best of my knowledge, there any no common expressions to the effect of, “the busy traffic flow in this morning’s rush hour is really causing my kneecaps to ache” — isn’t at all clear. [Read more →]
Tags: health & medical, language & grammar
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