Here’s a (completely anonymized) copy of an email I have sent to a person I work with at one of my jobs. I think you do not need to know the context to get the general gist of the sentiment, but I can supply further details if you like.
I am trying to navigate the dangerous channels that cut their path between chiding, scolding, friendly philosophically-styled discussion, and fightin’ words. How have I done?
Why is this in the pit? Because truth be told, this person is one of the few people IRL who ever make me want to say curse words. Out loud!. :eek: (Strangely, he’s also one of my favorite people, and that is meant in the most genuine sense possible. I like the guy. He’s just such a fucker sometimes. But always in an interesting way that makes you think. Anyway I’ve said too much.)
(The real “chiding” portion is the final paragraph, btw.)
I don’t see how you could be any more diplomatic about it. I tend to be on the confrontational side of things but I didn’t find that at all distasteful. It seems to me, as a man, that speaking to others directly about things that they might take offense to, even in a helpful or directing way, it helps to do so in person where I might put them more at ease, even though I am a rather large and not particularly handsome man, I can often use my smile or demeanor to lighten the mood a bit. When dealing with others I always try to do so while keeping in mind they are just the same as I am. No better, no worse, this way I feel I can communicate with them on an even field. Sometimes it is difficult to do so when interacting on the internet or in written form as I tend to let my mouth get the better of me. All in all I think your on the right track and If this individual feels that you have been harsh with them I think they might be reading a little bit into it.
Itching for a fight. You’re being way too convoluted and abstract, which will give him ample opportunity to misinterpret what YOU’RE saying and take offense.
I would try something more direct:
“Yes, I agree that literally your words could be taken to meant ‘X’. However, your manner at the time unfortunately gave me the impression that you meant ‘Y’. You seemed frustrated and, frankly, a bit frantic, and I tried to respond accordingly. Sorry if I misunderstood your intent.”
Better yet, do it in person when the two of you are alone. It’s so easy to say the wrong thing in email.
Is this the normal style of communication between you, or in your place of work? Because where I work, no-one would get past the first paragraph. I think you could have said the same thing more clearly and with many fewer words.
But, that’s not what you asked, so here’s my take on that:
The other person is already chiding you for “reading into” his communication something that he didn’t intend. I don’t see what you said as chiding (as much as I could understand it, 'cause opacity thy name is Frylock). It seems to me that you are kicking the ball back into his court, something like this:
Him: You read something into it that I didn’t mean.
You: Here are my valid reasons for having done that, please don’t pretend that you don’t understand how non-verbal communications work.
On preview, I think **Pochacco’s ** re-statement is pretty good. But I disagree with his conclusion that you are itching for a fight.
Roddy
If this is an email for work, I’d say you sound pissy; it’s too long and it’s too wordy. If you need to communicate that badly and explain yourself that much, get up and go find that person or talk to them on the phone. I confess I didn’t read past the second paragraph. I suppose you could be joking around, but it comes across as ponderous and picayune to me.
It sounds like you are two Greek scholars fighting the war of Rhetoric, which at this point looks to be another of those Hundred Year Wars. Or possibly two Japanese samurais, going through an elaborate tea ceremony before slicing each others’ heads off.
You are not chiding, scolding or discussing. You are BORING.
**Frylock ** is a philosopher, and he is clearly talking with a colleague about conversational implicature,and how it can convey information not strictly contained in the semantic content of a sentence. So I would take that into account in assessing the abstract nature of the discussion. E.g., when I say, “Do you actually possess a brain?”, I’m not really asking for information, although that is the form of the sentence. Given that context, it seems okay to me.
The E-mail is sarcastic, unprofessional, and extremely inadvisable. You should never have sent such a communication to a co-worker, for any reason. It appears to be worded in a way to make you sound smart and imply the stupidity of the recipient. You took about two hundred words to say something that could have been said in twenty, if it had to be said at all. And if you REALLY feel it’s necessary to confront someone about a flaw in their person, have the balls to say it to their face.
If someone pisses you off, avoid them or take it to their supervisor if it’s important enough. Long, condescending E-mails have the effect of making you look like an asshole. I must stress that this does not mean you, personally are an asshole - we all lose our tempers - but if someone sent me, or sent another co-worker, an E-mail like that, it’d be a pretty big check under the “Yes” colum on my Asshole Chart.
People can get you pretty upset, and it’s awfully easy to write a note or E-mail that’s nastier than it needs to be, so it’s not like this is a mortal sin or anything, but it was a mistake.
If you’re writing an E-mail because someone pissed you off, save it without sending and review it the next day before you send it.
ALL business communication should be as short and as simple as possible to convey the intended message.
If you have to ask yourself if something is too harsh, it is.
My main question would be: why use “uttarence” instead of “said”. I don’t know that as current lingo, and , sure, may well be ignorant of it’s proper use, so, please educate me. As said here without that knowledge, that term is stilted and dense, and puts up a wall towards facile communication. I’m all ears to hearing the reasoning as proper terms, though.
In the idiom I was writing in, “utterance” has connotations that include the idea of an action performed using words. “The utterance ‘such-and-such’” and “That one says ‘such-and-such’” probably do mean much the same thing, but I used “utterance” to bring to mind the notion that by saying such-and-such, one does something–is attempting to accomplish something.
It’s not really meant to be a professional communication, though it is in fact about an interaction that occured in a professional setting.
But you’re right that I’m using a bit o’ sarcasm in the post. However, there is no way in hell anyone (me, the recipient, or anyone who knows us) would think that I am trying to show myself to be smarter than him. To try this would be utterly preposterous, and foolish besides.
Still, you’re right–in a sense, I’m pretending to remind someone of the basics about a topic which this person could almost be called an expert on. It’s definitely a jab. But… he kinda deserves it. And I wasn’t trying to be acerbic or mean–I was actually trying to keep it relatively friendly. Do you think I failed?
(It may be that my memory of past conversations with this guy colors my reading of the email I sent in a way that it would be difficult to convey to you.)
I honestly couldn’t read the whole thing. If I had received that email, I’d read the first few lines, delete it, and strike up a conversation that started something like, “Look, Einstein, just do what the fuck I told you. I didn’t hire Noam Fucking Chomsky to write computer programs/restock the shelves/change the toner/assemble widgets/whatever.”
The chiding and annoying tone isn’t in the last paragraph. It starts at the word “utterance.”
That’s something I hear every now and then. I find it’s easy to say the wrong thing in person, and easy to avoid it in email. I wonder if this is a “two kinds of people in the world” phenomenon, or if I’m somehow deluding myself… I haven’t given it enough thought to be sure.
Everyone’s right that it’s a little too wordy, by the way.
I often run up against the problem that being too concise can often end up sounding terse. I tend to err on the side of non-terseness, but this in turn puts me in danger of pedantry.
In this particular case, the pedantry was part of the intended effect, at least for the first part of the email. But it probably could have been done more artfully.
OK, so I looked up the finer points and definition of “utterance”, and ,got it. What I now want to know is , what was the specific problem with the guy.
(Strangely, he’s also one of my favorite people, and that is meant in the most genuine sense possible. I like the guy. He’s just such a fucker sometimes. But always in an interesting way that makes you think. Anyway I’ve said too much.)
