If your idea of failing to communicate is an author using words that are unfamiliar to you and not being given an explanation as to where they come from then you will indeed find pretty much any classic literature annoying.
My point was serious. They use words that you can only guess at through context, Do you think that is a problem?
This is predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of what communication is. Of course Shakespeare won’t successfully communicate to someone who doesn’t speak English; do you deny that? To a lesser extent, Shakespeare won’t successfully communicate to someone who speaks only modern English and doesn’t look words up–how is this remotely controversial? What on earth do you think communication is?
I think you’re missing the point that in this situation people are assigning blame for failure to communicate. That’s the issue. This thread is about accusations, blame, responsibility for failure in communication.
You haven’t addressed the root issue.
As far as I know the meaning of the phrase was clear from context but the etymology of it was never explained. Regarding communication in literature I believe that all that is required is the former.
If the phrase was not able to be understood from the context then that would be poor writing but the use of an unamiliar term of uncertain background would not necessarily be. Even the use of an outright offensive word, phrase or term with with a well know problematic history would not necessarily be an example of poor communication.
“is required”, being the passive voice, avoids agency. “Is required” by whom?
Edit: This might be too cute, so lemme explain. I think you’re saying that you only look for the former in communication, that you’re not especially interested in considering any connotations attached to etymology. And that’s fine for you: if you’re the audience for a speaker who doesn’t explain etymologies, the communication will succeed.
But that’s not the case for all audience members. Some do consider etymologies and other contexts that provide connotations. Communicating successfully with them will require something different from communicating successfully with you.
People don’t choose to be offended. Being offended is a feeling. It’s neither right nor wrong, it just is.
Jane can choose how to respond to that feeling, though. If she trusts the author, she can tell him she was offended, and why, in the hopes he will avoid it going forward.
She did just that – she trusted @WalterBishop , and tried to give him constructive feedback.
Now what she said was:
And it would have been better if she’d told the author that the term “sandboy” looked racist to her, and therefore she felt it was inappropriate to use it without comment.
Note that while she was factually incorrect as to the historical meaning of the expression, she was absolutely spot-on as to how that expression will look to most modern readers, because:
Unless you happen to know that expression, the odds are you will read it as a racist comment. One that might be appropriate for the characters in the story, but that should be noted by the author – as Jane suggested.
Who owes whom an apology here? I dunno, everyone, I guess. @WalterBishop for reacting defensively, rather than listening to the constructive criticism he was offered. Jane for carelessly conflating “sounds racist” with “is racist”. But Jane certainly doesn’t owe an apology for accusing Walter of racism (she didn’t do that) nor for trying to help @WalterBishop write better and more effectively. And Jane was completely right to change the subject when Walter chose to defend his use of the archaic phrase without even asking why she felt it was racist.
Blaming your audience is never a good sign of an effective communicator, so yeah, there’s that. Jane didn’t choose the words to listen to, @WalterBishop chose them. So, yes, pretty much all the blame for a miscommunication should go with the speaker. That’s the same as if they mispronounced a word that caused confusion.
However, you claimed that this means that there is something about claims of lack of cognitive ability, and I’m still curious as to where you managed to dig that out of. I would have not understood the intended use of the word, and would have made the assumption that it had racial roots, and I’m from no historically marginalized group.
The only claim was that your average person would not know that word, and many would probably attribute it to have its racism in its history.
That it’s just classist as hell, and still insulting, doesn’t really mean that someone is lacking in cognitive ability if they question its use.
Say I say to someone, “As dumb as a redneck.” Now, they take exception to it because they think that I am referring to Native Americans. I can then beat them over the head and tell them how stupid they are because I’m insulting a completely different group of people than they thought I was, and how they owe me an apology.
I really don’t see how you managed to get that implication, but if somehow anything I said led you down that objectively wrong path, I apologize.
Now that you understand that the only person implying that “Jane” is stupid is @WalterBishop maybe you can stop making that sort of accusation against me? Thanks.
I don’t really see it that way. I see the tension as one group thinking that there is no value in empathy, no reason they should consider their audience in their speech, and no possible room for them to accept any blame for a misunderstanding; while the other group thinks that the speaker should actually pay attention to those being spoken to, and should adjust their speech accordingly, when it is found that they are not communicating effectively.
