Subjective Language: don’t use objective language for subjective things
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 2 mins
Summary: Discussions can be positive sum or negative sum. One of the best ways I’ve found to turn a positive sum discussion into a negative sum discussion is to use objective language when you should be using subjective language.
Subjective Vs Objective
Use subjective language for subjective things. The vast majority of things are subjective. It’s ok to use objective language for objective things. When in doubt, use subjective language.
Jingle: the only way to be objective about subjectivity is that you can’t be objective about subjectivity!
Using objective language often makes things ‘black or white’, which makes it very easy to strawman. Objective language often pushes people into ‘either or’ discussions which can often lead to ‘defence mode, not understanding mode’.
Normally the things you discuss are subjective. Many things don’t have ceilings, ie can be improved indefinitely. Eg how to live a good life, how to be a good friend, how to improve education, what is the best strategy for the project you are working on, how to help someone level up etc etc. If you are discussing something that is ceilingless then you normally just have your current best version of what to do, that hopefully you’ll be able to upgrade soon! I find that normally objective language makes it hard to discuss ideas.
Word choice > Idea choice?
Outcome = Messaging * Message = Word choice * Idea choice
If you mess up your messaging so much that many don’t even make it to your message, then you might find yourself in a mighty big mess!
Basically, messaging is what you wrap your message in, get the wrapping wrong and people often don’t understand what was underneath.
So yeah, I think it’s quite possible that word choice is more important than idea choice.
One of the most important components of word choice to me is having appropriately soft, subjective language.