The unintended pun in everyday life.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Huh? A Study in Obfuscation

approximately June 23, 2013 An NBA draft prospect said: "My weakness is my strength."


"My weakness is my strength." Without context, and even with context, this sentence can have so many different meanings, it's almost mind-numbing. In this case, I think the player was saying that he knew he needed to work out more so he could get physically stronger--he was using the word "weakness" in its metaphorical sense, and the word strength in its actual, physical sense. This play on words/almost-impossible-to-understand-sentence sent me on a research project, looking on the Web for "my weakness is my strength", resulting in a lot of hits. Apparently, most uses are the more standard fare, using both "weakness" and "strength" in their metaphorical senses--that is, "one of the worst things about me is one of the best things about me," and then the author explains what he or she means. In some cases, it has a spiritual meaning, others, some kind of internal awakening, in another, it was political of some kind. But I didn't find any cases where the words were mixed, as in the NBA prospect's quote above, so I think we have something of an Unintended Pun.

The multiple meanings I alluded to above:
  • The one I already mentioned--my metaphorical weakness--the thing I'm not so great at, is my physical strength
  • The opposite--my physical weakness is my metaphorical strength--because it keeps me humble, or relying on my family or God
  • Both metaphorical (seems to be the most common)--my metaphorical weakness--the thing I am not very good at--is my metaphorical strength--is the thing I end up being the best at.
  • And then it gets really interesting, because if we decide that the last item is the case, that both "weakness" and "strength" are being used metaphorically, we have then to learn what is the weakness and what is the strength. But the player was quoted only one more sentence, with no further explanation.
So I think the activation web comes into play here. The player knows he has an area of his basketball game that needs to improve--he needs to get physically stronger so he has more stamina, so he can withstand the more physical play at the NBA level vs. college, so he can drive to the basket and not have the ball knocked out of his hands as easily, etc. He chose the word "weakness" instead of "area of improvement" or some such because, of course, it is close in his mind's web to the word "strength." But the result is obfuscation, and a pretty good entry for our blog.

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