Another Phony E-mail Refuted

[BJean 16]

See, I told you this was a place to read and learn. I am surprised to learn that a rectangle can have four equal sides. Far out.

All of your other examples were quite clear. I am very guilty of using unreferenced pronouns. Just ask my DH - who is fond of pointing out each and every case of my constructing a sentence containing unreferenced pronouns. He'll thank you, I am sure.

Words are powerful; so are feelings. If one wishes to convey a feeling, she better use well constructed sentences, that is, if she wants any sympathy. Huh? Can feelings be conveyed? Should I have used express instead of convey? See, I'm just a silly twit wanting to communicate via the written word and I just didn't spend enough time conjugating sentences when I was in the 9th grade. Forget college. I had a couple of lit classes and that was about it.

[green 6]

Language is our primary tool for communication, this is obvious; see us here on LBT, all with our different backgrounds and our various interests, and we are doing a fine job of communicating with each other. I note that members will ask questions if they are unclear about the content of a post and I have also noted that other members have taken it upon themselves to introduce information-filled sticky threads.

I believe that these activities, which are carried on within the framework of language of course, are evidence that language is a tool that people generally want to make work. This requires collusion on our part and so we do collude.

Now, there are times when language is used in a less friendly fashion. Governments and businesses sometimes use spin; this is language employed to put a positive spin on news that is largely negative. We as individuals do this, too. It is often difficult to sort out what is spin and what is an actual lie.

Sometimes language is used to shut someone out of the in-group. The outsider is made to feel less educated, knowledgeable, or hip. This is language used as a psychological weapon. But though these exceptions often occur, they are still exceptions. We all want to understand each other and will work to make that happen.

[green 6]

By the way, I expect that I shall be thinking a lot about language over the next few days. I've got a French doctor, a friend of a friend, staying with me for the week and my fluency in the language has long since departed. It's been about 25 years since I lived in France. Trying to speak French to someone whom I like a great deal but who is not a close friend is unbelievably taxing. I feel like I have had a hundred IQ points shaved off the top of my head. And my dh doesn't speak a word of French!

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

Spin (used as the new word for a polite way of not quite lying, but helping a person misunderstand what happened) depends on misunderstandings like saying a rectangle when something is a square.

They are not lying when they say, "that object is a rectangle" if the object is in fact a square.

They are just giving you less information that they could have and it is always done if it benefits them to give you the information in that way.

I listen to the political shows and I listen how Tom Russert, for example asks his "Meet the Press" guest (a politician or a member of the UN) a question and how the guest doesn't quite answer that question.

Example (non-partisan): "Is Crest really the best toothpaste for fighting cavities?"

Answer: "No leading brand of toothpaste has been proven to be more effective than Crest at fighting cavities."

The Naive listeners (usually) hear: "Yes, Crest is the better than any other toothpaste."

But...

Maybe a non-leading brand is better. Leading brand equates to big seller, so maybe a local company's toothpaste or a boutique brand is better at fighting cavities.

Maybe no studies have been done.

Maybe studies were done and Crest tied with Colgate, Arm & Hammer, Listerine, Equate (Wal-Mart's house brand), Sensodyne and the store brands sold at CVS and Walgreen's. In that case, it doesn't matter which of those brands you use and some cost half the price of Crest.

I started the thread about needing help from an English teacher and it went around the world about Ebonics and other topics, but the purpose was to get communication problems out in the open.

[green 6]

So what we are now talking about, TOM, (and by the way, I love how these threads wander - why, it's just like a good dinner conversation!) is the deliberation obfuscation of language when it falls into the hands of professionals, and those would be people who have something to sell: politicians, advertisers, and, as often as not, the media. (Fox is notable for giving biased news coverage.)

I am an atheist and a cynic and so I am leery of the opiate groups, particularly fundamentalists of any stripe, be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, Lefties, Right wing-nuts or whatever.

Groups that have an agenda practise sloganeering. Any group that wishes to sell you on something has an agenda. I was kinda lucky in that my father was an immigrant whose first language was not English. He was intelligent and he had survived a time in Europe when there was a lot of sloganeering. He taught me when I was very young how to look behind a statement in order to find the intent and thus to take apart official language. This approach works equally well whether one is listening to an ad on T.V. or President BuSh. These folks want to sell us something. It is up to us to look carefully at what they are saying.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

So true! But Americans, like their German counterparts are, oh so willing, to want to accept authority figures at their word.

Prior to the I3 (Illegal Iraqi Invasion), I told people exactly what was going to happen on a forum that I was a regular member of (about 15 to 20 posts a day). I became extremely unpopular in the post 911 hysteria that gripped the USA. I read things being said by all sides and also read between the lines. Whenever someone says something that can be expected to be heard as one thing, but actually means something else, you can bet your bottom dollar that it means something even further away from the expected understanding than the actually meaning.

