I’m sure you thought this would be cute or funny or something, but the objections aren’t commensurate. I wasn’t making a sweeping statement about the alertness-giving properties of Mountain Dew. Trying to do that would have been beside the point, since I was giving an individual example about my own beverage-related limitations, and living where I live, a Mountain Dew that might materialize in my home would have plenty of caffeine. To compare, I wouldn’t have blinked if Psychohistorian had phrased the original remark about women as “I’ll still find women alluring”, making it about himself instead of about women.
Alternatively, I could just protest that in my idiolect, Mountain Dew refers to a beverage that contains caffeine, and your wacky foreign Mountain Dew is not Mountain Dew at all.
Trying to do that would have been beside the point, since I was giving an individual example about my own beverage-related limitations, and living where I live, a Mountain Dew that might materialize in my home would have plenty of caffeine.
Where you “attribute [your] distraction entirely to the sense that it was directed at a presumed male audience”, I attribute my distraction entirely to the sense that it was directed at a presumed American audience. It is regarding this presumption that I demand commensurate consideration. Such consideration could perhaps take the form of a simple acknowledgement: “Oh, really? I never new that! Next time I’ll either use a different example or I’ll throw in brief a parenthetised comment or footnote to make the text accessible to the non-American reader.”
Alternatively, I could just protest that in my idiolect, Mountain Dew refers to a beverage that contains caffeine, and your wacky foreign Mountain Dew is not Mountain Dew at all.
You could make that protestation. Yet you are dismissing the alternate experience as ‘wacky foreign’ as a point demonstrating how gender specific descriptions is incommensurably more significant than nationality-specificity. This is distressing. It would seem to lend support to a conclusion that your objections have been less about the implicit exclusion of minority participants and more about mere political manouvering in favour of your own particular group. This significantly reduces the credibility of any objections that you may make, at least in my eyes. I could quite fairly be accused of having an anti-hypocricy bias.
Where you “attribute [your] distraction entirely to the sense that it was directed at a presumed male audience”, I attribute my distraction entirely to the sense that it was directed at a presumed American audience.
Here’s where your analogy runs off the rails. Alicorn’s text isn’t directed at a presumed American audience—it’s directed at an audience presumed to be able to infer that Mountain Dew contains caffeine where she lives. Your rejoinder skips over this exact point made by Alicorn:
I wouldn’t have blinked if Psychohistorian had phrased the original remark about women as “I’ll still find women alluring”, making it about himself instead of about women.
My rejoinder did not so much skip the point as not see the point as significant. One of the strengths of analogies is that they can help trace where exactly the difference in thinking or opinion lies. I actually don’t see Psycho’s presumption of audience as more significant than that of Alicorn; I can infer that Psycho is speaking from his individual experience as a male just as easily as that Ali is speaking from her individual experience as an American.
The difference is that Phycohistorian was describing experiences that he intended the audience to recognize and identify with as their own, while Alicorn was describing her own experience as her own unique experience.
That does seem like a bizarre thing for Psycho to intend! I gave him a little more benefit of the doubt. Perhaps I was too generous in my interpretation, I get that a lot!
It isn’t necessarily a deliberate, conscious intent. However:
I know that Mountain Dew contains caffeine and that caffeine will make me alert. However, I also know that I hate Mountain Dew.
vs.
It’s part of that set of things that doesn’t go away no matter what you say or think about them. Women will still be alluring, food will still be delicious, and Michaelangelo’s David will still be beautiful, no matter how well you describe these phenomenon.
I’m sorry if it wasn’t clear, but the choice of the words “wacky foreign” was to be silly (in an apparently failed attempt to keep the discussion light), not to indicate an actual belief about the relative wackiness of foreign and domestic soft drinks.
I am afraid I missed that. The plain literal interpretation actually seemed to me to more closely fit the remainder of the reply. The core of your reply took the discussion from ‘light and slightly silly’ to serious while simultaniously dismissing the underlying serious message, which rather shocked me. ‘Light and silly’ just doesn’t seem to work when rapport is broken, which I tend to discover rather often!
