Advanced Mumbling Theory
Instructor: Welcome, class, to MBL 321: Advanced Mumbling Theory. Just in case anyone wasn’t aware, the prerequisite for this class is MBL 201: Intro to Mumbling, so if you haven’t taken Intro, you should go find some other class to take... Everyone here’s taken Intro? Good.
I should start by giving you a little overview of what the course is about. This class covers several advanced topics in mumbling theory, starting where you left off at the end of your last class.
Everyone should really know this already, but just as a refresher, I’d like someone to answer a question for me. What is mumbling?
(Student 1 raises hand.)
Instructor: Yes, you.
Student 1: Mumbling is the act of speaking quietly or incoherently, making it difficult to be heard or understood.
Instructor: Incorrect, that is not mumbling.
(After a pause, Student 2 raises hand, tentatively)
Instructor: Good, you give it a go. What is mumbling?
Student 2: (trailing off) Well, I think it’s like, when you don’t talk so clearly or when... maybe people can’t hear you or something well you know i think that’s, you know, mumbling, uh that’s all...
Instructor: Correct! That is mumbling. Not only have you given us an excellent demonstration of basic mumbling, but you’ve shown us one of the primary uses of mumbling, that is, ending a sentence without finishing one’s thought.
You see, there comes a time now and again in everyone’s life, when one begins talking about something and suddenly realizes, halfway through the sentence, that one really has nothing to say on the subject. Usually it is too late to back out gracefully: half the sentence has been said, your listeners are waiting for you to come to the important bit, and you can’t simply close your mouth and stop talking without looking foolish.
So you must use a trick of the senses to convince your audience that you have, in fact, finished your sentence, without actually completing it. You lower the volume of your voice and speak in an increasingly indistinct manner, finally trailing off at the end, and, if you have performed the feat correctly, your listeners will feel sure you have said something and that they themselves are at fault for mishearing you, when of course in reality you have said nothing at all.
You, there. (pointing at Student 3) What are some other uses of basic mumbling?
Student 3: Well... I think we learned in Intro that mumbling can be used as a safety net in certain awkward situations...
Instructor: Yes! Exactly. I’m glad you remembered. What is one example of mumbling being used as a safety net?
Student 3: Well, middle schoolers often use mumbling when asking each other to school dances. If the invitation is rejected, the spurned lover can try to claim that they were misheard.
Instructor: Wonderful! Act this situation out with your neighbor.
Student 3: (to Student 2) So I was thinking, you know, about the dance on Saturday, you know because we can go in partners or whatever and I was wondering maybeifyouwantedtogowithme.
Student 2: With you? Yeah, sorry, but no, I think I’m going with this other person, I mean we haven’t talked about it yet but I think that’s what’s going to happ-
Student 3: WHOA did you think I just asked you to the dance? That is NOT what just happened, I said I was wondering if there would be pizza, gosh why would you ever think that I mean ew.
Instructor: Excellent. There’s another safety-net application of basic mumbling I’d like to discuss, which is the awkward situation of passing a distant acquaintance on the sidewalk. This happens to all of us, in some cases on a daily basis.
One is peacefully walking along the sidewalk, minding one’s own business, and suddenly there is a friend of a friend coming down the same sidewalk from the other direction, someone whose name you may or may not remember. It isn’t clear if they’ve seen you, nor is it clear whether they would greet you if they did notice you, or whether they would even appreciate a greeting from you. In any event, the two of you are drawing closer, and the moment is approaching when it will be necessary to make a choice. It seems like the only viable choices are to ignore your acquaintance and remain silent like some kind of antisocial weirdo, or risk coming off as some kind of stalker or creep by saying hi to somebody who probably doesn’t even remember you.
But then you remember that you have a third option: the mumbled greeting. It combines the best aspects of the other two options. Brief eye contact is established, a few quiet words of greeting are mumbled, and an ambiguous gesture is made which could be interpreted as either a wave or some kind of oscillating stretch. If your acquaintance expects a greeting, they will interpret this as exactly that greeting; however, if they do not expect a greeting, your attempts at communication will go mercifully unnoticed.
The lesson to be taken from this is that mumbling leaves the mumbler with a way out- it prevents one from having to commit to a single course of action, instead providing a middle route between action and non-action that is much safer and often just as effective as making an actual choice.
Student 3: We saw all this stuff in Intro, though. What makes this class Advanced Mumbling Theory?
Instructor: Ah, I’m coming to that. You see, mumbling is not ALL about speaking quietly and indistinctly. That’s a big part of it, to be sure, but incoherent speech comes with its disadvantages: if you mumble all the time, you might gain a reputation as a timid person or a poor speaker, which is not at all desirable.
It would be ideal if one could express an idea loudly, clearly, and confidently, and still have all the advantages that mumbling affords- especially the ability to retract that idea at a moment’s notice.
For instance, (pointing to Student 1) say you are in English class and you have a brilliant theory about last night’s readings. Tell us your theory, please.
Student 1: (confidently) I think that Goblin Market is really not a critique of men and a celebration of female friendship, but rather a warning about the dangers of eating too much fruit-
Instructor: Good, good. Now, say that your instructor is smiling and nodding. What do you do now?
Student 1: Finish strong! “...It’s a warning about the dangers of fruit overconsumption, which we can gather must have been one of the largest health problems faced by Victorian England.”
Instructor: Excellent. Now say that your instructor had been frowning instead. How would you have finished that sentence then?
Student 1: By mumbling, like this: “...too much fruit, I mean uh, I guess it’s really about men.”
Instructor: That is one solution, but the problem is that you spoke too clearly in the first half of your sentence. It is now clear to the rest of the class that you had a stupid idea and that you are a stupid person.
But fortunately, there is such a thing as retroactive mumbling- a way to instantly nullify all the meaning of the sentence you just said, as if you had not said anything at all.
Student 3: (eagerly) How, how?
Instructor: By the addition of three simple words: “to some extent.” This is a qualifier which essentially renders anything meaningless, since just about everything is true “to some extent.” Let’s try that scene again.
Student 1: (confidently) I think that Goblin Market is really not a critique of men and a celebration of female friendship, but rather a warning about the dangers of eating too much fruit-
Instructor: Now I frown at you...
Student 1: ...uh, to some extent.
Instructor: There! Wonderful! Your idea is reduced to harmless vacuous fluff, as if you had mumbled the whole thing, and nobody is the wiser!
Another example of retroactive mumbling is called irony. If you see a cool pair of sunglasses but you are not sure whether you can pull off that look, just put them on. If someone ridicules them, all you have to do is claim you are wearing them ironically and the joke is suddenly on THEM for taking you at face value. If, on the other hand, you receive compliments on your sunglasses, you can claim you wore them in earnest the whole time.
Speaking in a “half-ironic” tone of voice is one of the highest forms of mumbling. It allows one to retract almost any statement, at almost any time, with impunity. It is difficult to calibrate exactly how much sarcasm you should allow to drip into your voice to achieve the perfect “half-ironic” balance that can be interpreted as either a total joke or absolute candor. Masters of this technique are occasionally known as hipsters.
Closely related to hipsters are what is called “literary critics,” an elite class of scholars who use intelligent-sounding academic language to conceal the fact that they actually have nothing to say at all. Basically, this involves using the word “discourse” as often as possible. Everything “informs the discourse.” If you can use its adjective form, “discursive,” so much the better.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is just a taste of what you’ll be seeing in Advanced Mumbling Theory. So, have a good week and um I guess I’ll see you tomorrow or wait not tomorrow I mean Wednesday.
THE END