Is this threatening?

[sciamachy]

Poll Threatening?
Comments are screened so as not to bias voting. If you want to discuss the story behind this poll, there's a previous (f-locked) post I'm happy to discuss it with my friends on.

Comments

[toxicpixie]

Is that threatening? Hell yes.

So.

Fine, threaten away. Meanwhile I'm taking my business elsewhere!

I suspect she's badly under quota & being leaned on.

Nathan, the Toxic Pixie

[sciamachy]

Hehe, well, her boss leaned back on her on my behalf & I got an apology in the end. :-)

[phoenicis]

I voted un-threatening because there was no "depends on the context" button. I think it could go either way.

[sciamachy]

True, but the question was really whether it was threatening independent of context. The statement basically says that the speaker (or writer in this case as it was an email) was going to take action to negatively affect the recipient's employment prospects. According to the dictionary definition, that's a threat whatever the context. But yeah, fair comment - with the proper context you'd know whether it was a justifiable threat or not.

[phoenicis]

The definition I'm familiar with is the declared intention to punish or hurt someone (or their employment prospects, in this case) conditionally upon (or in response to) some other action, so I stand by my assertion that it's impossible to determine whether something is a threat out of context. Not trying to be snarky here, just to explain what I mean.

[sciamachy]

Is the crucial clause here the "I will be forced to"? - in other words, "it's not my intention, terribly sorry & all that, but it's out of my hands, I abdicate responsibility for my actions"? Merriam-Webster's definition of a threat doesn't require conditionality. "I will break your nose!" is a threat, just as much as "I will break your nose if you come near my wife again!" is. (Don't worry, that's just an example!)

[breakingthrunow]

Threatening but (apparently) in a deserved way - which to me makes it unthreatening and just factual.

[sciamachy]

It's either a threat or it isn't. If what she said was true, that the recipient of the threat was entirely to blame for them looking unprofessional, rather than her having actually been unprofessional & compounding the error by threatening one of the customers, then maybe justifiably so, but it's still a threat.