Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Post on "Relatable"
When reading this, my first thought was how much I disagreed with this teacher's statements on the subject of the word "relatable". I love the word relatable, and I really love using it because it is a much better way to describe something that you can relate to than just saying "I can relate to that". I think that there is a point to how relatable a piece of writing can be before you feel like you are just reading about your own life, and that is definitely a problem if it is. However a piece, whether fiction or nonfiction, needs to grab the reader's understanding on some level, and writing about things that relate to the readers lives as well does a great job of doing that. Our culture does overuse the word in everyday life and on social media, I will agree with that, but if used correctly in a mature academic setting I don't see any problem with writing something that the reader can relate to or using the word to describe and discuss.
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I agree, I think the word relatable is efficient in the sense that the writer is doing something that triggers the audience into a true understanding that can resonant from real experience. However, I think the word relatable can be a bad thing when it's used to take away part of the uniqueness to a piece. What I mean by that is is a writer has the ability to write whatever he or she wants, but if the reader truly has no experience in what the writer is talking about then they shouldn't think it is relatable to themselves. I think readers can have an understanding to a piece of work, the problem with relatable is that it takes away part of creative aspects and/or personal experience the writer is trying to write about.
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