
Originally Posted by
Winston Hughes
I don't know exactly.
But perhaps the contrast here of maliciously/innocently and scummy/townie could be an example.
The word choice is unconscious, I think, because you're too good to rely on conscious word choices - they slow you down, tend to look clunky, risk the encroachment of paranoia. And you're also really good at regulating your mood, so that your unconscious doesn't tend to spit out those more obvious errors or tells that people like me need to be careful of when wolfing. But, for all that, there still has to be an agenda at work - an implicit intention to reshape the gamestate in some way that benefits your goal.
The unconscious choice to frame the dichotomy as 'maliciously' vs 'innocently' poses the question ethically, as one of good against evil. It is a dramatic framing, implying a rhetorical purpose. If you were less regulated, I might think this had an emotional component - you being irritated at my suspicions - but I'm pretty sure that's not what's going on here. And, to be sure, there are townie reasons why those words might have come to mind.
But it's the second part that tweaks me. You've already asked the question, with its implicit rhetorical load. And there is no reason anyone should misunderstand the meaning. And yet your instinct tells you to restate it in what are, in mafia, the most value-neutral of terms. What you're doing here, it seems to me, is sanding the edge off.
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