Reply to Derail conversations by focusing on semantics. Why do this?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My husband and I don't argue too much, but I get so annoyed when he does this and replaces my word with his word that means just about the same thing.
me: Why are you angry?
him:  I'm not angry, I'm upset.
Then we start conversating about words.  I obviously am acknowledging you have a negative emotion about something, but I still don't know what it is, because you want to talk about the difference between angry and upset.

In our case,  I think he uses euphemisms too much, and he thinks I label things too harshly.  If I say something is bad, he might say, "It's not bad, it's just not optimal."  I eventually get frustrated and say, "so we agree that such-and-such needs improvement."  It's okay if we label it differently, but if we have a similar understanding of something, we can work together to improve whatever it is.[/quote]

Be careful that what you think are two works that mean just about the same thing are in fact synonyms.  In your example, they are not.  To be angry is to be upset AT something or ABOUT something.  Being upset can be the emotion without target or direction.  They don't necessarily mean the same thing.

And a way to avoid the argument about diction is to not engage.  In your example:

You:  Why are you angry?
Him:  I'm not angry, I'm upset.
You:  Well, what are you upset about?

If you don't engage the word change, you can get to what you originally asked.  But be aware that your husband is not the only person that feels that semantics matter and semantics can make an entire conversation have different meanings.  For a basic understanding of how this works (if you care), see Deborah Tannen's books "You Just Don't Understand" and "That's Not What I Meant".  And you'll see how communication styles including word choice and semantics can make a difference.  Note, for anyone who has any knowledge of linguistics, these books are more "Linguistics for Dummies", but they have helped many people understand how to work around different communication styles.

[/quote]

I agree.  Also, angry and upset are two different states of mind entirely.  Many people use "angry" as a catchall phrase for "not happy" and that leads to misunderstandings.  It's not that you are labelling the same things differently; it's that you are assigning meaning to things he is saying (or worse, his states of mind/emotions) in ways that suggest you do not understand what he is trying to convey.

My DH is like you - virtually everything he says when in an emotional state is expressed in superlatives ("angry"; "terrible"; "disastrous" etc.).  It makes it very hard to understand what he is feeling and what he needs, when everything is expressed in crisis terms.  Also, when a bona fide crisis does hit, it's hard to recognize it because he cries semantic wolf so often.[/quote]

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