[offtopic]
Quote:
Originally Posted by endless psych  I think its usually fair to assume that in common usage when people say something is "shit" they mean they thought it was shit. |
Er, obviously. That's just saying the same thing twice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by endless psych IE they didn't like it. |
"
ie" ??? How does that follow?
"It was (adjective)" is assigning a specific, intrinsic attribute to a thing; "I didn't like it" is stating a subjective opinion than can be both true for some people and untrue for others without causing contradiction- they are
not synonymous. (Notice that the
subject in the first sentence is the thing denoted by the pronoun; in the second it's the "I" and the thing is relegated to being the
object. ie, the object exists in terms of the subject - not true in the first instance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by endless psych I fail to see the need for someone to qualify such an opinion by stating - "its perfectly well written/performed/etc but I thought it was shit" |
I'm not saying people have to explain themselves. Just that if they mean they didn't enjoy something, that point is conveyed better by saying so, rather than expecting someone to guess that that's what they meant, but actually
saying that it was bad.
(In this instance though I think Mark meant both: that he didn't enjoy it
because (in his view) it was bad. Which makes perfect sense. But it would make
semantic sense to say that you don't enjoy Shakespeare's writing because it's bad. By almost any sane measure though, there'd be a
critical flaw (but not a
logical one) at work there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by endless psych as most peoples default assumption of their meaning will be the former. |
Well you
may be right; that's not my experience on the whole. For the most part I think people assume that something described as "shit" has something wrong with it, some aspect you can attach a demonstrable criticism to. Are there things you happen not to like but still recognise as having merit? Would you really describe them as "shit"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by endless psych If you want to carry on an arguement based on the spurious notion that people on the internet should qualify statments of opinion so as to avoid confusing you into starting objective arguements about objective quality then feel free. I just think its rather pointless. (Particularly when your talking about objective consensus amoung experts in the arts...) |
Look up "spurious" , it doesn't mean what you think.
And look up "argument" and "your" too 
I wasn't confused. It's easier to respond to what someone has actually said rather than what they
might have meant... but I'll reiterate that I seem to have been right: Mark
does actually find some fault in the book... That was the aspect I was addressing, not why he didn't enjoy reading it (hell, you could fail to enjoy reading something because someone was flicking you on the head the whole time you were reading, but in a discussion of literature I think it's more interesting to discuss what's good or bad about the book itself).
[/offtopic]
