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> Included in the intended audience are Soldiers... "We tried to make this understandable by Soldiers, among others, as far as reading level and expected conte

> Included in the intended audience are Soldiers... "We tried to make this understandable by Soldiers, among others, as far as reading level and expected context & background knowledge" > ...particularly those tasked with integrating ASA concepts into training "This subset of soldiers are the ones we mostly expect to read it, or to be required to read it, though, so expect that the content is tuned to and most suitable for their needs" Nowhere does it say that all soldiers read this or that anyone expects that a typical soldier be required to read it. They are stating the background of their intended audience (Soldier, among others, should suffice) and those whom they expect to be best-served by the document ("those tasked with integrating ASA concepts into training"). This sentence is about as clear as English gets, to the point that I'm baffled this exchange is taking place. It says nothing about "junior soldiers [being] expected to read a document such as this". > A military manual is not a James Joyce novel. If the manual says the intended audience is soldiers, then you should not be able to come in and say 'actually, regardless of what they wrote, that's not what they really meant'. Your confidence and repeated insistence that your reading is correct here is not warranted. You're wrong. It is not ambiguous whether you're wrong.

Ansil849 5y ago
> Nowhere does it say that all soldiers read this or that anyone expects that a typical soldier be required to read it. And nowhere do I make this claim. The discussion is bout the intended, not the required, audience. And the intended audience is explicitly stated to be Soldiers in the manual itself.
- moshmosh 5y ago
  OK: let's look at this thread from the beginning. Not the post you responded to, but the one they were responding to. In particular, consider how the word "average" was intended in the post you responded to, and what aspect(s) of the root post that was addressing. Then consider, given the context of the whole thread, how "expected" was intended here: > Junior soldiers are not expected to read documents like this. Webster's for "expect": 1 c. to consider bound in duty or obligated (1a and 1b also more-or-less apply) That's what I take as the use of expect here, fitting with the thread before. Most soldiers are not obligated to read this work. No-one will be surprised or disappointed or pissed-off if most soldiers never crack it open. And then consider how I (and others) may have read your use of "expected" in your response to that: > If it is true that junior soldiers are not expected to read a document such as this, then the document should not state that the intended audience is soldiers. By this you mean that the authors anticipate (sense 2 of "expect" in Webster's) that some of those reading it will be soldiers, that they expect (some!) soldiers to be among their readers—at least I assume so, given your agreement with the notion that most soldiers are not obligated to read the text. You've been writing past everyone in this thread because your original response was a non sequitur to the thread-in-progress, which was about who is obligated or intended, in practice, to read this document. chrisseaton was addressing something different from what you're trying to argue over. You aren't even contradicting him because you're talking about different things. Besides, your reading is every bit as "connotative" as chrisseaton's, except that you're ignoring a big chunk of the (not long!) sentence you quoted in order to preserve yours as the exclusively correct reading. In particular, there are two senses of "audience" at play, between this thread and the text in question. Your reading that the piece is intended to be understandable by a "Soldier"—so that is the "audience"—does have support in the text, clearly, but the contention that the "audience", in the sense of who is actually expected to read it, and so for whose needs we may expect the text to have been crafted, is more precisely specified in the second part of the sentence, is also supported by the text, and is what comes out when the entire sentence is considered. That second sense is what was under discussion, originally.

Ansil849 5y ago

> Nowhere does it say that all soldiers read this or that anyone expects that a typical soldier be required to read it. And nowhere do I make this claim. The discussion is bout the intended, not the required, audience. And the intended audience is explicitly stated to be Soldiers in the manual itself.

moshmosh 5y ago
OK: let's look at this thread from the beginning. Not the post you responded to, but the one they were responding to. In particular, consider how the word "average" was intended in the post you responded to, and what aspect(s) of the root post that was addressing. Then consider, given the context of the whole thread, how "expected" was intended here: > Junior soldiers are not expected to read documents like this. Webster's for "expect": 1 c. to consider bound in duty or obligated (1a and 1b also more-or-less apply) That's what I take as the use of expect here, fitting with the thread before. Most soldiers are not obligated to read this work. No-one will be surprised or disappointed or pissed-off if most soldiers never crack it open. And then consider how I (and others) may have read your use of "expected" in your response to that: > If it is true that junior soldiers are not expected to read a document such as this, then the document should not state that the intended audience is soldiers. By this you mean that the authors anticipate (sense 2 of "expect" in Webster's) that some of those reading it will be soldiers, that they expect (some!) soldiers to be among their readers—at least I assume so, given your agreement with the notion that most soldiers are not obligated to read the text. You've been writing past everyone in this thread because your original response was a non sequitur to the thread-in-progress, which was about who is obligated or intended, in practice, to read this document. chrisseaton was addressing something different from what you're trying to argue over. You aren't even contradicting him because you're talking about different things. Besides, your reading is every bit as "connotative" as chrisseaton's, except that you're ignoring a big chunk of the (not long!) sentence you quoted in order to preserve yours as the exclusively correct reading. In particular, there are two senses of "audience" at play, between this thread and the text in question. Your reading that the piece is intended to be understandable by a "Soldier"—so that is the "audience"—does have support in the text, clearly, but the contention that the "audience", in the sense of who is actually expected to read it, and so for whose needs we may expect the text to have been crafted, is more precisely specified in the second part of the sentence, is also supported by the text, and is what comes out when the entire sentence is considered. That second sense is what was under discussion, originally.