In any case, I wouldn’t change a word of either of my preceeding posts yet am intrigued by the response. (And also somewhat glad karma can be gained so readily on trivial topics that it can be freely spent on those that I feel actually matter.)
There’s quite a difference between a parochialism that is, at worst, confusing, and a parochialism that makes some people feel ignored or excluded (regardless of whether or not this feeling is justified).
I’m sure you thought this would be cute or funny or something, but the objections aren’t commensurate. I wasn’t making a sweeping statement about the alertness-giving properties of Mountain Dew. Trying to do that would have been beside the point, since I was giving an individual example about my own beverage-related limitations, and living where I live, a Mountain Dew that might materialize in my home would have plenty of caffeine. To compare, I wouldn’t have blinked if Psychohistorian had phrased the original remark about women as “I’ll still find women alluring”, making it about himself instead of about women.
Alternatively, I could just protest that in my idiolect, Mountain Dew refers to a beverage that contains caffeine, and your wacky foreign Mountain Dew is not Mountain Dew at all.
Where you “attribute [your] distraction entirely to the sense that it was directed at a presumed male audience”, I attribute my distraction entirely to the sense that it was directed at a presumed American audience. It is regarding this presumption that I demand commensurate consideration. Such consideration could perhaps take the form of a simple acknowledgement: “Oh, really? I never new that! Next time I’ll either use a different example or I’ll throw in brief a parenthetised comment or footnote to make the text accessible to the non-American reader.”
You could make that protestation. Yet you are dismissing the alternate experience as ‘wacky foreign’ as a point demonstrating how gender specific descriptions is incommensurably more significant than nationality-specificity. This is distressing. It would seem to lend support to a conclusion that your objections have been less about the implicit exclusion of minority participants and more about mere political manouvering in favour of your own particular group. This significantly reduces the credibility of any objections that you may make, at least in my eyes. I could quite fairly be accused of having an anti-hypocricy bias.
Here’s where your analogy runs off the rails. Alicorn’s text isn’t directed at a presumed American audience—it’s directed at an audience presumed to be able to infer that Mountain Dew contains caffeine where she lives. Your rejoinder skips over this exact point made by Alicorn:
My rejoinder did not so much skip the point as not see the point as significant. One of the strengths of analogies is that they can help trace where exactly the difference in thinking or opinion lies. I actually don’t see Psycho’s presumption of audience as more significant than that of Alicorn; I can infer that Psycho is speaking from his individual experience as a male just as easily as that Ali is speaking from her individual experience as an American.
The difference is that Phycohistorian was describing experiences that he intended the audience to recognize and identify with as their own, while Alicorn was describing her own experience as her own unique experience.
That does seem like a bizarre thing for Psycho to intend! I gave him a little more benefit of the doubt. Perhaps I was too generous in my interpretation, I get that a lot!
It isn’t necessarily a deliberate, conscious intent. However:
vs.
Surely you see the difference?
I’m sorry if it wasn’t clear, but the choice of the words “wacky foreign” was to be silly (in an apparently failed attempt to keep the discussion light), not to indicate an actual belief about the relative wackiness of foreign and domestic soft drinks.
I am afraid I missed that. The plain literal interpretation actually seemed to me to more closely fit the remainder of the reply. The core of your reply took the discussion from ‘light and slightly silly’ to serious while simultaniously dismissing the underlying serious message, which rather shocked me. ‘Light and silly’ just doesn’t seem to work when rapport is broken, which I tend to discover rather often!
In any case, I wouldn’t change a word of either of my preceeding posts yet am intrigued by the response. (And also somewhat glad karma can be gained so readily on trivial topics that it can be freely spent on those that I feel actually matter.)
There’s quite a difference between a parochialism that is, at worst, confusing, and a parochialism that makes some people feel ignored or excluded (regardless of whether or not this feeling is justified).