The Production of Verbal Slips and Double Entendres as Clues to the Efficiency of Normal Speech Production

The examination of verbal slips is an established method for investigating the cognitive structures and mechanisms of normal speech production. The present study includes double entendres as a cousin of the verbal slip, and attempts to determine the cognitive-processing origins of both through an examination of naturalistic and laboratory observations. Several categories of antecedent conditions are proposed, with implications for the cognitive efficiency of normal, error-free, speech production; and in particular, with implications of polysemantic activation within a spreading-activation lexicon.