Comment by yyzhero
8 years ago
Don't blame yourself. Go read argument culture. Everything is positioned as a debate rather then a discussion ; take an opposing side and it's about winning not understanding. As an example If you've caught yourself ever leveraging syntax in a discussion to derail someone's ideas
I've always hated debate because of that and could never understand why it was valued. It is always about winning and never about getting to the bottom of what could be the truth.
That's a great point.
Even the very word discussion comes from late Middle English (in the sense ‘dispel, disperse’, also ‘examine by argument’): from Latin discuss- ‘dashed to pieces’, later ‘investigated’, from the verb discutere, from dis- ‘apart’ + quatere ‘shake’.
We generally don't do a very good job of talking about things in way that brings those things, or us each other, closer together.
Unfortunately, I find this to be a similar case with office/workplace politics pretty often as well.
Can you elaborate on “leveraging syntax”? Like commenting on the structure of their argument?
I think the author is talking about making bad-faith but very defensible interpretations. You can accomplish that by purposely taking hyperbole too literally, or by intentionally overlooking that a statement was meant as a metaphor. (Just a couple of examples.)
Very often, English-language experts can appear to defeat subject-matter experts in debates. When this happens it's usually because of footwork on the "language layer."
Thank you. That makes a lot of sense.