Call attention to

Call attention to

“Call attention to” is the expression I want to show you today. It means exactly what you think it means: to do something that causes people to pay attention to something.

For example, you might say something like this: “The documentary calls attention to the environmental dangers of deforestation.” That means, the documentary grabs people’s attention and causes people to pay attention to its subject, the environmental dangers of deforestation.

And that’s an example of calling attention to an issue. People might not have known about it before, but now they do; the documentation raised the issue; people’s attention was directed to the issue. The documentary calls attention to the environmental dangers of deforestation.

That’s probably the simplest way to use it. The way I used it in today’s story was just a little different. You’ll remember we were talking about Fernando Botero , the Colombian artist. And all his figures were oversized, voluminous people. And I said that by making his subjects so large, he can call attention to specific features. That means, just by the way he paints, he can make sure that his audience’s attention goes to certain things.

For example, if an artist paints a woman’s face in exactly the right proportions, it’s hard to call attention to woman’s eyes, for example. If a painter is true to reality, there’s only so much he can do to call someone’s attention to a character’s eyes.

But Botero made everything out of proportion. And that made it easier for him to call attention to specific parts of a body. He did this best with eyes, in my opinion; the eyes of his subjects are fascinating. But he also calls attention to the mouth, the knees, the arms, the legs, the feet of his subjects.

So this is “call attention to” in a general sense. Often, we insert a possessive pronoun in between “call” and “attention.” A possessive pronoun is like, your, his, her, its, their, or our.

Imagine you are giving a tour of a museum exhibit. You’re speaking to a group of people on the tour. You want these people—not just anyone, these people on your tour—you want them to pay attention to something. You can say, “I’d like to call your attention to the artist’s use of color in this painting.”

“I’d like to call your attention to…” simply means, “I’d like you to pay attention to the artist’s use of color in this painting.” So, “I’d like to call your attention to…” is a polite way of saying, “I want you to pay attention to this.”

I used to give presentations a lot, business presentations. And when you read the room, you sometimes notice people’s attention waning. Or you notice that they’re confused. You want to re-center their attention. So you can say, “I’d like to call your attention to the chart at the bottom of page 10.” So again, that’s a polite way of saying—hey! Look at the chart on page 10! Pay attention, here!

A man using a wheelchair was going through security in Milan’s airport. Security for wheelchair users can be a little different than for others. As the man was going through security, a drug-sniffing dog identified something suspicious. Police came to the scene and the dog called their attention to the wheelchair itself—that’s where they found $1.5 million of cocaine, hidden in the crevices of the wheelchair. The dog called the security officers’ attention to the chair, which they searched. The man, by the way, stood up and was marched to jail.

I recently renewed my residency here in Mexico—that was a fun entire day spent at the immigration office. I followed the instructions carefully, I showed up with all my paperwork in order, I got through the line, and I stood at the first window. The woman at the window called my attention to one missing document.

She made me pay attention to that, she told me about that. So I rushed down the street to a copy shop, printed the document I needed, and went back to the office. When I saw her again, I called her attention to the fact that my file was complete.

See you next time!

A lot of you listen in the car, you listen on the go, you listen as you do the dishes, you listen on your morning walks with your dogs—some of you even listen as you go to sleep. I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment or not!

But if you’ve only ever listened on a podcast app or on Spotify, I’d like to call your attention to the web site, where we have a full transcript of each lesson, plus additional resources to help you upgrade your English. The full lesson for today is at PlainEnglish.com/621.

And that is all for today—see you right back here on Monday.