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gnomi...or, gnomi ponders the differences between verbal and written communication.
NOTE: This is not because of any particular incident. Responding to someone else's LJ, however, pinged it in my brain.
I can tell, when I'm speaking to someone face-to-face, if they're being sarcastic (well, usually) -- there's a big difference in tone (which I'm using to mean "the way one adjusts the tone of one's voice to convey mood) between a "good luck" that means "I wish you the best of possible outcomes to the situation you're describing" and the "good luck" that means "yeah, right. That's never going to happen."
Instead of tone, therefore, we Internet denizens rely on other lexical clues, our previous interactions with the individual with whom we are communicating, and the like. This is fraught with potential pitfalls -- perhaps someone I'm angry at doesn't know it, and their perfectly innocent "good luck" runs the risk of being misinterpreted by me as a snide "good luck."
I don't have any particular solution to this issue; more, I wanted to just state it as being an issue. Because I may have misinterpreted people things e-mailed/commented to me in the past based purely based on my preconceived notions of how that person meant the statement. And for that I apologize, because it's not fair of me to do so.
gnomi ponders the differences between verbal and written communication.NOTE: This is not because of any particular incident. Responding to someone else's LJ, however, pinged it in my brain.
I can tell, when I'm speaking to someone face-to-face, if they're being sarcastic (well, usually) -- there's a big difference in tone (which I'm using to mean "the way one adjusts the tone of one's voice to convey mood) between a "good luck" that means "I wish you the best of possible outcomes to the situation you're describing" and the "good luck" that means "yeah, right. That's never going to happen."
Instead of tone, therefore, we Internet denizens rely on other lexical clues, our previous interactions with the individual with whom we are communicating, and the like. This is fraught with potential pitfalls -- perhaps someone I'm angry at doesn't know it, and their perfectly innocent "good luck" runs the risk of being misinterpreted by me as a snide "good luck."
I don't have any particular solution to this issue; more, I wanted to just state it as being an issue. Because I may have misinterpreted people things e-mailed/commented to me in the past based purely based on my preconceived notions of how that person meant the statement. And for that I apologize, because it's not fair of me to do so.
