Tuesday, November 5, 2024

The Obnoxiousness of Prefacing a Statement with the Word "Look"

A great many people seem to find a person's starting their statements with the word "Look" off-putting.

A significant part of it is likely the strong association of the tendency with a tone of exasperation, and condescension, which can seem at the least graceless and very easily insulting, which is inseparable from the fact that the exasperated, graceless, insulting person who has resorted to this usage is presuming to tell another person what to do. To command them. If someone can't stand being told what to do even by a person indisputably authorized to do so, how are they going to feel when someone with no grounds for bossing them about that way starts speaking to them in that manner? Especially when they are, as is very likely the case, dictating to them not simply what they are to do but how they are to see the world, forcing their self-serving subjectivity upon their own?

It is no accident that in an interview that is other than the usual flattering promotion by a courtier a cornered rat of a politician, lacking much in the way of self-awareness or alertness to the subtleties of the English language, or respect for the intelligence of an audience in many cases likely to be far smarter than they, so often begins an answer to their interlocutor with that word "Look"--a fact which does nothing to make the unpleasant usage seem any more genial to those who have to hear it.

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