Insinuation

I can handle almost everything: temper tantrums, grief, mockery… However, I don’t know how to handle insinuation. If anyone has a foolproof method of dealing with this particular form of taunt, please tell me, for I consider it a taunt by someone who does not have the courage to openly accuse me of something but does it anyway. I am unable to respond in any constructive way because the moment I challenge the insinuation, the other party will deny it.

Consider this sentence I found in a Sanskrit study book: खलाः सुरां अपिबन्, which means ‘The wicked drank alcohol.’ Now why am I unhappy? Because the sentence presupposes, without explicitly stating, that only wicked men drink alcohol. I understand this is called presupposition in modern linguistics. It is a loaded sentence that is trying to impose a cultural or moral bias on me. The bias is built into the lexical choice. If it had said ‘only wicked men drink alcohol’, I would have torn up the book. But I can’t do it because all it says is that some wicked men drank alcohol. Insinuation – I hate it.

Another example: I once wrote an accident investigation report while employed at the Marine Accident Investigation Branch. A colleague read it and said to me:
‘It’s an excellent report. Did you write it?’
How was I to respond other than to put on a fake smile and reply,
‘Yes’, while I seethed inside for days after that, imagining several scathing ripostes such as,
‘No, my dog wrote it’ or ‘Yes, but I wrote it with my left hand’ or ‘No ghostwriters were harmed in the making of this report’ or something equally clever. But then one should not jump to conclusions from what’s implied.

Should he have asked me such a question? What was he insinuating?

1. You are not capable of this. Did you get someone else to write this for you?
2. I did not realise you could write so well and organise your thoughts so succinctly. I am amazed.

I think my interlocutor meant the second. His existing bias was probably dented a bit. I forgot about the exchange after a few days, but remembered it again today based on the ‘wicked men drinking’ sentence from my Sanskrit book.

On another occasion, I volunteered to talk about the use of AI in a creative writing context. I had informed the chair that although I have a PhD in the subject, I have very little professional experience in the workplace, but that I have a decent theoretical understanding. When he introduced my talk to the members of our writing club, he said,
‘Gopi says he is an AI expert.’
I bristled at this comment but again, I was in no position to challenge him because he only repeated what I said to him minus the accompanying caveats. If he had said, ‘Gopi is an expert,’ I could have graciously lowered the expectations of the crowd, but he said it in a way as if he didn’t really believe what he was saying. It was an innuendo. What to do? I am clueless.

If I had anything to do with law-making, I would write into the statutes that insinuation of all kinds would be punished by severe flogging.