Here is a snippet from a conversation I am having elsewhere. Please tell me what you think of my reading of my interlocutor’s comments (w/ the ‘>’ before each line) as to how to answer the question “What kind of opponent does my interlocutor’s text presuppose?”
Do you understand what I’m asking you to do here?
(By the way, the topic of conversation involves the question of whether it was necessary for a certain person to yell publicly at an adult who yelled at his kid. You might not need to know that, but in case you do, there’s the info. My interlocutor has taken the position that it was necessary, and that this is the only way to “protect” the child. Anyway, I’m not asking for your opinion on that, just your opinion on how I read my interlocutor’s post.)
Interlocutor’s comments preceded by ‘>’ signs, my own preceded by no signs. When interlocutor says “you” he’s referring to someone else, not me. When I say “you” I am referring to my interlocutor.
Snippet:
">To fail to act in this defense is to give the words of the
>attacker greater value in the mind of the child.
Here you portray yourself as arguing against people who would “fail to act in” “defense” of children.
>The mind of the child is what we are talking about. Children
>don’t process information the way we do. In essence, you have
>summed up the IMPORTANCE of WHY you did what you did.
Here you portray yourself as arguing against people who do not think there is any reason to do “what epiphanes did,” and you have made it clear that by “what epiphanes did” you mean “protecting children from verbal abuse.”
>Children have a hard time understanding life in a general
>fashion. And they certainly don’t understand why a perfect
>stranger would rebuke them for such an innocent remark. If you
>had said nothing, your niece would have felt unprotected.
>That’s what is the overriding principle, if I have read you
>correct. I wholeheartedly agree that that is in itself the
>ovveriding factor in this whole merry x-mas debaucle.
Here you portray yourself as arguing against people who would rather epiphanes had “said nothing”.
>Young children should be protected. I would do the same thing
>if someone said something similiar to my son.”
>
Here you portray yourself as arguing against people who believe young children should not be protected.
So… in this post you have painted your interlocutors as people who would fail to act in the defense of children, as people who do not think there is any reason to protect children from verbal abuse, as people who think we should say nothing corrective to people who engage in such abuse, and as people who believe young children should not be protected.
This is what your post says about those who it portrays itself as arguing against."
-FrL-