And yeah, that’s y’all/y’guys who are trying to dictate how people should speak because some words in your personal dialect offend you, not me. THIS is what’s “not going to work”. What WILL work is moving on and not trying to be victims with made up offenders. It’s better for you health.
Why are you trying to be manipulative like that?.. Just like people are trying to be intentionally offended, you pretend that my comment is arrogant and “talking down”, pretending to be an expert…
So like, just because you ‘studied’ linguistics you think that makes you an expert on how language should always be used or that people should not feel a certain way about language just because you say so?
No, that’s not at all what I said… I don’t pretend to be a linguistic expert, I’m just expressing an opinion. I don’t want to dictate how languages should be used (quite the opposite, which is what I’m saying: it’s different for everyone and intentions are more important than dictionary explanations). And I didn’t mean to dictate how someone should feel, I’m just expressing my opinion based on my personal experience that it’s better to be lighter on your head about languages (not that you HAVE to because I’m an “expert”, sorry for having an opinion again, feel free to ignore it).
That’s not exactly a compelling argument
You just beat a strawman (or whatever it’s called) There was no “argument” based on my “expertise”, you intentionally misinterpreted it like that.
Language is always going to carry certain meanings for some folks and we do a disservice to people by ignoring that, we all have our own personal lexicons/semantic meanings to a degree
You are right, we have different “idiolects” (individual dialects), our words are vague, and when we communicate, we need to understand what the other person MEAN. There’s no point in being offended when offense was not intended. Words are not hurtful, but meanings are. The exact words are not important because their meanings vary from person to person. I don’t know why I need to explain that…
I feel that’s a better way of being than talking down to someone like you just did and telling them that how they feel about it doesn’t matter and they should just get with the program, which is never going to work
I never said that someone’s feelings do not matter… Stop being manipulative…
Being in a minority doesn’t make one an expert on anything… ?
I studied linguistics. What I learned is that words never carry meaning on themselves.
I’m not invalidating your feelings. You immediatly thought I intended to offend you? No, it’s the opposite. I intended to help you be less offended for no reason. Natural languages are always weird and overthinking about the exact words that people say is pointless. What’s important is the intention behind these words. There’s no “masculine language” because words never carry meaning themselves, it’s you decide to have victim mentality. A woman can say “you guys” and not intend to be sexist, and a sexist person can speak in the least “masculine” language and be hurtful.
People with personalities similar to your mom
Your overthinking is what makes you offended.
English is not my native language. I felt kinda weird about using “you guys” until I heard a woman that used “you guys” to a 100% woman group. I stopped caring about that shit because natural languages are weird and it all doesn’t matter. What matters is the intention of what you say, not its form. Y’all should stop caring about fixing other people’s speech too.
Yeah “bro”, sorry, I forgot that I’m talking to redditors, I’m an arrogant asshole, understood