• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Can you be literal and still be an N?

Craft

Probably Most Brilliant
Joined
Jan 8, 2010
Messages
1,221
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
5w7
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
That's clearly a non sequitur. You can't say what's it without actually getting to know a person. Jungian functions are not some magical shortcut around this.

It's primarily personal observation conjoined with personal logic. If it makes sense to you and, more importantly, your personal experiences, then it could be useful. I can argue for my logic, but I can't argue for my data. The logic works around three assumptions: Si = literal meanings, prplchknz = INFP, and INFP has tertiary Si. "Prplchknz = infp" is questionable and the argument may not be sound as a whole, but the argument, with the conclusion of "It is prplchknz's Si" is valid.
 

prplchknz

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
34,397
MBTI Type
yupp
It's primarily personal observation conjoined with personal logic. If it makes sense to you and, more importantly, your personal experiences, then it could be useful. I can argue for my logic, but I can't argue for my data. The logic works around three assumptions: Si = literal meanings, prplchknz = INFP, and INFP has tertiary Si. "Prplchknz = infp" is questionable and the argument may not be sound as a whole, but the argument, with the conclusion of "It is prplchknz's Si" is valid.
Just so you know I am not an SJ I have a hard time functioning in an SJ world. really hard time, I become really depressed and despondent when I'm forced to act like an SJ
 

lunalum

Super Senior Member
Joined
Dec 20, 2008
Messages
2,706
MBTI Type
ZNTP
Enneagram
7w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
This is funny..... IME the one's who are the best at not taking things literally in the way that you're talking about are all really strong S types. Like, they are more in tune with what is happening and what is custom, so when someone says they'll take 15 minutes they'll know from experience that it's just a customary saying. Or something like that.

But I still don't know what in the world this "15 minutes" is supposed to mean. If it doesn't mean what it means then there's no limit to what it could mean. I struggled with this a lot, especially when I was younger. If it has something to do with the customariness I either wasn't aware of it or ignored it as irrelevant to what it is or could be. I defaulted to literal just because it was easier when having to deal with real stuff. This isn't the same as being a literal-preferring person. It's more that I'm so overloaded by a sense of possibility in any given situation that I had to ground myself in the essentials of it to make sense at all to anyone but myself. Literal preferring is more like you don't care about the connections and meanings of the universe as much... "cut the nonsense I just want to live a normal life" sort of thing. But no, I greatly love speculation, just not in those annoyingly ordinary situations with those annoyingly ordinary figurative and sometimes convoluted language.

Telling me the trash is overflowing is not the same as telling me to take out the trash, it's only a hint at such so don't act like it was something I was actually told :tongue:


I.... just don't know at this point. Only that Intuitive and Sensing types are much bigger things than these strengths and weaknesses that we commonly attribute them to. Sensing isn't these lack of abilities and intuition doesn't necessarily have them. I could go about rationalizing this as Asperger's or other mental problems messing up my extraverted functions and/or making me use too much Ti than what's healthy or something.... but is that really necessary? Is that really what type is about? Maybe part of it is but I still think that sometimes we're overcomplicating type too much :tongue:

Okay, end rampage. Summary: Prplchknz still seems NFP.
 

prplchknz

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
34,397
MBTI Type
yupp
This is funny..... IME the one's who are the best at not taking things literally in the way that you're talking about are all really strong S types. Like, they are more in tune with what is happening and what is custom, so when someone says they'll take 15 minutes they'll know from experience that it's just a customary saying. Or something like that.

But I still don't know what in the world this "15 minutes" is supposed to mean. If it doesn't mean what it means then there's no limit to what it could mean. I struggled with this a lot, especially when I was younger. If it has something to do with the customariness I either wasn't aware of it or ignored it as irrelevant to what it is or could be. I defaulted to literal just because it was easier when having to deal with real stuff. This isn't the same as being a literal-preferring person. It's more that I'm so overloaded by a sense of possibility in any given situation that I had to ground myself in the essentials of it to make sense at all to anyone but myself. Literal preferring is more like you don't care about the connections and meanings of the universe as much... "cut the nonsense I just want to live a normal life" sort of thing. But no, I greatly love speculation, just not in those annoyingly ordinary situations with those annoyingly ordinary figurative and sometimes convoluted language.

