I first heard about "word salad" last night on "Boston Legal." From Wikipedia:
quote:
In the mental health field, word salad (originally from the German Wortsalat) is used to describe the symptom of confused, and often repetitious, language that is symptomatic of various mental illnesses. It is usually associated with a manic presentation and other symptoms of serious mental illnesses, such as psychoses. It describes the apparently confused usage of words with no apparent meaning or relationship attached to them. In this context, it is considered to be a symptom of a formal thought disorder. In some cases word salad can be a sign of asymptomatic schizophrenia; e.g. the question 'Why do people believe in God?' elicits a response like 'Because he makes a twirl in life, my box is broken help me blue elephant. Isn't lettuce brave? I like electrons, hello.'
Yes, I read about it at University in a Biology of Linguistics class. Came up during the section on aphasia. I had not heard of it used to describe a technique for bypassing Bayesian spam filters, though. Thanks.