I don’t see how I am asking for anyone to be treated anything but equal. Sure, there is more responsibility on a speaker than there is on the audience, but that’s how it is supposed to be. If you are claiming that the audience has an equal responsibility in the effectiveness of communication as the speaker, then you will need to do far more to justify that position than to simply assert it.
I disagree with this. In most communication failures, both parties have an opportunity to build a better bridge between them. The speaker might better consider contexts around the words chosen–including the context of what the intended audience is likely to understand and assume. The audience might decide, if the speaker appears to be saying something obnoxious, to interrogate the words before concluding that the obnoxious message is what the author intended.
Like I said, when I was Jane, I apologized. When I was Walter, I apologized. Both parties can make it better.
You’re arguing about the best conclusion to jump to as though jumping to a conclusion is the only thing anyone could do. But when encountering a word with which you are completely unfamiliar, there are two possible courses of action:
(a) enquire further as to its meaning/context (either by asking the speaker, or through research if you are reading a book);
(b) jump to a conclusion.
Are you really so determined to absolutely exonerate Jane that you will not concede that (a) is a better communication strategy than (b)?
Some nice goalpost-moving here. The term was used in an explicitly historical context, there is nowhere near the same sensitivity about outdated classist vocabulary used in historical fiction, and in the accuser was not concerned about this.
Right, and in this instance, @WalterBishop is assigning blame on “Jane” for his failure to communicate.
A slightly different example.
Today I had 3 dogs come in together, 2 getting baths, one getting a haircut. In the notes, I wrote:
Dog 1: BT
Dog 2: Bath
Dog 3: Bath
They did a bath finish on all 3 dogs, and I had to apologize to the client over having to take her dog back to get it done right.
Now, they were objectively wrong, “BT” means Breed Trim, and everyone knows it. However, I accepted the responsibility in my failure to communicate the owner’s wishes, and things progressed from there. I could have berated them and demanded that they apologize for their misunderstanding. But I don’t see why I would do that, not unless it’s all about my personal ego, and not about effective communication.
Instead, I made a note to be more specific in my notes, to avoid that sort of miscommunication in the future. That’s what someone who desires to be effective at communicating would do. Though it’s not someone who sees a conversation as something to be won would.
No, and that you are determined to shove those words in my throat is when I get off this ride
Good day sir.
How would you have handled it if you’d been the person who, on seeing “BT,” gave the dog a bath? What would you have done when you learned of the owner’s wishes?
If you are now stipulating that Jane bore some fault in her communication skills by jumping to an unwarranted conclusion, then I think we have no dispute here. But I don’t think I was wrong in feeling that you were remarkably unwilling to concede that explicitly until now.
Wait, what??
Yeah, that was my reaction too. I mean “niggardly”, sure - that needs to go. But obscure word ending -boy? I think people need to get a grip.
I’m also wondering: if Jane had been correct, if “sandboy” really was a nasty racist term, and WalterBishop had had a 19th century White Londoner say it in dialogue, do folks think Jane’s criticism would really have been that harsh?
Because I don’t. It’s hardly a strong accusation of racism to suggest that that sort of (hypothetically) racist language should be contextualized. Plenty of authors in the past haven’t done so at all, and by “in the past” I don’t mean 200 years ago, I mean like in the past decade. The idea that authors should avoid racist pejoratives in dialogue isn’t one that’s gained anything close to mainstream traction until the past decade, in my experience.
If I were reading a story in a writing group, and the story were set in 1930s Georgia, and a White character used the n-word, I probably wouldn’t say anything; but if someone said, “I appreciate the story takes place a long time ago, but I think it’s very inappropriate to use racist terms and expressions without comment,” I’d understand where they were coming from. It’d be a request for sensitivity, not an accusation of racism, I’d think.
I don’t think anyone would suggest that this underlying point is wrong with different facts (if it was a racist term).
But - assuming that the quoted speech is accurate - this is pretty confrontational. It doesn’t just raise the issue, it’s accusatory, and clearly faults the writer:
When you should know you don’t have the facts because you are unfamiliar with the word, I think raising the issue in a confrontational manner like this warrants a later apology if you’re not a jerk.
That’s absurd. They were communicating just fine with their intended audiences, to whom those words were not obscure (and who would have found much of our vocabulary incomprehensible). Nobody is claiming that anyone has any sort of obligation to guess accurately how the language might change in four hundred years, or even in a hundred and fifty.
You think it’s pretty confrontational, in a writers workshop, where the point is to critique each other, to point out a term that’s likely to offend? Really?