Thread by @magi_jay

The responses to this tweet reveal a phenomenon that is pretty unique to this site. People seem to forget principles of natural language, such as the fact that we often speak in general terms. If we made these same demands in real life, our communication would break down

https://twitter.com/_celia_bedelia_/status/1387127285694832643

Imagine if I said, in real life, “Dogs are so friendly!” and then someone interrupted me to say, “Well, actually, what you’ve said is inaccurate and implies that all dogs are friendly when, in fact, some dogs are not friendly at all.”

“I love beaches.” “All beaches? Some have mudflats that people get stuck in & die”
“Driving sober prevents car crashes." “Well, not all accidents are caused. . . ”
“Human beings cause climate change.” “All human beings? Let me issue a corrective. Some human societies. . . ”

When we speak this way, we are not being vague or inaccurate. People rely on semantic & pragmatic info to resolve generalizations. It’s a part of natural language communication. Yet people on this website seem to completely forget this *implicit* knowledge all the time.

Sometimes, it’s in good faith. Sometimes it’s b/c this website encourages meaningless pedantry. Most often, it occurs when the speaker is a woman &/or POC & the effect is augmented when they are speaking about social justice. In this case, it is intended to be undermining.

The people responding to this tweet w/ NOT ALL CANCER are pulling the same trick as “NOT ALL WHITE PEOPLE.” They ignore their implicit linguistic knowledge in order to be undermining. This does not occur in real life communication outside, perhaps, male-dominated dorm rooms.

A woman saying “This vaccine prevents cancer” is not inaccurate. If anyone was honestly confused, they'd just go look up Gardasil or ask her for specifics.

Also: this is exactly how official organizations & journalists have talked about the vaccine. B/c it's how language works