Being offended reports a state of the listener and is claimed to carry no weight as to whether the claim offending them is true.
The principle separates two questions usually run together: whether a statement is accurate and whether making it was decent. Gervais's formulation defends the first against the second. Its limitation is that most disputes about offence concern the second question, on which the principle is silent rather than decisive.
In practice
- A finding that upsets a department is not thereby wrong, and the decision to announce it at the all-hands is a separate matter.
- A speaker who treats every objection as mere offence has exempted himself from a class of criticism.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is that offence is a report about the listener's reaction, which is a different question from whether the claim is accurate, and running the two together lets a reaction settle a factual matter.
- In its favour
- The logical point is sound: a claim's truth does not depend on how it lands, and the principle protects inquiry against the veto of the most easily upset.
- Against it
- It is incomplete, since offence can be evidence that a claim was framed to wound rather than to inform, and truth does not settle whether saying a thing in a given way was decent.
- Standing
- Contested as stated. The logical point is sound and incomplete: offence can be evidence that a claim was framed to wound rather than to inform, which bears on the speaker's purpose even where it says nothing about the claim's truth.
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- The folk laws of argument and attention