![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Really, I'm amused at myself....well, and around myself. I must be part of a dying/separate breed -- the people who actually believe that using more extensive and precise language can clarify things. Old-school rhetoricians? Overarticulate orators? -- well, whatever it is, it's good when you see a chance that it might actually do the job of communication.
Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes, people are so unused to the full range and subtlety of unashamedly-intelligent discourse that it just shuts them down, clams them up -- and thus we have the sad phenomenon of thread-ending, where one person holds forth (reluctantly or not) and no one else can think of anything more to say.
Or, on the other hand, there's the counter-attack (wait a second, there was no attack in the first place!) by which one is accused of elitism, egotism, narrowmindedness, arrogance, etc. Often encountered among disgruntled roleplayers who hate feeling verbally inferior....sheesh, this at a time when the 'netspeak' of IMs and text-messaging is gutting the very foundations of literacy in our so-called culture, and they want to not feel at all intimidated or insecure?
That is one of the few areas in which I may come across as reactionary, conservative, etc, and even a bit of an asshole -- I have no patience for people who are borderline illiterate and think they're "all that." I don't think it's cute, I don't think it's defensible, and I don't think it's something that ought to be enabled by peer groups either. I think that children (or teens) should not be allowed to use instant-messaging until they have demonstrated a reasonable foundation in the spelling, punctuation and writing of their own native language -- they're getting stupid with all this enabled slacking-off in articulation, getting used to shortcuts and not knowing how to function without them. And 'adults', too....frankly, I have been known to refuse flat-out to chat with people simply because they used the shorthand "asl?" instead of bothering to start a real conversation. But if there's no real conversation, then why should I waste even a minute of my time on those idiots? Life's too short to chat with people who have nothing to say and no decent way to say it.
There, I'm an elitist -- can't be expressing such hatefilled opinions online, now can we? Screw it, I'm not about to apologize for being able to write intelligently and correct my own typos rather than wallowing in them. If people don't want to feel inferior and intimidated, maybe they oughta learn better instead of just getting pissed off 'cause I don't tone it down that I happen to write at a superior level. It's not an attitude, it's just me doing something better than them -- that's all.
But it's still a deadly weapon -- even when I'm not using it as such. And it can be whipped out on instinct, to whomp with overwhelming verbiage and rhetorical rationality and all that manner of thing that (for most) has gone the way of the entire field of belles-lettres. People just don't care to hone their words that finely anymore...as with swords, passed by in favour of terse projectiles. And just as swords have gone from implying the capability of dangerous usage to the privilege to the immediate intent, skilled words are widely mistrusted as inherently-malicious weapons in the hands of an unrecognized-yet-still-hated aristocracy. Sometimes one gets the urge to play that game....sometimes one's just trying to communicate -- but strongly.
And thus the word-stick in its own right, even though used with actual malice towards none, approaches the more-hostile vehemence of the ginsus -- just because of the sheer force and desire that I must be understood clearly, and I will accept no other way but that of the greatest clarity and precision. It may hit the mark, or it may result in a sudden Babel or dead silence. Language is our greatest tool and weapon as a species -- yet it is constantly overlooked, neglected and underestimated. Is this part of a progressive evolution to more-essential-and-important things, as some might propose? --or is it a dire decline in the acuity and flexibility of the average human intellect?
I'm sure you can guess what my answer is to that.
.
Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes, people are so unused to the full range and subtlety of unashamedly-intelligent discourse that it just shuts them down, clams them up -- and thus we have the sad phenomenon of thread-ending, where one person holds forth (reluctantly or not) and no one else can think of anything more to say.
Or, on the other hand, there's the counter-attack (wait a second, there was no attack in the first place!) by which one is accused of elitism, egotism, narrowmindedness, arrogance, etc. Often encountered among disgruntled roleplayers who hate feeling verbally inferior....sheesh, this at a time when the 'netspeak' of IMs and text-messaging is gutting the very foundations of literacy in our so-called culture, and they want to not feel at all intimidated or insecure?
That is one of the few areas in which I may come across as reactionary, conservative, etc, and even a bit of an asshole -- I have no patience for people who are borderline illiterate and think they're "all that." I don't think it's cute, I don't think it's defensible, and I don't think it's something that ought to be enabled by peer groups either. I think that children (or teens) should not be allowed to use instant-messaging until they have demonstrated a reasonable foundation in the spelling, punctuation and writing of their own native language -- they're getting stupid with all this enabled slacking-off in articulation, getting used to shortcuts and not knowing how to function without them. And 'adults', too....frankly, I have been known to refuse flat-out to chat with people simply because they used the shorthand "asl?" instead of bothering to start a real conversation. But if there's no real conversation, then why should I waste even a minute of my time on those idiots? Life's too short to chat with people who have nothing to say and no decent way to say it.
There, I'm an elitist -- can't be expressing such hatefilled opinions online, now can we? Screw it, I'm not about to apologize for being able to write intelligently and correct my own typos rather than wallowing in them. If people don't want to feel inferior and intimidated, maybe they oughta learn better instead of just getting pissed off 'cause I don't tone it down that I happen to write at a superior level. It's not an attitude, it's just me doing something better than them -- that's all.
But it's still a deadly weapon -- even when I'm not using it as such. And it can be whipped out on instinct, to whomp with overwhelming verbiage and rhetorical rationality and all that manner of thing that (for most) has gone the way of the entire field of belles-lettres. People just don't care to hone their words that finely anymore...as with swords, passed by in favour of terse projectiles. And just as swords have gone from implying the capability of dangerous usage to the privilege to the immediate intent, skilled words are widely mistrusted as inherently-malicious weapons in the hands of an unrecognized-yet-still-hated aristocracy. Sometimes one gets the urge to play that game....sometimes one's just trying to communicate -- but strongly.
And thus the word-stick in its own right, even though used with actual malice towards none, approaches the more-hostile vehemence of the ginsus -- just because of the sheer force and desire that I must be understood clearly, and I will accept no other way but that of the greatest clarity and precision. It may hit the mark, or it may result in a sudden Babel or dead silence. Language is our greatest tool and weapon as a species -- yet it is constantly overlooked, neglected and underestimated. Is this part of a progressive evolution to more-essential-and-important things, as some might propose? --or is it a dire decline in the acuity and flexibility of the average human intellect?
I'm sure you can guess what my answer is to that.
.
Tags:
