“You don’t need to get all worked up over this.” “You’re too angry for me to understand the point you’re making.” “Calm down.”

“您不需要为此付出全部努力。” “你为我太生气，无法理解你的观点。” “冷静。”

These phrases are all examples of tone policing, or responding to the presentation of an argument rather than the content of the argument itself. At its best, tone policing is an irritating behavior pattern that blocks meaningful conversation. But at its worst, tone policing is an insidious and sometimes hard-to-grasp method of reinforcing elitism and structural racism.

这些短语都是语调策略或对论据表示而不是论据本身内容的响应的示例。 最好的情况是，语气警务是一种令人讨厌的行为模式，可阻止有意义的对话。 但 在最坏的情况下，语气警务是加强精英主义和结构性种族主义的一种阴险的方法，有时是难以掌握的方法。

Tone policing is as rampant online as it is in person. As workplaces, schools, friends, and family groups continue to responsibly social distance, we’re spending more and more time communicating virtually. In these online arenas, tone policing can create space for pile-on responses, derailing a discussion when someone from the privileged side of the conversation focuses on the presentation of an argument rather than its content and all the following responses “pile on” to this language critique.

音调策略在网上和现场都是一样猖ramp。 随着工作场所，学校，朋友和家庭团体继续负责任地与社会保持距离，我们在虚拟交流上花费了越来越多的时间。 在这些在线竞技场中，语气警务可以为大量的响应提供空间，当谈话中特权方的某个人专注于论据的表达而不是其内容时，讨论便会脱轨，并且以下所有对此的“回应”语言批评。

Tone policing happens often on Twitter, a tool with a structure and space constraints that make it particularly easy to respond in anger to just one part of a comment. Take the following example, from a tweet by Black writer Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want To Talk About Race. A responder to the tweet begins by apparently agreeing with Oluo’s overall point but then derails the conversation by focusing on her belief that Oluo’s word choice is not helpful.

声音警戒通常在Twitter上发生，Twitter是一种具有结构和空间限制的工具，它使得在愤怒中仅对评论的一部分做出响应特别容易。 以下面的例子为例，该文章来自黑人作家Ijeoma Oluo的推文( 《你想谈论种族》的作者)。 对该推文的响应者首先显然同意Oluo的整体观点，但随后通过专注于她认为Oluo的单词选择无济于事而使对话脱轨。

Twitter is a platform that makes it easy to express anger with relative brevity. But that ease can quickly become a problem when individuals respond not to the topic itself but to what they perceive as anger on the part of the commenter. While white folks expressing anger online are regularly met with understanding and space to express their feelings, Black folks expressing anger are met with rampant tone policing and the refusal to even discuss complicated issues under the guise that the author is somehow out of line. As Layla Saeed says in Me and White Supremacy, “a white person’s expression of anger is often seen as righteous, whereas a Black person’s anger is often seen as aggressive and dangerous.” This experience on platforms like Twitter quickly results in the derailment of a conversation and verbal abuse of a tweet’s author.

Twitter是一个平台，可以轻松相对轻松地表达愤怒。 但是，如果个人不对主题本身做出回应，而是对评论者认为自己的愤怒做出回应，那么这种轻松就会Swift成为问题 。 尽管经常在网上表达愤怒的白人会遇到理解和表达他们情感的空间，而表达愤怒的黑人会经常出现紧张的语调，甚至拒绝以作者不合时宜为由讨论复杂的问题。 正如Layla Saeed在《 我与白人至上 》中所说的那样，“白人的愤怒表达通常被视为正义，而黑人的愤怒则被视为具有侵略性和危险性。” 在Twitter之类的平台上的这种体验很快导致对话脱轨和推文作者的口头滥用。

音调策略的问题 (The problem with tone policing)

Dictionary.com defines tone policing as “a conversational tactic” dismissing ideas that are delivered in a negative, emotionally charged manner. This includes anger, frustration, sadness, and so on. But tone policing is far more complex than a simple dismissal. Tone policing establishes hierarchies that have nothing to do with the validity of a specific point and everything to do with the perception of an individual based on the language and emotion displayed as they deliver an argument.

