By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm:
For my first line of this blog post, I want to say something. I have to say, honestly, it is going to be important. But I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. So, here it is: When communicating, don’t tee up your statement, just say it. That’s it. So, you might wonder, why the buildup? Why all the prefatory remarks about what I’m going to say? Because those kinds of lead-in statements can sometimes reach epidemic proportions in both common and official speech. Witnesses, for example, will sometimes let these conversational conventions leak accidentally into their testimony. The witness could think they’re making their language more appealing, polite, or careful, when they’re actually making their language more hesitant, more distant, and — most importantly — more likely to be seen as false or insincere.
These common lead in statements are called “tee ups,” and they are the focus of a recent Wall Street Journal feature focusing on the work of University of Texas, Austin Professor James W. Pennebaker. The problem with these expressions — the statements about what our statements are, or will be — is that they serve as insulation or a barrier. In a witness, this kind of language can reflect a hesitation or a hyper-precision that stems from understandable motives in an unfamiliar legal context. But to the fact finder assessing the credibility of that witness, it sounds like a hedge, a waffle, or an attempt to distance oneself from one’s own testimony. It sounds like insincerity. In this post, I’ll share a list of some of the most common types of tee ups and also comment a bit on why these tee ups are typically best avoided all together.
The Trouble With Tee Ups
Fundamentally, the tee up is a kind of meta-expression, or ‘talk about talk.’ The language can serve a number of functions, like hedging a statement or making it less direct. One form of the tee up is sometimes called a “performative” or an expression that is meant to convey an action. Using the famous example of President Clinton’s denial of having sexual relations with White House Intern Monica Lewinsky, Pennebaker points to the way these performatives put a highlighter on insincerity. The President began with, “I want to say one thing,” following that with, “I want you to listen to me,” and then capping it off with, “I’m going to say this again,” before his denial. He tees the statement up with not one or two, but three performatives. Based on Pennebaker’s work (you can see him explain it here in about three minutes), these statements about his statement are an implied effort to shift attention from the facts to the speaker’s intentions, and they not only make the claim appear more insincere, but also make it more likely the statement actually is insincere.
The speaker is trying to put some space between themselves and their statement. As The Wall Street Journal quotes Dr. Pennebaker, “We are emotionally distancing ourselves from our statement, without even knowing it.” Communications trainer Ellen Jovin adds, “It is a doomed attempt to evade the consequences of a comment.”
I’m Just Saying, Here Are Some Tee Ups to Be Careful Of
Trial attorneys should aim for direct communication that doesn’t hedge or distance. Generally, litigators are more practiced at the art of direct and persuasive communication. Witnesses, however, can have a harder time. In the unfamiliar setting of the courtroom, they can fall back on habits of speech that make them seem too guarded or dishonest. During witness preparation sessions, pay attention to the tee up. The following is a list of statements that should generally be eliminated, placed within the category of the ‘meta-statement’ (in bold) that each tee up conveys.
Here comes a statement…
As I say…
I just want to tell you…
I want to say…
I want you to know…
Here is what I think…
Let me be perfectly clear…
You need to understand…
It is going to be true…
To tell you the truth…
To be perfectly honest…
The fact is…
Honestly/Truly/Really/Actually/Seriously…
But it might not be as strong as I’d like it…
I’m just saying…
As far as I know…
I was thinking…
I could be wrong, but…
And it could be bad…
I’m not saying…
Don’t take this the wrong way…
I hate to tell you this…
Don’t get me wrong…
I don’t want to seem sexist/racist/homophobic, but…
There are probably many more we could add to the list, but when you consider each based on the evident meaning that it conveys, it becomes all the more clear how silly it is to include them. Usually, the better expression will be to simply say what follows without the tee up. There are exceptions of course. For example, “As far as I know” could be meant literally, but it is often simply a habit (like the word “literally”) that isn’t used to convey its actual meaning. In most cases, communication is more like baseball and less like golf: Don’t tee it up, just swing.
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Other Posts on Word Choices:
- Ban the Word “Anyone” From Your Oral Voir Dire
- Make Events Meaningful by Inviting Counterfactuals
- Use Visual Language
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Photo Credit: North Charleston, Flickr Creative Commons