English is a difficult language to master, and in the wrong hands it's a deadly weapon. Many of our phrases are manipulative in nature. When you start a sentence with "everyone knows" but someone in your audience doesn't or knows something else, it is intended to create consensus where none exists. When women ask me if I want to get them dinner or do a favor, it's meant to emotionally manipulate me into compliance with the assumption that if I decline I do not like them at all. This kind of reducto ad absurdium abounds because that's how they have been taught to ask. "Consider if you will" invites people to imagine or join your thoughts; "will you" invites a man to respond without a matter of personal preference. These phrases are linguistic upgrades that are inefficiently and sparingly utilized. Turned the wrong way, the pen is mightier than the sword and words can wound much more than anything else we do to one another. Most of us do not know how to communicate because we do not know anything about the people around us. This means we do not consider our audience, we do not respect them for their individual variances, and we do not consider that they may see something completely differently than we do.
While learning English in High School, my teachers impressed upon me the necessity of communicating effectively with your audience. Some of the people who try to sound smart do not use words the way we do. At a political town hall in Vegas once, a federal congressman once told the audience in response to my inquiry that they intended to "fix" the healthcare system. When I asked them, "Do you mean fix as in to repair or as in to make permanent?" they looked at me with abject horror as if to say "Oh no, he's on to us!" They meant it the latter way while allowing the audience to assume they meant the former (incidentally, as late as 1914 the OED defined fix as "to make permanent" without any denotation of repairs). I see this all the time that people say a word one way knowing people will assume it means that while they intend some other connotation or denotation. Recently Nancy Pelosi described the illegal immigrant children on the border as some of God's precious creatures, but apparently she only feels that way about children who manage to survive birth since they don't feel the same about the aborted fetus. I regularly want people to beware when leaders of any sort speak in sweeping terms about things of faith because they do so, not because they mean it, but because they know it resonates with you. Of course there's also the possibility that people don't know they made a speaking error. It took me many years to decide if the producers of Star Trek IV intended to mock my Faith when they had Kirk say Spock did too much LDS in the 60s or whether it was meant as a faux pas. Whatever the reason, most of us who speak English do so poorly, and so I don't know that we're actually communicating as well as we like to think. More and more I agree with Inigro Montoya that far too many people use words that do not mean what they think they mean. I love my dog, I love chocolate cake, and I love to watch a sunset, but those kinds of love are not the same, and they are not how most men use the term love. Language is often used to manipulate.
Since English, and speech in general no matter the language, seems so complex, many people manipulate the stage so as to seem the better person. I detest politics and law, because they deal with rhetoric. This means that the person with the best argument is perceived as victor, not the person who is right. Recently, I read an article on twitter that reported a link between how loudly and how frequently someone said something and its perception by the audience as truth. In other words, the louder and more shrill you argue, the more people think you are an authority. Wow, how bizarre! At other times, they come prepared to a fight, having planned one with planted questions, prompts, etc. to help their side and then draw an equivalence between the strength of their preparation and your extemporaneous rebuttal. It's a common ambush tactic for someone to approach you with something on which they've spent hours, days, or even weeks thinking and expect a cogent and coherent and rational response from you in seconds. When you fail to approach the skill and persuasion they demonstrate without advanced notice, they persuade the audience that you must be a dolt, a nit-wit, and a heretic. Even when the respondent is of superior linguistic ability, they place the burden of proof on the respondent when in reality it's always on the part of the person who broaches the subject to defend his position.
Besides the fact that men and women see the same thing different ways, members of society at large do not always see things the same way. I remember as a younger man my sister describing her friends, not on the normal demographics described by men but on how she knew them. It is for this reason that I refer to my friends with similar names as Brother Tom, Philadelphia Tom, Professor Tom, etc. (I also program them into my phone this way), because that describes which one in a far more accurate way than the more common sobriquet. However, most people don't communicate that way. They choose words that convey emotion rather than simply description so that you know how they FEEL about a thing or a person. Often, they see the same thing differently depending on how it stacks up to them. They insist that "someone should do something" but insist that it be someone else. When they do it, it's a transgression or mistake, but when others do it those people deserve lynching or death. It's a very diabolical way to see the world that unjustly ascribes virtues to their MyFaves while concurrently villifying those with whom they happen to disagree. When the Supreme Court decides a case 5-4 in favor of liberal ideology, the media in particular describes it as settled and the law of the land. When they lose 4-5, they describe it as divisive, an error, etc. Usually people compare their strengths with the weaknesses of others. The late Bishop Krister Stendahl said, "Most people think of their own tradition as it is at its best and they use caricatures of the others", and that means that you must take things that are said with a word of salt.
If you want to know the truth, go to the first source. I know better than to find out about a woman I like by asking the opinions of her former boyfriends. I don't know what you want me to tell you about people who aren't me, so you should ask them yourself. I only know that tiny sliver of truth to which I am privy, and even as fits my own part I know I don't know all the facts or if the "facts" I have are reliable. Tonight I will bring up to my students the paradox of them simply accepting me as the teacher. How do they know I am qualified or who I claim to be? They won't ask my credentials. Yet, a few semesters ago I heard about a student who, when the professor was late the first class period, got up and started teaching. We assume that people who are speaking have a reason to talk. We assume that when they do it's because they care about us. When they do not know us, how can they possibly care about us? When they do not care about us, how can they possibly respect us? We all spout the adage that people don't care what you know until they know that you care, but then we project virtues onto "our guy" and see our opponents as villains (reasons for villainy may vary). I contend that I know you, not because we've met, but because I learned to see my fellow men as who they really are- the Family of Man. This is why I write the way I do and think the way I do and live the way I do, to show familial piety towards my Father God.
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