"I suspect you would not want your writing to be that subject to such selective interpretation"
😅 You're absolutely correct. But sadly that's not how writing works. Writing, and all communication, is always subject to selective interpretation. The skill and struggle of good writing is communicating in such a way that it's hard to misinte…
"I suspect you would not want your writing to be that subject to such selective interpretation"
😅 You're absolutely correct. But sadly that's not how writing works. Writing, and all communication, is always subject to selective interpretation. The skill and struggle of good writing is communicating in such a way that it's hard to misinterpret. As I said in the post itself, I usually overlook a clumsily worded sentence. This went beyond that for me.
I freely admit that my interpretation isn't the only reasonable parse. No argument whatsoever. I don't think I've written anything that suggests otherwise. My confidence in my interpretation doesn't come simply from the words in the sentence, but from the fact that I've spoken to her before and since. I understand her thinking in ways that you don't yet. Mrs. C had the right of reply, and if she *had* replied, I'd have included that too. Note that she didn't.
Lastly, I'm fascinated by the accusation of an over-reaction. I interpreted a sentence in a particular way, and made a comment based on that interpretation. Let's pretend that I haven't had any other conversations with her (which I have), how would that be an over-reaction? Do you think my response was particularly harsh or emotional? If so, why? What makes you so certain that my response didn't come from my "best self"?
First off, I hope this examination is welcome; I've come to greatly appreciate most of what you say and I don't want this particular small issue to cause you to think of me as an enemy. If it's alienating you, I'm glad to drop it.
That said, I can answer better if you could explain how you parse the whole sentence, including the words "and caste divisions". Please briefly paraphrase the meaning(s) you take from the whole sentence.
I ask because I cannot see a sensible way to parse the whole sentence which binds "unfortunate" to "skin" rather than to "divisions". Parelleling "skin" and "caste" as types of unfortunate divisions is extremely logical, while parelleling "unfortunate skin" and "caste divisions' doesn't make sense to me, semantically or syntactically.
However, if we stopped reading after the word "skin" I would agree with you.
So maybe I don't understand correctly how you interpret the (whole) sentence, and that needs to be cleared up before I build any argument upon a false understanding.
"First off, I hope this examination is welcome; I've come to greatly appreciate most of what you say and I don't want this particular small issue to cause you to think of me as an enemy"
No, no worries there. I rely on you guys to keep me honest. If I thought of everybody who occasionally disagreed with me as an enemy I'd have very few friends😁
I'm simply reading "the fact of our unfortunate skin" and "caste divisions" separately. Caste divisions aren't even a meaningful way to describe divisions in the west.
But the issue here is that you're working off less information than I am. It's as if you had a conversation with a friend of yours, you recounted it to me, and then I wanted to debate what they meant by a particular phrase. It's not that I don't see that there's more than one way to interpret the sentence, it's about context.
"I suspect you would not want your writing to be that subject to such selective interpretation"
😅 You're absolutely correct. But sadly that's not how writing works. Writing, and all communication, is always subject to selective interpretation. The skill and struggle of good writing is communicating in such a way that it's hard to misinterpret. As I said in the post itself, I usually overlook a clumsily worded sentence. This went beyond that for me.
I freely admit that my interpretation isn't the only reasonable parse. No argument whatsoever. I don't think I've written anything that suggests otherwise. My confidence in my interpretation doesn't come simply from the words in the sentence, but from the fact that I've spoken to her before and since. I understand her thinking in ways that you don't yet. Mrs. C had the right of reply, and if she *had* replied, I'd have included that too. Note that she didn't.
Lastly, I'm fascinated by the accusation of an over-reaction. I interpreted a sentence in a particular way, and made a comment based on that interpretation. Let's pretend that I haven't had any other conversations with her (which I have), how would that be an over-reaction? Do you think my response was particularly harsh or emotional? If so, why? What makes you so certain that my response didn't come from my "best self"?
First off, I hope this examination is welcome; I've come to greatly appreciate most of what you say and I don't want this particular small issue to cause you to think of me as an enemy. If it's alienating you, I'm glad to drop it.
That said, I can answer better if you could explain how you parse the whole sentence, including the words "and caste divisions". Please briefly paraphrase the meaning(s) you take from the whole sentence.
I ask because I cannot see a sensible way to parse the whole sentence which binds "unfortunate" to "skin" rather than to "divisions". Parelleling "skin" and "caste" as types of unfortunate divisions is extremely logical, while parelleling "unfortunate skin" and "caste divisions' doesn't make sense to me, semantically or syntactically.
However, if we stopped reading after the word "skin" I would agree with you.
So maybe I don't understand correctly how you interpret the (whole) sentence, and that needs to be cleared up before I build any argument upon a false understanding.
"First off, I hope this examination is welcome; I've come to greatly appreciate most of what you say and I don't want this particular small issue to cause you to think of me as an enemy"
No, no worries there. I rely on you guys to keep me honest. If I thought of everybody who occasionally disagreed with me as an enemy I'd have very few friends😁
I'm simply reading "the fact of our unfortunate skin" and "caste divisions" separately. Caste divisions aren't even a meaningful way to describe divisions in the west.
But the issue here is that you're working off less information than I am. It's as if you had a conversation with a friend of yours, you recounted it to me, and then I wanted to debate what they meant by a particular phrase. It's not that I don't see that there's more than one way to interpret the sentence, it's about context.