Posted by alexandra_k on July 10, 2005, at 21:16:40
In reply to Re: please be civil » alexandra_k, posted by crazy teresa on July 10, 2005, at 20:58:47
> > Have you really had the experience of 'most' small towns or are you generalising from a couple of them to most of them??
> I have no idea what you wrote means. I am referring to the small towns I've lived in, worked in, grown up in, the people I work with and have visited in this area.Right. What I was getting at was that you said 'most small towns'. But you haven't experienced 'most' small towns either in the US or in the world so you are generalising from your experience of some small towns to most small towns.
> > How about 'In my experience some small towns are pretty small-minded'. But even then did you experience most people in the small town?
> Moving a prepositional phrase from the end to the beginning of a sentence does not change the meaning at all.I changed the most to some. I thought that was less of a sweeping generalisation.
>I said it was my experience. In fact I went back and inserted 'in my experience' trying to be unoffensive. It's not that hard to experience people when you live with only 4,000 in the town.
Right. Did you have that experience in one small town or a couple?
> > How about 'Some people I know who are from small towns are pretty small-minded'.
> So it would be better to be "uncivil" about the the people than an anonymous town?I think the only way a town gets to be 'small minded' is by having a large number of 'small minded' citizens.
> > 'Small-minded' is pretty vague and rather judgemental sounding...
> > What do you mean by 'Small-minded'?????> Considering the subject, I'm sure you know what I mean. If I list all the qualities of small-mindedness, wouldn't that be even more uncivil???
I dunno. I think you might be able to say what you want to say. But you have to be careful about posters here who are from small towns thinking that you are assuming they must be small minded or that you are assuming that their town must be small minded because of your experience of some people in some towns.
> I'm not being smart.I know.
And I hope you don't think I'm being presumptuous.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:525785
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20050628/msgs/525940.html