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> It seems to me that this whole argument about "Abort, Retry, Fail"
> and violent terminology is the result of a disagreement between
> connotation and denotation. What we "think" a word means often
> has no relation to its actual definition.
But if we think of language as system of signs, then we *can't* dissociate
connations from denotations very easily. Although dictionaries are useful
for a lot of things, it's not as if there's some pure language onto which
users try to hang "incorrect" meanings. And although in our discussions
here we can bemoan the "incorrect" assignment of "baby killing" to
portions of the "abort, retry, ignore" message, there are still a lot of
users who make that connection--not because they're looking to be
troublemakers, but because those connotations pre-exist their reading of
the error message. I think it's a poor rhetoric that either dismisses
these connotations or, at best, makes fun of them behind closed doors.
(I'll stop here before I break out into full-blown pomo and try to claim
that the technical communicator is dead.)
