Quote:
Originally Posted by yakubu
when i sed nobody i didnt actually mean nobody or everybody. its just a figure of speech . for example you leave a club at 4am in the moring and someone says to you ''whats it like in there tonight'' and you reply ''EVERYONE is off their heads, they are all wasted''. not everyone is wasted but you dont say '' a certain percentage of the people in there are sober and a certain percent are wasted''
i didnt mean it as a generalization hence u are taking wot im saying out of context
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It doesn't matter if you didn't mean it as a generalization, it
is a generalization, regardless of context. And, therefore, wrong.
If you want to use that manner of speech to describe a group of people you're not talking to, chances are that no one will call you out on it. The problem is that you're not just talking
about us, you're talking
to us.
No, I don't say "A certain percentage..." when talking about the club, but I don't say "all" unless everyone really is wasted. There you can see firsthand what's going on, whereas here you can't.
Morale of the story: Overgeneralizing
to a group of people
about them, including when doing so as a "figure of speech," still means saying something inaccurate that will cause objection. (ok, I'm done now
)