At 06:40 AM 2/4/02, Jeroen wrote: > > -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- > > Van: Ronn Blankenship > > > > >The purpose of the police metaphor was to get you people thinking > > >about the difference between a warning and a threat. Unfortunately, > > >nobody seems to have gotten the idea. > > > > No, I'm sorry . . . the *impression* the police metaphor gave was of > > the Dirty Harry-type of policeman who pulls out his service piece and > > holds it to the back of the suspect's head, finger on the trigger, > > while saying, "Gimme a reason, punk." > >Wow. You are equating a cop who gives you a warning instead of a ticket (no >mention of guns anywhere) with a trigger-happy cop like Dirty Harry. Yikes.
No, I'm saying that that was how it came across in _this_ case: as a threat to "kill" someone (i.e., remove them from the list) if they didn't comply with the "policeman's" demands. IOW, the penalty mentioned made it seem the on-line equivalent of threatening someone with deadly force, whether that was how it was intended to sound or not. > > BTW, addressing a group of others as "you people" is frequently > > considered insulting in contemporary American English > >But I am not an American, nor am I a student of American English. In the past, however, you have pled ignorance that what you had written might offend someone on the basis that English is not your first language, so I thought I would help and take the opportunity to inform you that some people might take that particular expression as insulting so you'd know it in the future. > If every >time I write something I would have to check if it might perhaps maybe >possibly be insulting to a specific group of people somewhere in the world, >I would not be posting at all anymore - too busy checking if I *can* post a >message... Like Julia said in one of her messages yesterday, in RL I, too, am not always careful to be as nice as I try to make an effort to be on-line. And some times on-line, I have said something that, though I did not mean it to be offensive, offended somebody. I've noticed that in such cases my natural reaction seems to be to not post to that list for a day or two until things have had a chance to calm down. FWIW. -- Ronn! :) God bless America, Land that I love! Stand beside her, and guide her Thru the night with a light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies, To the oceans, white with foam� God bless America! My home, sweet home. -- Irving Berlin (1888-1989)
