Thinking a bit more about the times when I nitpick a technicality rather than digging into a real disagreement:
Both of your examples are cases where there’s a LOT of subtext (friend implying status and/or attempting to influence my purchase decisions, grandma asserting authority and enforcing her preferences by implying universality), and much of the time I won’t want to risk the relationships by directly contradicting or correcting them, _NOR_ by walking away and never seeing them again. And yet, it grates on me to take the option you didn’t call out: just meekly accept the underlying disagreement. I totally get that the initial-response mechanism of pointing out that they’ve used a word in a way that doesn’t exactly match a dictionary does not further a rational discussion, but I’m not sure a rational discussion is what these examples are.
Pedantry like this _is_ a way to assert a little bit of independence/disagreement (or, less justifiably, dominance), and to open the concept of disagreement in a way that’s deniable, and start a subtle, unacknowledged negotiation which can be de-escalated easily if either party decides it’s not worth pursuing.
Pedantry like this _is_ a way to assert a little bit of independence/disagreement (or, less justifiably, dominance), and to open the concept of disagreement in a way that’s deniable, and start a subtle, unacknowledged negotiation which can be de-escalated easily if either party decides it’s not worth pursuing.
Great point! That is, provided you make this a conscious choice. But if you are not making it consciously. If you are just following a habit of nitpicking (for whatever deeper psychological reasons) then de-escalation will be harder because you don’t know where the conflict comes from.
Thinking a bit more about the times when I nitpick a technicality rather than digging into a real disagreement:
Both of your examples are cases where there’s a LOT of subtext (friend implying status and/or attempting to influence my purchase decisions, grandma asserting authority and enforcing her preferences by implying universality), and much of the time I won’t want to risk the relationships by directly contradicting or correcting them, _NOR_ by walking away and never seeing them again. And yet, it grates on me to take the option you didn’t call out: just meekly accept the underlying disagreement. I totally get that the initial-response mechanism of pointing out that they’ve used a word in a way that doesn’t exactly match a dictionary does not further a rational discussion, but I’m not sure a rational discussion is what these examples are.
Pedantry like this _is_ a way to assert a little bit of independence/disagreement (or, less justifiably, dominance), and to open the concept of disagreement in a way that’s deniable, and start a subtle, unacknowledged negotiation which can be de-escalated easily if either party decides it’s not worth pursuing.
Great point! That is, provided you make this a conscious choice. But if you are not making it consciously. If you are just following a habit of nitpicking (for whatever deeper psychological reasons) then de-escalation will be harder because you don’t know where the conflict comes from.