说话前先铺垫必未是好事.docVIP

What Verbal Tics May Be Saying About Us 说话前先铺垫未必是好事 A friend of mine recently started a conversation with these words: Dont take this the wrong way . . . 不久，一位朋友在开始和我聊天时说了这么一句话：“别误会啊…” I wish I could tell you what she said next. But I wasnt listening -- my brain had stalled. I was bracing for the sentence that would follow that phrase, which experience has taught me probably wouldnt be good. 我也希望我能告诉你她接下来说了什么，可是当时我没在听——我的大脑停止运转了。我在为它接下来的那句话做准备，经验告诉我那大概不会是什么好话。 Certain phrases just seem to creep into our daily speech. We hear them a few times and suddenly we find ourselves using them. We like the way they sound, and we may find they are useful. They may make it easier to say something difficult or buy us a few extra seconds to collect our next thought. 有些语句似乎悄悄潜入了我们日常的言语中。听了几次后，突然间我们就发现自己也在说那些话了。我们喜欢它们听上去的感觉，也许还发现它们很有用。它们可能会使难以启齿的话更容易说出口，或者为我们多赢得几秒钟时间去想想接下来的想法。 Yet for the listener, these phrases are confusing. They make it fairly impossible to understand, or even accurately hear, what the speaker is trying to say. 然而，对于听者而言，这些语句却让人迷惑不解。它们会让你无法理解甚至是无法准确地听到说话人要说的是什么。 Consider: I want you to know . . . or Im just saying . . . or I hate to be the one to tell you this . . . Often, these phrases imply the opposite of what the words mean, as with the phrase, Im not saying . . . as in Im not saying we have to stop seeing each other, but . . . 想想这些语句：“我想让你知道…”、“我只是说…”或者“我真不想由我来告诉你这件事…”。这些语句通常暗示出与它们表面意思相反的意味，好比“我并不是说我们不能再在一起了，可是…”中的“我并不是说…”。 Take this sentence: I want to say that your new haircut looks fabulous. In one sense, its true: The speaker does wish to tell you that your hair looks great. But does he or she really think it is so or just want to say it? Its unclear. 以“我想说，你的新发型太好看了”这句话为例。从某种意义上说，它是真话：说这句话的人确实想对你说你的新发型很好看。但是，他或她是真的觉得如此还是只是“想”这么说呢？这就不清楚了。 Language experts have textbook names for these phrases -- performatives, or qualifiers. Essentially, taken alone, they express a simple thought, such as I am writing to say . . . At first, they seem harmless, formal, m