linguistics, pragmatics, and the culture of asking for things....

[coraa]

Fascinating, fascinating, fascinating series of posts in ozarque's journal about requests, asking vs. hinting, and other such grammatical pragmatics of asking for things. It ties deeply into a lot of the problems/conflicts I've had. The discussion is at least as interesting as the posts themselves, in terms of seeing how widely people differ in what they're comfortable asking/saying/being asked.

(ozarque is a trained linguist, so she approaches this from that perspective. She also has a fascinating journal in general. Her real name is Suzette Haden Elgin, on the chance that you've seen her books/heard of her.)

The thread is called "Linguistics; pragmatics; favors:"

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Six Afternote

I was raised to only ask for things if you think the request is reasonable and likely to be acceded to; to only ask for things if you really need them; to not ask for things if you think the person you're asking is likely to have to say no (unless it is vital in that critical-to-life way); and -- because of this -- to assume that requests are vital (since they wouldn't ask if it wasn't!), and therefore that saying no would create hardship. (I am trying to overcome the rigidity of this training -- it's very useful when dealing with other people who work that way, but results in quite a lot of friction when dealing with people who are freer about asking for things.)

It's fascinating to see other peoples' different expectations about favors/requests -- all the way to people who are perfectly happy asking someone for five thousand dollars! They can say no, after all....

(ozarque is a fascinating read in general. She's a linguist, she's a science fiction writer, she's from a very different background than a lot of people I read -- the Ozarks, hence her name -- and she's not a young woman, which also gives her an interestingly different perspective and a lot of experience.)