Telling me the trash is overflowing is not the same as telling me to take out the trash, it's only a hint at such so don't act like it was something I was actually told :tongue:


I.... just don't know at this point. Only that Intuitive and Sensing types are much bigger things than these strengths and weaknesses that we commonly attribute them to. Sensing isn't these lack of abilities and intuition doesn't necessarily have them. I could go about rationalizing this as Asperger's or other mental problems messing up my extraverted functions and/or making me use too much Ti than what's healthy or something.... but is that really necessary? Is that really what type is about? Maybe part of it is but I still think that sometimes we're overcomplicating type too much :tongue:

Okay, end rampage. Summary: Prplchknz still seems NFP.
exactly especially on the trash overflowing. I'm likely to go, um ok.
 

Craft

Probably Most Brilliant
Joined
Jan 8, 2010
Messages
1,221
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
5w7
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Just so you know I am not an SJ I have a hard time functioning in an SJ world. really hard time, I become really depressed and despondent when I'm forced to act like an SJ

Being an SJ is different from having an Si function, so yeah. I think that if you are more creative with things than you are literal with meanings, then you are NP.
 

skylights

i love
Joined
Jul 6, 2010
Messages
7,756
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
6w7
Instinctual Variant
so/sx
^ i wouldn't link creativity and literal to SJ/NP. SJ boyfriend is, in fact, more creative than i am (gasp). he thinks of funny little things i don't think of and he brainstorms like a boss. yet SJ boyfriend is still SJ and i am still NP.

i think that Ns are more likely to interpret things as pattern/metaphor (especially NPs and metaphor) but i don't think we can apply that to every phrasing. like [MENTION=5857]LunaLuminosity[/MENTION] said, strong S types are usually more connected to reality and probably more likely to understand communication in its context. and things like "15 minutes" are quite context dependent. "T-minus 15 minutes" is quite a different 15 minutes than "see you at the park in 15 minutes". the former is 15:00:00 and the latter is 12-18 minutes. and "get over here in 15 minutes or you're fired" is GO GO GO NOW.
 

Owfin

New member
Joined
Dec 18, 2011
Messages
261
MBTI Type
ISTJ
Enneagram
6w7
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
To this day, I still cannot understand "quarter after" and "quarter till". I'm like "Just tell me the time!"
 

highlander

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Dec 23, 2009
Messages
26,562
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
6w5
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
well can you. I'm very literal at times when someone says something metaphorical my first thought is picturing it literally. it took me years to figure out about 15 minutes didn't mean exactly 15 minutes and would get mad when it take 16 minutes.

As an INTJ, I tend to take things somewhat literally that people tell me. Since I'm direct, I like them to be direct. However, I don't get caught up in the precise meaning of words - so there can be some interpretation even if they did not use the best words to communicate things. If I know the person well, it's like I understand what they mean vs. what they said.
 

prplchknz

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
34,397
MBTI Type
yupp
As an INTJ, I tend to take things somewhat literally that people tell me. Since I'm direct, I like them to be direct. However, I don't get caught up in the precise meaning of words - so there can be some interpretation even if they did not use the best words to communicate things. If I know the person well, it's like I understand what they mean vs. what they said.

I sometimes wonder if I'm not an INTJ. Probably an INFP and that's why i wonder so much
 

bluestripes

curiouser and curiouser
Joined
Oct 27, 2011
Messages
180
MBTI Type
Fi
Enneagram
4
[MENTION=5388]CrystalViolet[/MENTION], [MENTION=360]prplchknz[/MENTION] -

i was also in speech therapy for a month or two, but i was somewhere between five and seven. i didn't learn to talk until i was 3.5, almost four, because of a neurological disorder that was eventually diagnosed as cerebral palsy (it was not 100 percent certain and i made a complete recovery, owing to the efforts of my maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother). when i did, i started to use full sentences almost at once and, as my mom put it, "erupted". she used to call me chatterbox or motormouth - i am told i could talk loudly and excitedly for hours, and i guess it must have been incredibly hard to shut me up. ;) but i still pronounced the "l" sound after broad/hard vowels as identical to the "y" in "young" and couldn't manage the rolling "r". it became guttural, more similar to the rhotic sound in german or yiddish.

