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The existence of "actual literal sociopaths" does not depend on the words used to describe them. If you use words other than "actual literal sociopath" to descr
by rhizome 6y ago
The existence of "actual literal sociopaths" does not depend on the words used to describe them. If you use words other than "actual literal sociopath" to describe the actual literal sociopathic acts of a person, that doesn't mean they aren't an actual literal sociopath. I mean, if I understand your stance here, you're arguing for the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis to be true, which experimentation tells us is not[1]. See also: the "euphemism treadmill."[2]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
2. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/euphemism_treadmill https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/euphemism_treadmill
- strken 6y agoI'm arguing that if you look at the actions of the group in question, "opportunist" is a better description of what they do than "sociopath". If you use the word "sociopath" then you've changed the meaning of the principle under discussion, because the language suggests "sociopaths" are real Antisocial Personality Disorder sociopaths, when that is observably not the case. The research on linguistic relativity focuses on sensory perceptions that differ across languages. It's not applicable to the decision to claim that most of the managerial structure have a diagnosable mental illness when they clearly don't, by an English speaker in an essay read by other English speakers.