To clarify that:

If someone makes a statement that really means 4

but it is worded to get people to believe it means 2

then the truth is probably 5 or 6.

When BuSh and the other supporters of the I3 kept talking about Hussein's use of WMD, they always left out the part that the WMD usage was at least 15 years before the I3. If Hussein had WMD, why didn't he use them in 1991 when he needed them when the USA was rousted his troops out of Kuwait? If the advocates of I3 had said, "We know Hussein had WMD as late as 1988 when he gassed the Kurds", then I would have known that they were not trying to hide anything. But they always said, "We know Hussein has WMD" instead.

To me that meant not only that they "don't know Hussein has WMD", but that they "know Hussein does not have WMD".

That was not the only reason why I knew he didn't have them and we were going to attack no matter what.

BTW, Have you or anyone else ever read about the 12 Level experiment?

[BJean 16]

I had an advertising class in college that addressed not only un-truths in advertising, but we also looked at tricks used in print ads. It is astounding if you have never seen the tricks and learned how they are used to make most people feel or think a certain way about a product.

When it comes to poliltics, it's a much scarier proposition. Lives hang in the balance. Elections also are manipulated by "spin" or in the case of some commentators, lies are used. Many people are convinced by the spin and lies, and many people are not. Many people feel helpless to do anything to point out the un-truth of the spin because there it was on TV or in the press, for all to see. It feels like you're an alien baby in your own country.

In England you see so many stories printed that are scandalous and outrageous, but everyone seems to know that liberties are taken and that the rags are so much rubbish and the public reads or listens for entertainment much of the time.

Wish that were true in the U.S. of A.

[BJean 16]

I'll bite. What's the 12 Level experiment?

[missy4gordon 0]

I have a quick question. I have noticed in many many posts that refer to the President, the "s" in Bush is Capitalized. May I ask why? What is the significance of the capital letter? I have been wondering that for a while now.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

I was referring to the Milgram Experiments of the 1960's and 70's in which people were tested to see how far they would go hurting someone with electric shocks if they were told by the person running the experiment, "I'll be responsible".

There was a movie or play called the 12th Level, in which the experiment was dramatized.

Milgrim thought that only Germans would follow the orders of an authority figure and cause harm to another, but he found out that Americans were too willing to inflict pain if they were told that they were not responsible.

Of course no one was actually hurt during the experiment, but the person being tested did not know that at the time.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

I have a quick question. I have noticed in many many posts that refer to the President, the "s" in Bush is Capitalized. May I ask why? What is the significance of the capital letter? I have been wondering that for a while now.

Which letters are capitalized?

[green 6]

No, I haven't heard anything about the 12 Level experiment but now I am curious so you can fill me in.

I should mention that though I am generally cynical I always fall for those ads which advertise products that will help me clean my house, especially the Swiffer products. I live with the middle class woman's dirt guilt and so I am a sucker for these products though buying them doesn't always translate into using 'em. In just such a fashion many of us fall for herbal (and the subtext reads natural) weight loss products. If they really worked, our doctors would be the first to be telling us to use them.

I almost got myself thrown out of a focus group because of my objections to the concept of natural/herbal as being something that automatically equalled goodness. I pointed out that there were a lot of toxins to be found in nature and that modern chemistry has helped humanity immeasurably. I almost got myself thrown out because I got all the other participants scratching their heads and thinking. This interfered with the "feel" that they were after.

As for my reading on the situation on Iraq, I almost got myself thrown off another board for airing this. I don't believe that anyone from this side of the Atlantic Ocean should be in Iraq at this time. The Blix report stated that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Nor were there any explicit connections between Iraq and al Qaeda. (There are, however, connections between al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia, an ally of the United States.) So why are the cowboys over there? Why invade this country?

Though the BuShies state that they are there in order to liberate the Iraqi people, there are many other countries, notably North Korea and a whole mother load of African states, where the citizens are very badly treated (to say the least). A cynical girl is inclined to think that this cowboy diplomacy does involve oil and the concerns of big business.

[green 6]

Oh yah, the electroshock experiments. I remember those. They were done at Harvard and the Professor's name was Milgram....

[missy4gordon 0]

When BuSh and the other supporters of the I3 kept talking about Hussein's use of WMD, they always left out the part that the WMD usage was at least 15 years before the I3. If Hussein had WMD, why didn't he use them in 1991 when he needed them when the USA was rousted his troops out of Kuwait? If the advocates of I3 had said, "We know Hussein had WMD as late as 1988 when he gassed the Kurds", then I would have known that they were not trying to hide anything. But they always said, "We know Hussein has WMD" instead.

This is what I am wondering about, I underlined it. The "s" is capitalized.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

I asked you

Which letters are capitalized?

I was hoping you would say "BS".