To Be Honest With You

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Danielle, and I’m from Escanito, California.

Hello, Danielle.

Hi, Danielle. Welcome to the show.

So, I have a question about the phrase, to be honest with you, or I’ll be honest with you. I’m just curious where it comes from, and I guess why we say it. My boyfriend says it a lot, and then I’ve noticed I’ve started saying it a lot. And I think, whoa, wait a minute. I just like, why am I saying that? Like, is it more like I’m going to cut you a deal? I don’t know. I was just curious about that.

To be honest. To be honest. Yeah. To be honest with you, I’m just a little curious. And so you’re thinking that being honest should be the default. That’s what I’m thinking. Why am I saying it if already what I’m going to say is honest? And I guess, you know, it’s usually when someone’s asking a question. And so, like, through our businesses or work or whatever, when someone’s asking me a question and the answer, I’m already going to say the same answer, regardless if I put the to be honest with you. But I’m just curious about it.

As if ordinarily that you’re a huge liar in this one time when they tell the truth. I just got to clarify this time I’m going to be honest with you. But everything else, everything else is rubbish. Finally, Danielle is going to tell the truth.

There’s some linguistic stuff happening here. There’s a lot of different ways to go about this. Obviously, everyone who says to be honest or variations on that theme, they’re not all saying it for the same reason. Sometimes it is because they’re a huge liar and this one time they’re going to be honest. Sometimes, and it sounds like this may be the case in your house, it just kind of becomes a catch word where you can’t stop yourself from saying it. And it’s a little bit of a crutch and kind of empty. And it’s just a thing you throw at the top of a sentence to introduce a sentence. And it doesn’t really have a lot of weight or meaning. And it can be safely ignored.

But there’s another whole usage of to be honest, which I really like. In linguistics, we call it an adverbial disjunct. And this is where you are providing commentary on your own language. You’re labeling your words or you’re talking about your intentions. So frankly and hopefully kind of work the same way. Frankly, you know, I’m saying basically I’m going to be franker. Or hopefully, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m talking about my wishes for the future. A lot of language that we have is metanarrative or commentary on our own speech. And this is just one of those many things here.

The other thing that’s happening here sometimes is it’s not that you’re always a big fat liar. It’s that the circumstances in which you’re in put you in an adversarial relationship with the other person. And you need to reassure them and do this really human thing of reaching out to them and just kind of saying, I’m being honest with you. You generally want them to know that you are being honest and you’re being forthright because, let’s say, they’re a customer with a complaint and you run the complaints department and you’re naturally adversaries, right? And so that’s another kind of, to be honest, which I think is really, really interesting because you just want the other person to understand. I’m being faithful. I’m being loyal to you as another human being and being genuine. Please believe me. And that’s probably the best use of, to be honest.

Oh, okay. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Yeah. And I have another hour on that topic if you want.

Danielle, thank you so much for your call. Really appreciate it.

Yeah. No, thank you guys. You guys are great.

Yeah. Thank you. Keep being honest.

I will.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.