Taking things literally - spoken against written.

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I was thinking about the tendency to take things literally that a lot of AS people have, and I realised that I am much more likely to take something literally if it is spoken (and very likely when it is sung; I keep realising that I've missed metaphors in song lyrics, even very obvious ones) than if it is written down.

I'm wondering if this difference between perceiving spoken and written meanings literally is common?

I understand most metaphors that are spoken since I accent myself with them heavily in speech (to the point that I sound Texan), but emotional messages hidden in questions are beyond me. Written words are art to me, but I take them literally if I'm not given a day or two to scientifically extract the emotional aspects from poems/songs/etc.

I sometimes know what a metaphor means without having it be explained to me and other times they confuse me because I don't understand them because I never heard it. I rarely take a phrase literal.

Well, in Mozart and the Whale there's a part where the two of them are walking down the street in their costumes. Some girl laughs at them, and Isabelle says, "at least my boyfriend's a vegetarian!" and Donald says, "you have a boyfriend?" I would probably think the same thing.

What I won't take literally are idioms like "break a record" or "kick the bucket" or "spend time". Perhaps as a child I might have, but we grow up and learn a lot about language to the point where we don't do that so much anymore.

I remember when I was a child my grandmother must have told me some story about her own childhood, and I repeated it like it was my own, even saying, "when I was a little girl..." It's pretty hilarious to think about, haha.

I don't take popular phrases literally. If there's one I haven't heard I can tell it doesn't make logical sense to the situation so I'll ask what the phrase means. I'll give an example of what I do miss. I clean offices and one has a front office area with a back lab area. They had been cleaning out the lab and the dumpster was so full I couldn't fit anything else in. The office manager told me to leave my trash (a substantial amount) "here" as opposed to "the back" and on of the technicians would take care of it later. I questioned her because I thought she was telling me to leave the trash in the office area. The conversation went around in circles for a while. We had a good laugh when it was all cleared up. I have known them for many years and she reacted to my mistake with an 'Oh you silly' manner. Of course I should have realized she didn't mean for me to leave 100 gallons of trash by volume in the middle of an office.

I chose the third option.

I'm much more comfortable with the written word. I think there's too much distracting stimulus going on when people speak - their face, their eyes, what they're wearing, the room, background noise. People also tend to be vague when talking while they think about what they want to say properly when writing.

I don't take common phrases literally because I've heard them before. I don't take unfamiliar metaphors literally because of my strong sense of logic. If someone used a metaphor like "My face looks like a war zone" to describe their bad skin, I would know that this was a metaphor because a person's face wouldn't look like a literal war zone. I don't have a conscious thought process, I just know. What I struggle with is ambiguous questions and instructions. If asked a vague question I will answer it literally so god help you if you ever ask what I did today or what music I like. I used to take guys literally when they said they loved me, taking this to mean they literally loved me like my family do, not realising that it's just the sort of thing guys say to girls to get them into bed. With instructions I'm worse. If asked to do something in terms too general I will just sit there, totally overwhelmed, because I think I have to do it all now. My mum used to say "tidy round before I get home from work". I interpreted the phrase to mean neaten the magazines on the coffee table and not much else so I didn't vacuum or wash up. My mum would get mad because by "tidy round" she meant make the place tidy, which involves vacuuming and dusting etc.

I think it may be just because when you read something, you have time to think about it? In a normal verbal conversation, you have to respond immediately to what's said, you don't have time to analyze it much, so what you respond to is more likely to be your first impression of what was said. When it's written, there's more time and more context. If there's a metaphor burried somewhere in a paragraph, it's not so easy to just take it literally by itself. Does that make sense?

Wait, is "spend time" a metaphor? Your life has a limited amount of time in it. If you devote time to something, isn't that spending time? I don't see what's not literal about that. It's used in almost exactly the same way as money is. You could spend time fixing something, or spend money paying somebody else to fix it. How is time not something you literally spend?

I was about to vote written but decided to put both. I read text more than I am around people speaking, so of course I'd think I had more trouble with written but I don't think it makes a difference. At least in conversations people aren't TRYING to be poetic or literary or whatever.

Spoken. Totally.
Although I often do misinterpret the written word,
the socially confusing aspect of speech and my auditory processing issues
contribute to even more frequent mistakes like this.

I am equally likely to take things literally no matter how they are presented.

*sensitive piece of aspie*

Both for sure... I chat with my bf as well as talk on the phone and in person a lot... I'm always getting confused by what he is talking about, or getting frustrated with him about the way he words things... I also tend to answer just about any rhetorical question that he asks-sometimes I have an inkling that it is rhetorical, but I still answer, just in case.

I tend to take things literally, and I believe that I pretty much take both the written and the spoken words with an equal amount of literalness. I have to remind myself frequently to take time to evaluate what I'm hearing or reading to see if the message really means what I believe it means or if it means something else.

Last edited by JetLag on 17 Sep 2009, 5:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Last edited by Hmmmn on 18 Sep 2009, 7:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yea, you do.. if you spend time doing something, you no longer have that time. And people "rent" a little extra time when they pay somebody else to do something. Then they've paid money in order to not have to spend their time to do something.

Edit: and you can pay your time-bill.. it's called death. When you've used up all your time.

Last edited by Maggiedoll on 17 Sep 2009, 6:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't take things literally and I love metaphorical, symbolic, language written or spoken. My biggest issue is communication with others and "getting" where they are at emotionally and mentally. There's so many misunderstandings between me and them. It's like, I am never in the same "place" as them on a mental level. They are having one conversation and I am having another, most the time.