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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Questions Regarding the History of the Term "Psionics."
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<blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 7899275" data-attributes="member: 926"><p>I think the degradation of commonly spoken English is self-evident by just listening/reading to how people spoke even a hundred years ago, with people commonly using more poetic words and more eloquent sentence structures. Today's common speech, in comparison, can almost come across as simplistic grunting in a lot of cases.</p><p></p><p>I try to speak in a more refined and eloquent register, unfortunately a lot of the time I run into people who either mock me or become actually upset about my being "overly formal." And don't even bother trying to explain that you are speaking politely and eloquently in an attempt to show respect to the person with whom you are speaking instead of simply monosyllabically grunting at them, they will nevertheless almost always still interpret it as being condescending and supercilious. And then there are the (many) people who simply don't understand a word you are saying if they are comprised of more than two syllables... years ago, my former best friend and Dungeon Master, with whom I did almost everything with, got a new girlfriend, and he tried to encourage her to become friends with me by having me accompany the two of them on outings in the same way that I would accompany him and his former girlfriend all the time. It was almost comical the way he and I were discussing some kind of D&D-related philosophical subject during a certain car ride and she would interrupt us every other sentence to ask him "what the Hell did he just say?" And then he would have to rephrase what I had just said using simpler, elementary school level words, even though the language I had used had been <em>far</em> from difficult to understand. It <em>would</em> have been comical if it hadn't been so tragic; in the end, she "encouraged" him to stop associating with me and to instead become friends with other people who were more tolerable to her and never spoke about philosophy, nor science, nor anything else beyond the grasp of your average dull 5th-grader, and she <em>barely tolerated</em> his playing of D&D and love of fantasy and science fiction. There isn't really any bad blood between he and I and we still text message each other occasionally, but it is a bit strained and being able to hang out with him now is simply out of the question because she openly shows her disapproval. Losing him, and the rest of that group of friends who all moved away around the same time, essentially cut me off from having any social circle and I never was able to find any other friends to make up for it, and that was basically the end of my social life... all because she didn't like the way I speak and thought I was too much of a smarty-pants nerd.</p><p></p><p>(Yes, I am a bit of an intellectual elitist, and I make no apologies about it. I don't consider myself a genius nor do I go out of my way to make other people feel stupid or condescend to them, I don't insult anyone nor intentionally use "big words" to try to confuse them, but the anti-intellectual biase of American culture causes a whole lot of people to be actively hostile to anyone who speaks using any kind of eloquence or precision, or shows that they have a mind and take pride in using it and who take care in how they speak. I quite often find myself having to pause and intentionally "dumb down" the things I am about to say so as not to alienate people. The current political climate especially has made it acceptable among certain groups to attack anyone who shows any signs of having an intellect or education.)</p><p></p><p>The creative use of language is one of the reasons why I appreciate writers like Joss Whedon, who is known for breaking conventional language rules with "Buffy-Speak," but in such a way that makes it evident that it's being done <em>not </em>because he doesn't know any better or doesn't understand how to use language properly, but rather as a creative expression from someone who thoroughly <em>does</em> understand the rules well enough to bend and break them creatively and well. You cannot break the rules so well if you don't understand them properly in the first place.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Aaron L, post: 7899275, member: 926"] I think the degradation of commonly spoken English is self-evident by just listening/reading to how people spoke even a hundred years ago, with people commonly using more poetic words and more eloquent sentence structures. Today's common speech, in comparison, can almost come across as simplistic grunting in a lot of cases. I try to speak in a more refined and eloquent register, unfortunately a lot of the time I run into people who either mock me or become actually upset about my being "overly formal." And don't even bother trying to explain that you are speaking politely and eloquently in an attempt to show respect to the person with whom you are speaking instead of simply monosyllabically grunting at them, they will nevertheless almost always still interpret it as being condescending and supercilious. And then there are the (many) people who simply don't understand a word you are saying if they are comprised of more than two syllables... years ago, my former best friend and Dungeon Master, with whom I did almost everything with, got a new girlfriend, and he tried to encourage her to become friends with me by having me accompany the two of them on outings in the same way that I would accompany him and his former girlfriend all the time. It was almost comical the way he and I were discussing some kind of D&D-related philosophical subject during a certain car ride and she would interrupt us every other sentence to ask him "what the Hell did he just say?" And then he would have to rephrase what I had just said using simpler, elementary school level words, even though the language I had used had been [I]far[/I] from difficult to understand. It [I]would[/I] have been comical if it hadn't been so tragic; in the end, she "encouraged" him to stop associating with me and to instead become friends with other people who were more tolerable to her and never spoke about philosophy, nor science, nor anything else beyond the grasp of your average dull 5th-grader, and she [I]barely tolerated[/I] his playing of D&D and love of fantasy and science fiction. There isn't really any bad blood between he and I and we still text message each other occasionally, but it is a bit strained and being able to hang out with him now is simply out of the question because she openly shows her disapproval. Losing him, and the rest of that group of friends who all moved away around the same time, essentially cut me off from having any social circle and I never was able to find any other friends to make up for it, and that was basically the end of my social life... all because she didn't like the way I speak and thought I was too much of a smarty-pants nerd. (Yes, I am a bit of an intellectual elitist, and I make no apologies about it. I don't consider myself a genius nor do I go out of my way to make other people feel stupid or condescend to them, I don't insult anyone nor intentionally use "big words" to try to confuse them, but the anti-intellectual biase of American culture causes a whole lot of people to be actively hostile to anyone who speaks using any kind of eloquence or precision, or shows that they have a mind and take pride in using it and who take care in how they speak. I quite often find myself having to pause and intentionally "dumb down" the things I am about to say so as not to alienate people. The current political climate especially has made it acceptable among certain groups to attack anyone who shows any signs of having an intellect or education.) The creative use of language is one of the reasons why I appreciate writers like Joss Whedon, who is known for breaking conventional language rules with "Buffy-Speak," but in such a way that makes it evident that it's being done [I]not [/I]because he doesn't know any better or doesn't understand how to use language properly, but rather as a creative expression from someone who thoroughly [I]does[/I] understand the rules well enough to bend and break them creatively and well. You cannot break the rules so well if you don't understand them properly in the first place. [/QUOTE]
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