| > Has anyone stopped to consider that he may have been talking about trouble he has actually experienced? If one assumes (and I don't think that his subsequent clarifications are consistent with this interpretation) that his intent was to merely relate personal experience without generalizing further from it, then the whole affair provides a valuable lesson about why one should be precise in one's use of language and avoid using the second person ("you"), especially in a context where it might be readily be viewed as intended in its generic sense (in which it is equivalent in definition, though less formal in tone, to "one"), when one intends the first person ("I"). OTOH, I don't think it works. > Later, he went on to clarify that he has fallen in love with someone and someone has fallen in love with him. "People" (plural) in both cases, but what he did not say when he did so as part of his mixed apology/defense of the statement was that anything indicating that he did not intend to generalize beyond his personal experience. > He didn't comment any more on the crying part He did, in fact, in the same apology/defense. [0] [0] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33077107 |
An equally valuable lesson is if something can be taken different ways, make sure you are taking it the same way the other person meant it. He didn't say it was or was not a generalization. He didn't say it was or was not only personal experience. Everyone just made their own assumptions.