Noncompositional

A recent Jet Blue radio commercial features a (probably) staged telephone conversation between a potential flyer and someone from customer service. The service rep says that now all people on Jet Blue flights have extra leg room because they’ve removed a row of seats, giving everyone an extra few inches. The caller then asks, “If I don’t have an extra leg, can I use the room for something else?”

There is then some back and forth between the two, and eventually everything is clarified. Then the caller, being exlanatory/self-deprecatory, remarks that he tends to “take things literally.”

Though the caller may indeed take many things literally that aren’t meant to be, perhaps in this case he should have said that he tends to screw up interpretations of series of adjectives. No doubt his friends avoid talking to him about their Turkish history teachers and fake leather wallets, hoping to avoid wasting precious minutes explaining what they’re actually talking about.

The question is, assuming that most people understand this fellow’s self-characterization, what the heck does “literal” mean? Now, in the context of the commercial it’s clear what is meant by “literal,” since the source of the guy’s misunderstanding obvious. I just wonder how many people, asked to give examples of misunderstandings due to taking things too literally, would provide cases of attachment ambiguity. (”Oh, the guy you were spying on had the telescope? I guess I just take things too literally…”). Perhaps a native interpreter can provide intuitions.

As a side note: the service rep, when she gets that ridiculous question, admits that the words “extra leg room” do “imply” the meaning that the guy initially had. That’s also interesting, since when I think of something implying another thing, both things can be true at once. But in the extra leg room case, one reading can’t really imply the other. My guess that this is related to, loosely speaking, “perspective.” That is, for the rep there was a the “core,” intended meaning, but there was an additional one that was slightly covert, i.e., “implied.” Somehow I’m reminded of the semantics of a (medicinal) “side-effect,” which of course can become the main effect if the drug is repurposed.