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Como Evitar
Ambiguidades na Comunicação
11/21/09
Today
in the grocery store I watched this scene, as I was
standing in the cashier's line. A lady passed by the
cashier with her groceries, ans she was
also buying a basket. The cashier said to
her, "I will use your basket..." as to say that she
would put the groceries back into the shopping cart
after ringing them. She used the word "basket" for
"shopping cart", what is okay. But, because the buyer
was in fact buying a basket, and she was also an
immigrant with some difficulties in English (as
I could notice), she didn't understand right away
that the cashier meant "cart" and not the basket she
was buying. She got all confused, and the cashier
repeated, "I'll use your basket, M'am" - waiting for
the lady to move her cart to the other side so she
(the cashier) could fill it again with the registered
groceries.
Well, after pointing to the
buyer the way to go with her cart, she finally got
it right.
A
primeira dica aqui é: procure ser
claro na sua
comunicação. "Leia" (observe) as
expressões do seu interlocutor, e a situação ao
seu redor, para ter certeza que vocês estão
na mesma "página"!
If the
cashier had observed the basket
the lady was buying, and had observed how
confused the lady became, she would
have said "cart" in the second time she
spoke. Besides, the best word for a
shopping cart is "shopping cart !! Or
"cart", if the context is about
shopping. Carts are big, they roll, they have
casters (rodinhas) - they are not "baskets"
(which are smaller, and have handles - not
casters!). Even so carts end up being called
baskets as a result of regional and
cultural aspects.
This is
an example of semantics
(words
choice).
Now
take a look at this:
"
I eat only white
meat"
doesn't mean the same thing as
"I only
eat white meat."
Do you
see the difference? "I eat only white
meat"
means that "I don't eat red meat" [what is a lie,
in my case! ;-) ] - and "I only eat white
meat"
means that I don't eat anything else in
life, besides white
meat.
So
this is an example of
syntax (word
order)
A segunda dica
para uma comunicação clara é "prestar
atenção à sintaxe (ordem das palavras) e
à semântica (escolha das
palavras)".
Groucho Marx, a US comedian
(1890 - 1977) left us a funny example
of this:
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit
flies like a banana."
Caso você
não saiba ou tenha esquecido, mosquinha de
banana, ou mosquinha de fruta, é
"fruit
fly" em
inglês. Lembre-se que "like" pode ser verbo
(gostar) e também advérbio de comparação
(como).
Fácil criar
ambiguidades em inglês, não é?
;-)
