I signed up for the gym yesterday (April 1) and the woman said "Your next payment will be March 1. I assumed she meant that my first payment was at the end of month. Should she have said "your next payment is today"? I intepretted the word "next" as "first". So does "next" mean "first" or "the one after"?
Another Example
Today is Monday and I say "I'll see you next Friday". Do I mean this coming Friday or the one after?
Most people would say it means "this coming Friday".
Today is Thursday and I say "I'll see you next Friday". Do I mean this coming Friday or the one after?
Most people would say it means "the Friday after this coming Friday".
Aha! There it is! Ambiguity based on proximity and a common mis-usage of English.
Dictionary.com defines "next" as "nearest or adjacent in place or position" so it never means the one after.
So if it is Friday and I say "I'll see next Friday", it actually means "I'll see you today" since today is the nearest in time position.
The American Sign Language sign for "next" implies "the one after".
You leap-frog one hand over the other to indicate you're skipping the up-coming thing for the one after. That sign gives the wrong idea about the meaning of the word "next".
The sign should actually closer to the sign for "near".
Your two hands move toward and away but in a close proximity but they don't touch. So in my mind, the right sign for "next" would be to have the front hand stationary and the back hand move toward the front hand and touch. Unfortunately that is the sign for "arrive".
So even sign language perpetuates the ambiguity of next.
1 comment:
If you think "next" is bad, try "near." How can you get any nearer to a house than being inside it? And yet, when you're in a house, you can't say that you're "near" it... Why is it that when I say "I painted the house blue" you assume the outside of the house is blue, but when I say "I painted the cave blue" you assume that the inside of the cave is blue? I'm glad I'm not the kind of linguist who has to worry about these things for a living!
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