Nobody said that

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

K S SWIGART   katswig@earthlink.net

Ken Cook said:

>  There does seem to be an 
>  implication here that I was maybe abusing my horse with 
>  back to back wins.

While you (and apparantly Maryben and Linda Cowles) may
have assumed that by commenting that both horses that
were running in front at Oakland Hills had also been 
running in front the week before that the poster was
implying that this is horse abuse, certainly...at least
not in anything that read, did anybody actually say that
back to back wins are horse abuse.

And I didn't take it that way. _I_ had thought that 
Lisa made the comment about the other horse that was
front running had also won the week before was her
way of saying that just because a horse that is running
in front two weeks in a row doesn't mean that the horse
is being abused because, after all, the other horse
that was front running was doing the same thing and 
did just fine.

_I_ thought it was her way of saying that it was, in fact,
the falling off the trail rather than the running in 
front that was the precipitating incident in the horse's
demise because the other horse was doing the same thing
and suffered no ill-effects.

She, of course, didn't say THOSE things either, but that
was the "implication" that _I_ got from reading what
she wrote.

A reasonable way, of course, to find out what she meant
or why she included the comment about the other horse
also front running two weeks in a row would be to ask
her what exactly she meant.  It could even be asked,
"Did you mean to imply that...."

The fact of the matter is that the implications from
something that any person says or write comes from the
reader not the writer.  So if somebody thinks that she 
was implying that there is something bad about back to 
back wins, that implication comes from them not from her.
(She may think that as well, I don't know...but she didn't
say it, and what she DID say, could be taken VERY 
differently.)

I mention this, because this happens ALL the time, 
especially in this form of communication (well, it 
happens in all forms of communication, it just is 
exacerbated by this particular format).  People are
constantly leaping to conclusions (myself included, but
I TRY not to) about what people really meant to say
rather than what they actually did say.

If anybody wants a lesson in linguistics as to why this
is inevitible, they can e-mail me privately (as I 
consider it to be a fascinating discussion, I didn't 
major in linguistics because I thought it would be a
marketable major); however, it would behoove us all 
(myself included) to atleast be aware of when we are 
leaping to conclusions about what we are assuming that
people are implying and to understand that the biggest
reason that we make these assumptions is because of our
own prejudices, not because of theirs.

How many times have we heard during a flame war, the 
person who started the whole thing saying, "...but...but
..but...I NEVER said that!"  And what do you know, they
never did.

kat
Orange County, Calif.