On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Michael Turniansky
<
mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I considered it to be more pronomial mismatch than ambiguity.
> I'd've preferred "Those identified not washing their hands
> after bathroom use may be approached by their coworkers", personally.
> (And similarly with your example sentence. I consider it just plain
> wrong) But your solution works just as well, I suppose.
second person pronouns (especially plural) than English is. Perhaps
the writers of the sign chose the second person to implicate the
reader more.
> You might consider it Big Brotherish, but this was an excerpt from
> the bottom of this three paragraph sign. The first was a reminder
> from the Center of Disease Control about the importance of hand
> washing, and the second an appeal to protect yourself, your family,
> your coworkers and patients from disease. Remember, this is a
> hospital, and hand washing is the number one way of avoiding spreading
> infections.. a very important consideration in a place where a great
> many people are medically fragile and there are many resistant
> bacteria and viruses around in the air, on surfaces, etc.
Yes, I realized that.
> Social
> ostracism is an important mechanism of compliance.
Here's another cultural tidbit for Lindar. I suspect in my culture
being the coworker doing the approaching in this case would be more
embarrasing than being the one approached. But I don't have any
experience with work in a hospital. Do coworkers actually approach one
other with this stuff? And relying too much on this for compliance may
encourage the attitude of "if I'm alone in the bathroom I don't really
need to wash".
> They even have
> monthly reports of which departments have done the best job washing up
> after using the restroom (how they know, I can only guess. Bathroom
> Stasi, I guess)
Maybe they measure the amount of soap used or something.
mu'o mi'e xorxes