Some attitudinals I would like to see

[Richard Kennaway <cbmvax!uunet!information-systems.east-anglia.ac.uk!jrk>]

The experience of listening to some dire conference talks and
question-answer sessions leads me to suggest some attitudinals and
discursives that it would be useful to have words for:


Attitudinals typically used as one-word utterances when listening to
someone else speaking:

"Your utterance is too vague for me to respond to."

"Your utterance is so vague, incoherent, and grammatically confused that
it fails to communicate any meaning to me whatsoever."

"Please delete your utterance and try again."

"Your have not yet said enough for me to form a useful idea of your
meaning, but I still have hope.  Please continue."

"Your utterance makes too many unexamined assumptions for a simple
agreement or disagreement to be possible."


Discursives and attitudinals (is there a difference?) for indicating the
status of the different statements one may make in the course of a talk:

"As background which I expect you to be unfamiliar with, and which I will
therefore briefly summarise..."

"As background which I expect you to be familiar with, but which I will
state in order to indicate the context..."

"This is an important statement, for reasons which I will subsequently
explain: ..."

"This is an important statement, for reasons which should be clear from
what I have said already: ..."

"This is a frivolous aside: ..."

"The answer to your question will be quite lengthy.  Please wait until it
is complete before commenting further."

--
Richard Kennaway     SYS, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Internet:  jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk               uucp:  ...mcsun!ukc!uea-sys!jrk