Re: [Terminology] We should avoid childish acronyms as well

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On 2022-01-11 15:04, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 12:43 PM <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 2022-01-10 17:20, Dan Harkins wrote:
  . . .
>>> It's basically a power-grab-- I take offense at your words and
>>> you must now grovel to my satisfaction.
>> . . .
>> 
>> "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."
>> used to be a long-established cultural tool available in cases like 
>> these
>> at issue.  Useful to help all sides of an issue maintain calmness and
>> rationaliy, but I have not seen it being used lately.
>> 
>> Tom
> 
> Victim blaming is of course a very convenient approach, if someone is
> offended you can dismiss them for being weak and unworthy. If they
> were not the person offended you can ask why they are making a fuss.
> So you can defend people being obnoxious by mocking people who suggest
> being obnoxious is wrong.
> 
> The whole point of this group is to avoid giving unintended offense.
> But the argument you are making lacks understanding of just how
> powerful social peer pressure can be and how it is abused to suppress
> dissent.
> 
> If you look at the information engagement literature you will discover
> that the Tudor monarchs popularized 'Irish jokes' as part of a
> campaign to justify the invasion of Ireland.
> 
> If you watch rallies by mid 20th century dictators, you will find they
> spend quite a lot of their time making insulting and derogatory
> comments about their opponents. The reason Trump has lost his hold on
> US politics outside his party is not that he doesn't have access to
> Twitter, it is because the establishment media refuses to repeat his
> demeaning attacks on his opponents.

I respectfully disagree with your assertion "the argument you are making 
lacks understanding".  It is just because I quite understand social 
forces (and sociolinguistics) that I brought up the cultural tool I 
quoted in my Jan 11, 2022 post. "Wise sayings" used to arise, and to be 
widely practiced or not, as the result of many social interactions over 
long time periods.  I think this maxim is (or was before electronic 
social media chaff confused so much cultural wisdom) successful because 
it is a solid middle ground one, useful in many kinds of situations.  
With the first phrase, insulting personages are chided that they have 
been attacking the utterer of the maxim; with the second phrase the 
utterer indicates he/she will not be intimidated even if physically 
attacked.  And by displaying exemplary behavior--ie saying the maxim 
instead of bashing the insulter with a stick--the utterer is offering a 
behavioral standard for the insulter to adopt.

Separately, there are pretty well known examples of dictators and 
politicians gaining support by falsely claiming having been harmed.  Eg 
Hitler's claim that Germany's boundaries had been shamefully reduced; or 
the current claim in the USA that the last election was shamefully 
stolen, used to motivate supporters to try to steal the election on 
behalf of their candidate.

A useful practice in the terminology/RFC arena is the baseline rule to 
listen to anyone making a claim, and do it long enough to judge what 
they say.  This facilitates getting enough data to begin to evaluate the 
character of the people involved, and to judge sincerity. This 
Terminology group and RFC development in general seem to me to be good 
examples of "listening to anyone long enough".  Which makes me curious 
whether there been any sociological studies of the RFC process which 
could be referred to in thinking about the terminology issue(s) at hand?

Tom