my parents took me to a speech therapist, who made me lie on a couch and inserted a strange tool underneath my tongue - it looked like a long spoon with a wooden ball attached to the end. i was told to expel my breath in a specific way to make it vibrate against the lower side of my tongue. i didn't like this because i would get dizzy with hyperventilation and the sessions could last an hour or two each, so it was difficult to stand up afterward. but once the sessions were over, the speech defect was gone. :)

Telling me the trash is overflowing is not the same as telling me to take out the trash, it's only a hint at such so don't act like it was something I was actually told :tongue:

this is the exact thing i can have trouble with. if someone says, "it is cold in here" - or, as in your example, "the trash is overflowing" - my first instinctive impulse is to understand it as a statement of fact. now, with more social experience and several comprehensive courses in pragmatics, i am aware that people may not say what they mean in situations like those, so i can arrive at the additional meaning rationally. "one usually wouldn't state the obvious without a reason. it's colder than usual in this room because the window is open. this should be connected to the window, then. does this person want me to close it?" but it's not natural for me, and feels forced.

during one of our pragmatics classes, the tutor illustrated this with the following example. she said: imagine a situation where you are sitting on a bench and eating a cucumber. someone sits down next to you and asks, it is not a chocolate egg that you are eating, is it? how would you interpret it?

i was perplexed and couldn't think of a response until she told us that the person would be (supposedly) asking for part of the cucumber. but that did not explain much. i still could not understand why one would want to go to such a length - the sentence sounded outlandish, and i couldn't imagine who on earth could say that or where. it seemed a little dishonest, too, an attempt to be selfish and rude (or what one would perceive as that) without appearing to be such. i thought, i would rather that person asked outright - not sure about others, but i would not have found anything objectionable about it. or, if one does believe one is acting in a rude or unacceptable manner, then why do so at all? just be silent.

in the end i would probably give them the cucumber. but only to make them stop asking bizarre irrelevant questions. or because, now that we had started to talk about the cucumber, it would sound like a good idea to snap it in half and share.

to be honest, i suspect that i was not the only person in the class who had this reaction.

To this day, I still cannot understand "quarter after" and "quarter till". I'm like "Just tell me the time!"

i couldn't understand it either as a child but i am not sure when this stopped - possibly when i was fifteen or sixteen. those two expressions made me stumble over them. i first had to remember that "a quarter past seven" meant i had to think about that actual hour, whereas "a quarter to seven" meant i had to think of the hour before that; then i had to visualize a clock face with the hour hand on seven and the minute hand on fifteen, or with the hour hand on six and the minute hand on forty-five, respectively. may have had to do something else too. the result was that when my mom (who taught me english) would ask me to translate the time using one of these expressions, i would experience a sort of mental emptiness and just stare.
 

FireShield98

Member
Joined
Oct 17, 2011
Messages
455
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sp
Yes, I can be literal at times... I think. I'm pretty sure what I'm saying at times is literal, but maybe it just seems literal to me because I usually speak more metaphorically.
 

miss fortune

not to be trusted
Joined
Oct 4, 2007
Messages
20,589
Enneagram
827
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
same as asking "can you be figurative in speech and also an S?" :)

similes, metaphors and strange comparisons are totally the best! especially if you can work in a few pop culture references and quote a movie or song as well... I rarely communicate off the forum without alluding to something else and I'm rather comfortable where I placed myself even if other people aren't :tongue:
 

lunalum

Super Senior Member
Joined
Dec 20, 2008
Messages
2,706
MBTI Type
ZNTP
Enneagram
7w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
this is the exact thing i can have trouble with. if someone says, "it is cold in here" - or, as in your example, "the trash is overflowing" - my first instinctive impulse is to understand it as a statement of fact. now, with more social experience and several comprehensive courses in pragmatics, i am aware that people may not say what they mean in situations like those, so i can arrive at the additional meaning rationally. "one usually wouldn't state the obvious without a reason. it's colder than usual in this room because the window is open. this should be connected to the window, then. does this person want me to close it?" but it's not natural for me, and feels forced.

