Posted by used2b on April 11, 2005, at 18:49:37
In reply to Re: Please explain your opinion, posted by Dr. Bob on April 11, 2005, at 13:24:02
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> It can be tricky, how exactly to word I-statements.I wonder why someone would publish a unique rule of usage that routinely tricks people. Maybe the work isn't complete yet.
The FAQ links to an explanation by Dinah:
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> http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20040112/msgs/320097.html
>The cited discourse does not address the construction I submitted. Nowhere in her discourse does she assert that a prepositional phrase establishing a first-person stance, followed by a declaration of a personal perception, is not a valid "I-statement".
The citation critiques four constructions. One is a universal assertion. The other two are universal assertions based on the authority of the writer, and are not first-person declarations of personal perceptions. The writer proposes avoiding "statements that are not solely about 'I' but include references to he she or it." But this would include ALL first person sentences in which the predicate includes both a verb and an object. Most prose includes subject, verb and object. Try composing even one paragraph in the first person without using an object. The proposed model sentence even includes an object.
After stating we are to avoid all objects, and without summarizing the central premise of why the model sentence is presumed compliant, the discourse proposes that we select a temporal conjunction to describe the relationship of object to subject. The temporal conjunction is represented as minimizing the relationship of the object to the subject sufficiently to make the sentence entirely about the subject. The discourse implies the sentence "I jumped when I heard the noise" is not about both me and the noise.
Dinah proposes the correct style in this forum for relating perceptions is to say, "I was offended when I saw the movie."
This is a first-person subject followed by a predicate in which the direct object of a passive verb is associated by a temporal conjunction to an indirect object, which is the subject.
The statement tells us nothing about why the writer was offended. Was somebody talking loudly in the theater? Did she find a foreign object in her snacks? Did the movie violate community standards? Is she easily offended?
If she is not telling us about her perceptions of the movie, she might as well tell us "I was offended once." But if in any way the statement implies the movie is related to the offense against her, it violates the rule the discourse proffers in the following paragraphs, which discourage statements that connect a perception with the object of a perception.
Dinah says her statement "is a statement about me, about my reactions, and really isn't about anyone or their movie." The conjunction "when" suggests the movie may be relevant only as an indicator of time and place. But the object of the sentence is someone's movie.
If a writer is to exclude any possibility that the movie was the source of offense, she should avoid the passive voice ("I was offended") because that implies she was acted upon by something. She does not tell us if she acted on herself, or if the movie acted upon her. She just tells us when it happened.
The statement, "I was offended when I saw the movie" is obviously not about some other offense that occured coincident to the movie. Standard usage suggests a direct object acts upon its indirect object, even though a writer might avoid stating the obvious by using a conjunction (when) that minimizes the relationship of the direct object with the indirect object. Unless we are offered mitigating information about some other object that inspired her feeling of offense, we can only assume we are being told about the temporal relationship of the indirect and direct object because the relationship is relevant.
She is telling us her reaction in response to the movie -- somebody's movie. And she is doing it in a passive voice that implies something acted upon her, rather than an active voice that tells us she is the actor. The object "movie" makes it about the movie. Even though the conjunction "when" offers no formal explanation as to why the movie is relevant to her being offended, the meaning is clear. She was offended. If she is not telling us the movie was offensive to her values, what is she telling us? She might not be saying "I found the movie offensive", (to everyone) but she is suggesting that "To me, the movie was offensive."
Further, Dinah's guidelines imply that the writer was actually offended. It is only her perception that she was offended, yet she states it as fact, so it does not appear to be an "I statement" about her feelings at all, but rather an allegation that she was offended at a certain time and place.
If I were to place my words in Dinah's suggested format, it would be less of an I-statement than what I submitted. The statement would have read, "I see people being pretentious when I see huggies and smileys in Internet posts." I suspect the statement would have earned the same administrative admonishment, regardless its better coherence with the suggested guideline.
> If you'd rather not engage, just don't reply?
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> BobThat is an imperative command is punctuated as a question. And it misrepresents my statement.
I didn't say I would rather not engage, but only that I would rather not engage in certain types of communication, specifically the use of keyboard symbols to indicate affection. Maybe you should try replacing sincere human touch with a few pixels of symbolically arranged light in a VGA device. You might conclude the symbols are not real to you either.
Let me ask this another way. Is it an accetable topic of dialogue here for me to represent any version of my actual condition in which I often perceive human affection toward me as pretentious? If so, is it allowed even though I might have confidence in the accuracy of my perceptions?
poster:used2b
thread:482520
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20050323/msgs/483005.html