Monday, March 12, 2007

Recognizing conversational terrorism

Shawn recently made an interesting post about "conversational terrorism"--in a nutshell, the many ways that one can indulge the ad hominem fallacy, as well as a few others. So as a bit of a public service, I'd like to offer a way of recognizing likely abuses of conversational partners:

If someone is flavoring his speech with extensive use of "you," "he," "she," or "they", then it's likely that this person is trying to personally attack "you," "he," "she," or "them." If one, on the other hand, is engaging the topic, one doesn't need to use these personal pronouns.

And, for what it's worth, it's derived from something I learned in premarital counseling; avoid using "you" in argument with your wife, because it tends to be a personal attack. So recognizing conversational terrorism can also be a great way to love your wife.

2 comments:

Mark said...

Thank you.

Bike Bubba said...

You betcha.