I tend to USE language literally

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See, I tend to use language literally.

When I'm thinking of a broom, I call it a sweeper because it sweeps.

When I think of the phrase, "Wearing ones heart on their sleeves", I recall it as "Wearing ones emotions on their sleeves" (Because it's emotions on the surface, not their heart nor strictly emotions associated with the heart.) unless it's specifically a situation where one is demonstrating love or affection.

When I say "See you later", I mean... "See you later". Apparently, some NT person thought I was saying farewell forever and was getting annoyed by that.

So, I speculate this comes from autism but... I seem to have many characteristics of NT people and I seem to understand them, even if I find them "stupid" sometimes. (Before, I thought they were simply crazy, but now I understand that yelling and making inane loud noises is a matter of communicating emotions, not necessarily being "crazy".) But, my understanding seems to be more intellectual than 'intuitive', if you know what I mean. I mean, I've read books on "emotional intelligence" and the such and came to realize, "Oh, so that's why people do that".

And, I almost effortlessly use metaphor when I'm speaking. I haven't noticed anyone on the boards using metaphor in their writings, at all. I also use colloquial language without a problem... I think?

As far as understanding people, I think I understand them when they speak. Sometimes it's a stretch and people have called me literal minded, but I'm not nearly as literal as some of the people I've seen around these parts.

So, it's like I'm half NT and half aspergian but I seem to be, fundamentally and emotionally, NT. But, I'm curious, if it's something else, what could it be? Would schizophrenics have similar characteristics? Could it be a language disorder of some type? As far as I know, none of my parents are autistic (They both scored lower than average on the AQ test) and I heard that the heritability of autism was something like .8 - in other words, pretty freaking high. Meaning, you pretty much have to have autistic parents to have autistic children.

I'm getting memory tested in a couple of months, as I'm suspecting it might be related to that. I think most of the time, my memory just isn't efficiently linking phrases and words to their associated meanings while my ability to recall phrases and words is intact and with the combination of my pretty high IQ, I reason it through pretty quickly and sort of complicatedly, giving the impression of "literal language use". I think the process of inefficiently recalling the meanings associated with words is associated with schizophrenia.

Last edited by swbluto on 24 Sep 2011, 2:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

1) Metaphors are an absolutely crucial key to my understanding of the world. I frequently put together long, complex analogies comparing things I don't fully structurally and functionally understand to things I better understand, analogies so complex they leave 95% of those who hear or read them behind. I try to avoid them in writing for clarity.

2) Since autism (like many psychological conditions) is considered a spectrum, you could be abnormally close to the spectrum without quite meeting the criteria for a proper diagnoses of aspergers. You would probably need to talk to a professional.

This probably has a lot to do with the whole "visual thinking" thing that's common in autism. While some people remember "pictures of words" and can remember the exact spelling, phrasing, etc., a lot of us mentally translate them into some kind of picture internally and lose the specifics. You may just be translating to something that your brain considers more relevant.

I know that I can read an entire book, describe the scenes and plot in excrutiating detail (even a lot of detail that wasn't even on the book [whoops]), but I struggle to remember the names of the characters that must have been repeated hundreds of times. Unless there's something interesting or distinctive about the names, they just become an unimportant detail to me. As I'm reading, the names become a mental picture of the person in my head (which can be disconcerting when a description later in the book contradicts something about my mental image of the person)

Unfortunately, this is also how I tend to process speech. If somebody tells me something, by brain turns it into an interpretation almost immediately and I'd find it difficult to repeat any of it verbatim. I can switch gears and focus on the specific words, but I have to do it very deliberately. It's one of the reasons why I hated literature classes. I'd have to switch to that "literal" mode and reading became a chore rather than something enjoyable. Conversely, I love the challenge of picking contracts apart and focusing on the literal interpretation of the words. But that's more of a puzzle-solving thing than anything else.

I use more abstract terminology than that. I think my language issues are to blame for that. To call them all brooms is way simpler. On the other hand there are just as many moments when I feel like insisting that something is labelled in detail.



I remember them accurately usually - then intentionally or accidentally change them to my liking because I don't see why I shouldn't.

It's fun to play with language by making fun of it or of people never having questioned it, I intentionally step "out of line" and I love the effect slight changes in common sayings have on people.



It's somewhat 50-50 for me. I can be very literal with things I don't care much about and don't want to spend too much time on. Then there are times when I will use language literally and will only realise then that others might misunderstand because they'll try to read between lines that don't exist.

Being literal can be a handy tool as much as it can be a grave weakness.



Same for me, it's all intellectual. Learning about autism ultimately meant to me that I learnt about normal people. Most normal people don't have that much insight and knowledge on how they function and how they relate to each other. The thing is, they don't usually need it and can do without that insight.

No matter the level of mastery I obtain that way, I'll keep lacking horribly in social "imagination". Social imagination: that ability to react adequately with no prior knowledge and no comparable reference from which one can quickly pick up and adjust a suiting "plan" to follow.

Faking spontaneous and complex interaction is yet different (and often doable) from truly being able to interact spontaneously even in situations that one has never experienced, seen or heard of and that also cannot compare to similar situations of the past.



I use a lot of metaphors when speaking and use colloquial language when it is appropriate.

Mhm, come to think of it... I probably use a lot more colloquial language than my friends because I went to different schools and almost all of them come from "academic" families.

Others don't usually notice consciously (a lot of people aren't that self-aware) that my language is "idiosyncratic" and full of borrowed and adjusted phrases but I am aware of it and that it very much is a language impairment basically.



I thought so too for the longest time and only recently started to release that people misunderstand me a lot more than is "typical" because of the what I believe in, because of my experiences, my intelligence, my ever-present curiosity and because of my ADHD and my ASD.

I also noticed that they misunderstand each other a lot too. Things usually still work out for those who're more alike than not but I'm more different to a lot of people so things don't work out as often. I have high goals for myself so I need to pay attention to these misunderstandings.



I don't have autistic relatives either. Not even relatives with "broader autism phenotype" or "eccentrics". Interesting enough, I do have a "parent" who's what people here like to think of has to be the opposite of ASDs.


My ASD is more about that the impairments I have do not change despite that compared to the severity of the impairments I can still be very high-functioning and "not to be told apart from normal people" even "appear to be more able than most normal peers" for certain periods of time and/or under certain circumstances.

Severity isn't the same as functioning-level and that goes for many other psychiatric disorders (and normality and "talents") too. It might be a major reason for why you feel you cannot easily identify with a particular subgroup of people.

"Wearing one's heart on their sleeves" I sometimes think of a bloody sleeve.

I do call a broom... well a broom, usually, but there is one at work which someone has scribbled (for some bizarre reason) 'I love weasols'. I therefore call it the weasol (yes I didn't spell it that way though!) stick. No one has any idea what I am on about! I also call the 'dustpan and brush' the sweep tray.

I visualise it similarly. A disturbing image of a white sleeve holding a bloody, beating heart on it. That's the very picture of inside-out.