I was watching television and this MacD's advert came on.



So it got me thinking about primings and collocations yet again. Although this may not be directly linked to the lexicon and such, but it's a nice analogy of how primings work. However, it also highlights how primings can sometimes be 'wrong' or be unconventional, leading one to wrong conclusions. In this Macdonald's advert, the little girl was happy about going to MacDonald's because whenever they did, he would not go to work after that. What she does not realize in her innocence and uncomplicated thought processing, is that her dad is only able to bring her to MacD's BECAUSE he is not going to work. This then, can be analogized to how the sequence of items being collocated together could lead to priming differences in the brain. It also shows how, sometimes primings could lead us to wrong conclusions. This is when our primings prevent us from being able to draw the correct meaning from a sequence of words which would make perfect sense in its literal meaning, but which we might try, erroneously, to force into another template based on our priming. On the other hand, perhaps in the situation whereby we are dealing with the lexicon, the dividing line is not quite so clearcut, and it could be possible that an interaction of the items bring about feelings/collocations. It's a little hard to articulate what I'm trying to say in words, so let me just give an example.

I was hungry. I ate chicken. (1)
I ate chicken. I was hungry. (2)

In both the sentences above, the reader is led to think that I was hungry and so I ate the chicken, and perhaps I am less hungry now. But nowhere in the two lines, is there any word used that is indicative of the time or sequence of events that happened. It is the priming that we have with respect to these group of words, so often collocated together, that made us draw the conclusion that I ate the chicken because I was hungry. Now look at the next two sentences.

I was hungry because I ate chicken. (3)
I was still hungry after I ate chicken. (4)

Now, with the addition of new words, the sentences have taken on whole new meanings, haven't they?

This leads me to another point of discussion. Is it priming which causes us to use a particular word, or is it the word, with its associated primings, which invokes certain emotions or feelings?

When I use a word such as the singlish 'sian' (feeling very bored with nothing to do) or 'nua' (feeling very lazy), in sentences like 'I feel so.... ______(insert either of the above words)'. Imagine a case where you are uncertain of how you are feeling, and you are trying to think of a word that encapsulates how you feel, and after a moment of pause, u decide to use one of the above words, even if it isn't really the word you want to use. Would this be a case of you ultimately choosing to use that word because you really feel it? Or would saying the word become a self fulfilling prophecy, and you suddenly really do feel very 'sian' or 'nua'? Does the feeling lead to word use? or does the word use result in the sudden development of that feeling?

Perhaps, like the question of the chicken and the egg, this question can never be answered. But it is interesting that this MacD's advert has so aptly brought to the front how easy it is to mistake one thing for another, and how we can easily make mistakes because of false primings.