Saturday, July 26, 2014

Things I'm sure they've invented a word for, but I can't think what it is

I'm looking for a word or phrase to express the concept of going straight to boldly/almost-but-not-quite aggressively asserting your rights when asking nicely would have the same effect.

Example: rather than emailing your landlord with "My toilet's been dripping lately, could you have a look at it?", you go straight to citing chapter and verse of the Residential Tenancies Act about the need to maintain a state of good repair and emphasizing the importance of a functioning toilet to basic quality of life.

Part of the notion this word or phrase encompasses is not giving your interlocutor the opportunity to say "Yes, of course!" and demonstrate goodwill and reasonableness. 

The best I can come up with is "unnecessary assertiveness", but I don't want to use the word "assertiveness" because it isn't a bad thing, and in the thing I'm trying to write I'm trying to differentiate this phenomenon from regular, appropriate assertiveness.

Any ideas?

3 comments:

laura k said...

Unnecessarily confrontational?

You do need the "unnecessarily," I think. I can't think of one word that conveys this meaning without that qualifier.

laura k said...

Excessively might be better than unnecessarily.

impudent strumpet said...

I'm going back and forth about whether this concept necessarily* includes confrontational every single time. I can't decide.

*This "necessarily" is not at all the opposite of the "unnecessarily" in the term we're trying to coin in this post! English is weird!