Board Thread:False Info and Speculative Discussion/@comment-192.230.165.112-20140420035210/@comment-4091815-20140618001707

Grahamburglar wrote: Paul, aren't you a journalist? It strikes me as odd that you, also, don't seem to understand that words and phrasings carry certain implications. This is sort of a vital aspect of your profession -- as it is for the writers of their show. This is an implicit part of language itself. It's not even personal experiences, it's societal perception filters you're talking.

Societal perception filters the writers themselves have as well, mind you.

Like, this is practically the entire basis of learning public speaking, I can't imagine they don't teach this sort of stuff in writing classes. But it doesn't even really need to be taught because it's engrained in all of us from childhood. Effective writing uses that. Piss-poor writing ignores it.

And you're honestly acting like this "misunderstanding" is *our* fault? You want us to stop having these filters? Okay, Paul, sure, let me just go ahead and unlearn an entire lifetime of cultural understandings of meanings of phrases. Sure. Or, I dunno, maybe writers could do their jobs? The job of the writing is, after all, to put down words that can be understood by an audience. You're literally telling us that we're expecting too much because we want a professional show to have better than piss-poor writing.

So, as I said, Paul, if it is not an inconsistency it is shitty writing. The "solution" is for people to not hire writers who cannot grasp the most basic ways the language they are writing in functions.

These "implications" are not universal.

They are not even cross-cultural - which is why, as a journalist, I boil things down to the simplest possible phrasing to minimize misunderstandings.

For example - I would never use the phrase "fixing to go." I grew up saying "I'm fixing to go to the store."

I know what it means.

Everyone I grew up with knows what it means but it doesn't mean a damn thing to most of the rest of the planet.

You have imbued the simple phrase "when I lived with my dad" with so much backstory that you simply cannot let it go.

Even though the writers have told you that it didn't mean what you thought it meant you still can't let go of your belief - so they MUST be wrong?

We had one piece of information that alone suggested one thing - but in light of new information means another.

If we were in court - we could say Scott spoke the truth then and the later evidence not contradict that truth.