this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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Being in a minority doesn't make one an expert on anything... ?
I studied linguistics. What I learned is that words never carry meaning on themselves.
I'm not invalidating your feelings. You immediatly thought I intended to offend you (or to "win" against you)? No, it's the opposite. I intended to help you be less offended for no reason. Natural languages are always weird and overthinking about the exact words that people say is pointless. What's important is the intention behind these words. There's no "masculine language" because words never carry meaning themselves, it's you decide to have victim mentality. A woman can say "you guys" and not intend to be sexist, and a sexist person can speak in the least "masculine" language and be hurtful.
So like, just because you 'studied' linguistics you think that makes you an expert on how language should always be used or that people should not feel a certain way about language just because you say so?
That's not exactly a compelling argument.
Language is always going to carry certain meanings for some folks and we do a disservice to people by ignoring that, we all have our own personal lexicons/semantic meanings to a degree and that will likely never change, we do best by understanding this and working together to understand and accept when certain language can be hurtful and thus find ways of talking that do work for each other.
I feel that's a better way of being than talking down to someone like you just did and telling them that how they feel about it doesn't matter and they should just get with the program, which is never going to work.
Why are you trying to be manipulative like that?... Just like people are trying to be intentionally offended, you pretend that my comment is arrogant and "talking down", pretending to be an expert...
No, that's not at all what I said... I don't pretend to be a linguistic expert, I'm just expressing an opinion. I don't want to dictate how languages should be used (quite the opposite, which is what I'm saying: it's different for everyone and intentions are more important than dictionary explanations). And I didn't mean to dictate how someone should feel, I'm just expressing my opinion based on my personal experience that it's better to be lighter on your head about languages (not that you HAVE to because I'm an "expert", sorry for having an opinion again, feel free to ignore it).
You just beat a strawman (or whatever it's called) There was no "argument" based on my "expertise", you intentionally misinterpreted it like that.
You are right, we have different "idiolects" (individual dialects), our words are vague, and when we communicate, we need to understand what the other person MEAN. There's no point in being offended when offense was not intended. Words are not hurtful, but meanings are. The exact words are not important because their meanings vary from person to person. I don't know why I need to explain that...
I never said that someone's feelings do not matter... Stop being manipulative...
Nobody is trying to be manipulative bro, the boogeymen in your head aren't trying to be offended - you come off like an asshole that's why they're assuming you are.
Yeah "bro", sorry, I forgot that I'm talking to redditors, I'm an arrogant asshole, understood
And yeah, that's y'all/y'guys who are trying to dictate how people should speak because some words in your personal dialect offend you, not me. THIS is what's "not going to work". What WILL work is moving on and not trying to be victims with made up offenders. It's better for you health.
Okidoke, hope you have a pleasant life and you never get upset about the way folks talk to you about anything or refer to you.