• jsomae@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    No, I’m not saying that. I think I clearly indicated that I approve of your coping mechanism with the my first sentence, “I think that’s great.” I meant that genuinely.

    I’m saying I don’t think your coping mechanism reflects a deep linguistic truth.

    That’s okay, it doesn’t need to be linguistically precise to help with pain. If it works as a coping mechanism for you, it might work for others. But because I don’t think it reflects a deep linguistic truth, I don’t think this coping mechanism is likely to be widely useful for everyone with chronic pain, and I don’t think this is likely to be helpful for many non-chronic-pain-havers to better understand chronic pain. Or perhaps it might help some people understand better, but if one’s not clear that this is a coping mechanism that helps psychologically, and instead presented as linguistic fact, I think it will actually be on net harmful to the credibility of people with chronic pain.

    • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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      1 day ago

      Okay, so I guess part of where we differ is that I completely reject the idea of ‘linguistic truth’. To me, there is no one singular way to communicate that is ‘correct’, all behavior is a form of communication and language is descriptive and not prescriptive. It’s inherently subjective and not objective.

      I also do the reframing to help with my mental health problems, and don’t think about it as linguistic fact, I’m just looking for different words to describe the same feeling, but choosing my words based on connotation. It’s almost super-linguistic, in that it’s about the meta understanding and not the dictionary definition.

      instead presented as linguistic fact, I think it will actually be on net harmful to the credibility of people with chronic pain.

      There is no such thing as a ‘linguistic fact’, what meta meaning words have will change based on geographical location.