Up Front: A Word in Your Ear
172 Responses
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What?
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I disagree.
[Check please! And hurry, as I'm about to be run over by rhetoric.]
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You know you're dealing with a poncy fucker when they use footnotes, eh
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And all because I chose to retain my own cultural practices in the workplace.
There should be a treaty claim over the right to swear in the workplace. Currently we're mostly just doing it under our breath, so we're being repressed.
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I think you're right, up to a point. Here on PAS we like to show off our cleverness and our education, but I'd like to think we weren't just finding fancy ways of slagging each other off. I'd like to think that we also have an appetite for discussing facts and interpretation and an openness to changing our views in the light of these.
To have an intelligent debate, people need to be able to explain why they think the way they do, and what their choices are based on. Sure we need a level of articulacy to do that, but we also need an environment where reasoning and reasonableness is favoured over invective. One thing I enjoy about PAS is that everybody (mostly) plays nice and we can share stuff we know without everybody shouting.
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In light of the overwhelming evidence, I no longer disagree*.
*Footnote of no particular relevance, other than to support Sacha's argument.
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It's a dangerous weapon you have Emma. My parents taught me how to argue and how to win arguments. What they didn't teach me was when to use those skills. Why didn't my flat mates want to argue for four hours about whether the milk should be on the third or fourth shelf???
In my work I've been criticized for being articulate because my ability to explain my projects gave me an unfair advantage over those who couldn't clearly articulate what they were planning to do with the money. Interestingly that criticism was accepted as fair.
As for your issue with swearing in the US. You were facing two issues, yes they are puritans, but what you actually needed was a man to repeat what you just said to make it worth listening to, and yes I have been in meetings where precisely that has occurred. Female presents idea, idea ignored, male repeats what she said, idea brilliant. In this case being articulate didn't help her - she didn't even swear!
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Fortunately defending a faulty premise with dazzling rhetoric doesn't usually make anyone look smart for all that long. Though due to esprit d'escalier one may never actually find out what ones 'victims' really think.
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What being born articulate allows me to do, however, is to win arguments even if I'm wrong.
Okay, now imagine growing up in a country where *everyone* can do that.
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now imagine growing up in a country where *everyone* can do that.
I didn't realise you were of Dutch extraction too Gio!
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I'm not saying Italy's the only one. I'm picking at least Ireland and your ancestral digs.
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It's not just about rhetorical persuasion either.
In any disagreement with a public agency, you will be better served if you are articulate, literate and persuasive.
More than once, I've felt privileged in this respect.
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In any disagreement with a public agency, you will be better served if you are articulate, literate and persuasive.
The time I made my Income Support caseworker get the book off the shelf and look up the law that stated that I was eligible for the dole is a tremendous example of this sort of privilege in action.
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Maori are pretty good with words...we cherished & cherish them so much (and recognise the power they have over other humans) that we are paticular, exact & potent wielders of words.
And we love argument-
but we dont relish people who confuse rhythym & repetition as the sole form of dialogue, nor people who limit themselves to an overarching language while being wholly ignorant of any other-
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What being born articulate allows me to do, however, is to win arguments even if I'm wrong. Just ask my ex-husband
No. I'm sorry, but that has far less to do with being born articulate than with having the correct gonads. No level of skill at argument avails a husband against his wife.
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The time I made my Income Support caseworker get the book off the shelf and look up the law that stated that I was eligible for the dole is a tremendous example of this sort of privilege in action.
It was a doctor in my case. A doctor at Student Health, but still a doctor.
In any disagreement with a public agency, you will be better served if you are articulate, literate and persuasive.
Oh yes. I mean, you'll get so far on sheer 'squeaky wheel' just refusing to shut up and go away, but still...
what you actually needed was a man to repeat what you just said to make it worth listening to
My bosses were female, but in one case this was still true.
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I'm the complete opposite, Emma. When I'm passionate about something I'm neither clever nor articulate, and when I'm angry, forget about it. Which is strange, because my family culture is very much one of arguing, and sounding really convincing because we're so authorative that we must be right. But only to outsiders. To each other, we're just know it alls and bullshitters. And bossy.
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In any disagreement with a public agency, you will be better served if you are articulate, literate and persuasive.
More than once, I've felt privileged in this respect.I don't doubt it. Howevah, when being stonewalled by the Australian Commonwealth bureaucracy a few years back, all my attempts at articulacy and quoting of the rules (I'd done my homework) got me nowhere. Breaking my cheap umbrella over the back of a chair got instant results - the Stalinist facade evaporated, every bureaucrat on the floor looked up from their monitor, and a woman who gave the impression of having attended a seminar in dealing with this sort of thing offered sympathy and a cup of coffee, while the security guard twitched in the background.
Embarrassing as hell, but suddenly I was upstairs in the carpeted office for special cases, where everyone was so polite and understanding, and I got what I'd come for. Sometimes giving the appearance of being a loose cannon trumps articulacy.
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I've been informed that being persistent and hopeless or persistent and shouting are also techniques that work well with bureaucracy. The thing is to make it more bother for officials to not sort out your problems.
I've always been too chicken to try these techniques, myself.
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Huh, well there you go, I wrote that before Joe's comment popped up. Nice story, breaking the umbrella and all! :-)
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Truth is, I'm far too chicken to do my balls in cold blood. The aggro was spontaneous and short-lived. If I'd kept it up no doubt I'd have been escorted down the stairwell in a headlock by the security bouncer-bureaucrat, but being suddenly contrite - and, I have to admit, articulately apologetic - clinched it for me.
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Perisitant and hopeless is a goer, persistant and shouting will get you arrested.
As Joe discovered, reckless abandon with your own property does tend to flick attitudinal switches hastily, but I wouldn't bank on it as a solve-all. Nice work Joe. I'm guessing that the umbrella breakage following a warm up of reasoned articulation served as a fine explanation point. But you can never underestimate the gaming element in these things, and that may have been the third umbrella this week and that's just standard procedure.
In cases like these, it's always worth observing what you can of office politics/ dynamics, there's always someone out to get someone else, and if you can play them off against each other, necessitating worker A to step in to solve the problem that worker B has exacerbated, getting what you need regardless of the turmoil,.
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I'm picking at least Ireland
Not if my neighbours are anything to go by. OTOH, they're Northern Irish, which, depending who you talk to, doesn't count.
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Oh, for a sodding muse of fire that would ascend
The brightest heaven of effing invention?
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