There’s a relatively recent post about overly expansive definitions and why the changes in connotation they create are bad—but I can’t find.
I will say that a wildly nonstandard definition of a term increases inferential distance. And there are labels for the concepts you want to gesture towards—expanding the reach of the label “torture” is not necessary.
I wasn’t aware of better labels that could be used in nontechnical discussion, and I can’t think of any at the moment.
In practice I’ve used this expanded “torture” label in discussions with various sorts of people both specialized and not (though this does not include professional sociologists, historians or moral philosophy experts), and found that it was usually understood from context without additional input, and otherwise a single extensional example (like the typical bullying case where a couple of kids take someone’s bag and throw it around while the owner helplessly runs around trying to get their stuff back) was sufficient for them to make the remaining inferences.
Granted, this may in part be due to body language and other unspoken information channels, and I have transmitted neither this nor any examples before the grandparent. I also didn’t think much of it at the time of writing, so I’ll agree that it was a mistake, since I could just as well have rationalized in this manner even if I did not observe it as a successful label in previous instances.
I’m just trying to distinguish between behavior a “law-abiding” slave might never encounter in her lifetime, as opposed to what she probably deals with on a weekly basis (on average—and that’s not intended to count the standard “get back to work” instruction). A substantial part of the confusion in this conversation was my reading your words as asserting the former behavior (archetypal torture) was more frequent than historically occurred. My understanding was that behavior towards escape attempts and such (most of which would qualify as torture) was very different than “ordinary” treatment of slaves in the American South.
A phrase like emotional abuse or just abuse might be reasonable label, depending on what other connotations it brings to the conversation.
A phrase like emotional abuse or just abuse might be reasonable label, depending on what other connotations it brings to the conversation.
Indeed, in retrospect that should have been an obvious choice. I’ve been conditioned by the French word “abus” (also the verb “abuser”) which carries different connotations and which in common usage would generate a lot more misunderstanding, so I tend to underuse the words “abuse” and its subsets.
There’s a relatively recent post about overly expansive definitions and why the changes in connotation they create are bad—but I can’t find.
I will say that a wildly nonstandard definition of a term increases inferential distance. And there are labels for the concepts you want to gesture towards—expanding the reach of the label “torture” is not necessary.
I wasn’t aware of better labels that could be used in nontechnical discussion, and I can’t think of any at the moment.
In practice I’ve used this expanded “torture” label in discussions with various sorts of people both specialized and not (though this does not include professional sociologists, historians or moral philosophy experts), and found that it was usually understood from context without additional input, and otherwise a single extensional example (like the typical bullying case where a couple of kids take someone’s bag and throw it around while the owner helplessly runs around trying to get their stuff back) was sufficient for them to make the remaining inferences.
Granted, this may in part be due to body language and other unspoken information channels, and I have transmitted neither this nor any examples before the grandparent. I also didn’t think much of it at the time of writing, so I’ll agree that it was a mistake, since I could just as well have rationalized in this manner even if I did not observe it as a successful label in previous instances.
That makes sense.
I’m just trying to distinguish between behavior a “law-abiding” slave might never encounter in her lifetime, as opposed to what she probably deals with on a weekly basis (on average—and that’s not intended to count the standard “get back to work” instruction). A substantial part of the confusion in this conversation was my reading your words as asserting the former behavior (archetypal torture) was more frequent than historically occurred. My understanding was that behavior towards escape attempts and such (most of which would qualify as torture) was very different than “ordinary” treatment of slaves in the American South.
A phrase like emotional abuse or just abuse might be reasonable label, depending on what other connotations it brings to the conversation.
Indeed, in retrospect that should have been an obvious choice. I’ve been conditioned by the French word “abus” (also the verb “abuser”) which carries different connotations and which in common usage would generate a lot more misunderstanding, so I tend to underuse the words “abuse” and its subsets.