Semantic-pragmatic (was Re: tone as a guildeline?)

At the face to face meeting in Melbourne Lisa mentioned the
semantic-pragmatic issue, whereby certain cognitive disabilities lead to
difficulty in understanding or appreciating metaphorical language.

Clearly this is a disability-related issue and as such should be taken
into account in our guidelines (my previous message was in no way intended
to exclude it from consideration).

Obviously the semantic-pragmatic issue arises under checkpoint 3.3. It
would be impracticable to require everyone (in all web content) to avoid
metaphorical language altogether; but through the guidelines they should
at least become aware of this particular issue so that they can assess the
consequences of using language in certain ways and decide whether or not
to avoid doing so.

Received on Sunday, 9 December 2001 21:34:08 UTC