Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Zenaan" == Zenaan Harkness <address@hidden> writes:

    Zenaan> On Fri, 2004-07-23 at 15:10, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

    >> others whose feelings I can reliably estimate

    Zenaan> Out of interest, whose feelings do you actually feel
    Zenaan> confident in "reliably estimating"?

First, to calibrate, I wouldn't go so far as to attribute specific
feelings to anybody else in the thread the way I did with Nadim, even
in my own mind.

Up until now, when they're in words as strong as Nadim's, in idiomatic
(though not always polished textbook) English, with lots of contrasts
in context to help identify usage, I thought I was reliable with
pretty much anybody.  I'd need enough posts to be pretty sure it's not
a one-off troll on the one hand, and on the other with as much emotion
as was expressed in the thread to that point.  (That's a general rule,
and not intended to imply I ever thought Nadim was trolling.  I didn't.)

My experience has been that, when I've been able to check through
further interaction, people were very good at using idioms to express
emotion accurately---they acquire them through real interactions, not
book learning---even if they don't choose them accurately to express
meaning.  This does require a certain level of grammatical
proficiency, but everybody who posts to this list meets it.  And the
variety of cultures I've encountered is quite broad, although except
for my whitebread American background, Japanese, and some Hispanic
USians, they're mostly highly educated researchers, teachers,
professionals or their families.

Now?  I still think I'd be able to reliably assess Western Europeans
(ie, not immigrants or children of immigrants), native English
speakers, economists, and to a lesser degree Japanese writing in
English, again given very strong mode of expression.  I've met a lot
of them in person, and had plenty of chance to confirm my "reading"
from online interaction.  But of course that restriction is severely
limiting, because on the Internet I don't "know if you're a dog".

The bottom line is that although I still think on a statistical basis
I'll be pretty accurate, getting it mostly right most of the time, I
won't rely on it.  That is, I'll phrase my own statements much more
cautiously than I did in the last couple of days, and avoid
attribution of feelings entirely.  With anybody.


-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.