Generalization Question
I'm a writer and a pedant, and it makes my gears sandy and shuddering when being one requires knocking the other for a loop. I've been reading advice about writing, speaking, and communicating lately. It helps to at least have passed guidelines on the subject through my head, even if my retention rate is bollocks. One universal theme in the advice is "speak simply and streamline." This rubs nastily against my instinct to qualify properly. I keep painstakingly adding qualifiers to things, only to be told - rightly - that it makes my writing clunk and my speaking untrustworthy.
Even when I'm not in a situation like that, I feel like I'm doing a disservice to clear communication by not saying exactly what I mean instead of more than I mean. Speaking the way that requires you to, though, slides you right into speech patterns that American culture codes as belonging to the con artist, the sniveller, and the shylock. That's not good at all in a professional environment, but that environment brings this trait up more since there's genuine uncertainty around.
In other discussions - especially political ones - there's the added problem that when I generalize, there's more than one unspoken qualifier to the generalization. Even in a mostly-sympathetic and uniform audience, that can be trouble. It makes me grind my teeth when I'm in situations where people will take the absence of those qualifiers as a willed and malicious generalization. That usually rises from culture clash, but sheer crankiness among people who agree in general can churn it up, too. Part of the reason that Finally Feminism 101 exists is to spare having to repeat qualifications and clarifications over and over. David Sirlin wrote a book about Playing To Win that explains the concept thoroughly instead of having to repeat himself endlessly. A recent Leonard Pitts column has a similar substance, reminding people of the bundle of concepts being strapped together when we say "racism."
Wordy types - how can I begin to flatten this obstacle? What helps you?
Even when I'm not in a situation like that, I feel like I'm doing a disservice to clear communication by not saying exactly what I mean instead of more than I mean. Speaking the way that requires you to, though, slides you right into speech patterns that American culture codes as belonging to the con artist, the sniveller, and the shylock. That's not good at all in a professional environment, but that environment brings this trait up more since there's genuine uncertainty around.
In other discussions - especially political ones - there's the added problem that when I generalize, there's more than one unspoken qualifier to the generalization. Even in a mostly-sympathetic and uniform audience, that can be trouble. It makes me grind my teeth when I'm in situations where people will take the absence of those qualifiers as a willed and malicious generalization. That usually rises from culture clash, but sheer crankiness among people who agree in general can churn it up, too. Part of the reason that Finally Feminism 101 exists is to spare having to repeat qualifications and clarifications over and over. David Sirlin wrote a book about Playing To Win that explains the concept thoroughly instead of having to repeat himself endlessly. A recent Leonard Pitts column has a similar substance, reminding people of the bundle of concepts being strapped together when we say "racism."
Wordy types - how can I begin to flatten this obstacle? What helps you?