No one likes to be talked down to. The company president who in a newsletter to employees makes jokes about supposed romances between the boys who drive the trucks and the girls in the office, the headmaster who uses, and probably misuses, his students' slang, the clergyman who laces his instruction to the affianced with mild vulgarities - all are being falsely magnanimous, pretending not to be in the positions of authority that they hold.
We may sincerely want to put aside the trappings of office a while and be treated as an equal rather than a superior, and those who perceive our sincerity may oblige us. But in the context in which our authority, experience, or position is relevant, we shouldn't pretend we don't have it. Talking down, after all, is only a form of bullying.
- From The Handbook of Good English by Edward D. Johnson, p. 264.
1 comments:
Amen!
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