Linguistic Reinterpretation

There are lots of words that we say and hear everyday, but don't necessarily find an opportunity to write down or see in print. With words and phrases like this, people apply what they know about the patterns and structures of their language to come to an interpretation of the word to be able to continue to use it. Occasionally, this kind of interpretation is very different from what could be called a standard interpretation and linguists refer to this as 'reinterpretation.' An example that was given in class was people mistaking 'notary public' for 'noter republic.' They sound pretty much the same, and if you're not familiar with the word and concept of a notary, a noter republic makes about as much sense as a notary public for talking about someone you pay $15.00 to put an official stamp on a document.

(As an aside, the phrase notary public sort of implies that it's a specific kind of notary, and that others are out there. Just plain notary? Notary private?)

This is an interesting to talk about in class, but it's always exciting (for me, anyway) to see the things talked about in class actually happen in the wild, so to speak. In my other life I work for a computer help desk where our customers have the option of typing up and submitting a trouble ticket online, and in the subject line of one of these tickets, a coworker of mine came across a really interesting (again, for me, they didn't seem to care about it all that much) reinterpretation: "The peddle stool is broken."

We weren't sure what a peddle stool was, or if it was even out responsibility to fix until he opened the ticket and read the first line of the body: "The peddle stool that holds up the keyboard is broken." What the customer was looking for was pedestal, and I think I can see how they got there. First of all, they sound very nearly or maybe even completely identical. Second, a stool, or footstool, is something you stand on that supports you and the keyboard was 'standing' or at least being supported by this thing that is now broken. The 'peddle' part might have looked a little odd once it was all typed out, but really no more opaque than many other aspects of English.