during one of our pragmatics classes, the tutor illustrated this with the following example. she said: imagine a situation where you are sitting on a bench and eating a cucumber. someone sits down next to you and asks, it is not a chocolate egg that you are eating, is it? how would you interpret it?

i was perplexed and couldn't think of a response until she told us that the person would be (supposedly) asking for part of the cucumber. but that did not explain much. i still could not understand why one would want to go to such a length - the sentence sounded outlandish, and i couldn't imagine who on earth could say that or where. it seemed a little dishonest, too, an attempt to be selfish and rude (or what one would perceive as that) without appearing to be such. i thought, i would rather that person asked outright - not sure about others, but i would not have found anything objectionable about it. or, if one does believe one is acting in a rude or unacceptable manner, then why do so at all? just be silent.

in the end i would probably give them the cucumber. but only to make them stop asking bizarre irrelevant questions. or because, now that we had started to talk about the cucumber, it would sound like a good idea to snap it in half and share.

to be honest, i suspect that i was not the only person in the class who had this reaction.

Yeah I don't get these either..... these things aren't really what the phrases mean, they're just one thing they might lead to, and in the case of the cucumber and the chocolate egg, a pretty unrelated one. If someone said that to me, my interpretation would be that they were being silly, and I would answer "it is not a chocolate egg that you are eating, is it?" with "yes" to be ambiguously silly back ;)
 

Craft

Probably Most Brilliant
Joined
Jan 8, 2010
Messages
1,221
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
5w7
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
^ i wouldn't link creativity and literal to SJ/NP. SJ boyfriend is, in fact, more creative than i am (gasp). he thinks of funny little things i don't think of and he brainstorms like a boss. yet SJ boyfriend is still SJ and i am still NP.

Well ideas are stored via Si, so it could have come from experience. Or he could simply be skillful with ideas and yet not prefer the process of ideation. It's been said a lot, but preferences=/=abilities.

(or you could be bad at typing..)

As an added data, I consider myself very literal.
 

CrystalViolet

lab rat extraordinaire
Joined
Oct 24, 2008
Messages
2,152
MBTI Type
XNFP
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Do you say spoonerism alot? I do, LOL. Actually, in truth I wonder how I manage to communicate all, my brain scrambles it up all the time. Maybe my mother dropped me on my head alot.
 

prplchknz

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
34,397
MBTI Type
yupp
I convolute things, but i realize i'm doing it but i can't stop rearagging the order there suppose to come out so i go put them in order yourself.
 
R

ReflecTcelfeR

Guest
I'm with the counter-intuitive argument here. I think sensing dominance and auxiliary are perhaps better at handling those types of phrases.

I don't see why being literal gets in the way of pattern seeking either. So my answer is yes.
 

strychnine

All Natural! All Good!
Joined
Jun 23, 2010
Messages
895
I tend to interpret things literally when they are meant metaphorically, and metaphorically when they are meant literally. I approximate meanings most of the time. As for cultural references, both current and past, I feel totally out of the loop most of the time they come up. As if I were born on a different planet and dropped into this one right before the conversation. Other people seem to have gathered so much information, perhaps passively, and memorized it. It seems in those situations like I did not absorb the information I was supposed to. It's the same with social conventions. I seem unaware of how I am "supposed" to interact. I am clumsy and by other people's standards, "awkward".
 

Rail Tracer

Freaking Ratchet
Joined
Jun 29, 2010
Messages
3,031
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Yes, depends on how I want my information, how I want to send out information, and who are the people giving the information.

Generally, the more I am literal, the more I am wanting to give accurate information as "January 8 on Sunday" is easier to understand than "the beginning of the second week of January." The first case is to the point, the information is to the point. The second is just begging me to think, second week of January, the beginning day (Sunday,) so.... that day would be Sunday and the Sunday of that week is on the 8th. A whole lot of needless confusion if you ask me.

Generally, if someone where to tell me to be somewhere by, say, 6PM, I'll be there by 6PM or earlier. Not 6:00:30PM not 6:01PM not 6:10PM.

However, in some cases, when someone says to be at a place by 6PM, it is generally assumed people will be arriving a bit later (say 6:30PM.) But that is because people would generally assume that the exact timing to arrive at a party isn't exactly at that time, it is just a time to tell people to get ready around that time.
 
Top