On the radio last week, a local politician was being interviewed regarding a controversy where she had apparently said something that was not true. The radio played a recording featuring her saying “a hotel will be built,” which turned out to be false. While I was listening, she was interviewed and asked to comment on the situation, to which she said that the public had misunderstood her, and that the hotel was not in fact going to be built.
Whether a hotel is being built or not really doesn’t matter in this context – what matters is that she neatly shifted the blame from herself to the public by using the word “misunderstand.”
If you say one thing, and then realize that it was incorrect, the best thing to do is to admit that you were mistaken, apologize, and move on. People cannot misunderstand you if you say something outright and it turns out to be wrong. In that case, you misspoke.
However, if you say something ambiguous, and people assume that a hotel will be built because of it, then you can certainly make the claim that the public misunderstood you.
There is a clear difference here, and it is a very important one! By shifting our rhetoric slightly, we can shift reality (who hasn’t heard a kid say “it fell out of my hands” rather than “I dropped it”?). Shifting the blame changes our understanding of the situation and thus changes our perception on what really happened.
What do you think of this? How does your perception on the situation change from the point of view of “I misspoke” vs. “you misunderstood”? Share in the comments section below!