Dictionary.com将语气策略定义为“对话策略”，以消极的，消极的，情绪化的方式传达想法。 这包括愤怒，沮丧，悲伤等等。 但是，音调策略要比简单的开除复杂得多。 色调警务建立的层次结构与特定点的有效性无关，而层次结构则与个人论据的基础有关，后者是根据他们传递论点时所显示的语言和情感来进行的。

Tone is particularly difficult to convey online. According to the writing tool Grammarly, tone works when “people agree on the meaning behind words.” But these agreements differ across age, race, gender, socioeconomic class, and other divisions. In online discussion spaces, where participants often cross the bounds of many of these categories, placing judgment on the perceived “tone” of a piece of writing rather than the argument the author is making is both dismissive and harmful. And even in spaces where these agreements might be mostly shared, there are many other barriers to correctly interpreting tone. A writer using all lowercase, dozens of exclamation points, and filler words in every other sentence is going to be perceived far differently than a writer using all uppercase and no exclamation points or filler words, even if the two writers are saying the exact same thing.

音调在网上很难传达。 根据书写工具Grammarly的说法 ，语气在“人们同意单词背后的含义”时起作用。 但是这些协议在年龄，种族，性别，社会经济阶层和其他部门之间有所不同。 在在线讨论空间中，参与者经常跨越许多此类类别的界限，将判断力放在某篇文章的感知“基调”上，而不是作者所提出的论点既无礼又有害。 即使在这些协议可能大部分都被共享的空间中，正确解释语调也存在许多其他障碍。 与使用全部大写而不使用感叹号或填充词的作者相比，使用两个其他小写字母，数十个感叹号和填充词的作者与被使用大写且不使用感叹号或填充词的作者的感觉将有很大不同，即使两位作者说的是完全相同的话。

Tone policing sets up a system wherein certain arguments are considered more valid simply because they align with the rules of the dominant group in a space. These rules might include specific grammar, lack of swearing, passive or active confrontation of issues, and more. Other arguments are thus deemed invalid because they are presented in a format that is unacceptable, which shifts the focus away from the topic and toward the individual.

音调策略建立了一个系统，其中某些自变量被认为更有效，因为它们与空间中主导群体的规则保持一致。 这些规则可能包括特定的语法，缺乏宣誓，对问题的被动或主动对抗等等。 因此，其他论点被认为是无效的，因为它们以不可接受的格式呈现，从而将焦点从主题转移到个人。

Tone policing has roots in colonialism and white supremacist practices that hold individuals to a certain standard in order to be considered acceptable. Consider Indigenous children who were forced into boarding schools run by the government or missionaries and forbidden from speaking their native languages, which also separated them from their cultures. Respectability politics is another ancestor of tone policing. This is what happens when marginalized groups are told (internally or externally) that they must “behave better” to receive better treatment from the dominant group. One salient example of this is the 2018 treatment of tennis legend Serena Williams at the U.S. Open final match, where she was provoked and then censured for her justified and highly precedented anger. In The Cut, Rebecca Traister writes that this exceptional behavior on the part of Black women has always been the expectation: “Take the diminution and injustice and don’t get mad about it; if you get mad, you will get punished for it, and then you will be expected to fix it, to make sure everyone is comfortable again.” This expectation labels marginalized groups as worthy of bad treatment unless they align with the dominant group, shedding cultural practices, norms, and even speech patterns to fit in with a standard under which their normal ways of being are considered invalid.

色调警务源于殖民主义和白人至上主义的作法，这些作法使个人达到一定的标准，以便被人们接受。 考虑一下土著儿童，他们被迫进入政府或传教士经营的寄宿制学校 ，被禁止说其母语，这也使他们与文化背道而驰。 尊重政治是语气管理的另一祖先。 当被边缘化的群体(内部或外部)被告知他们必须“表现得更好”才能从优势群体获得更好的待遇时，就会发生这种情况。 一个明显的例子是2018年美国网球公开赛决赛中网球传奇人物塞雷娜·威廉姆斯的待遇，在那儿她被激怒，然后因其合理的和高度先例的愤怒而受到谴责。 丽贝卡·特赖斯特(Rebecca Traister)在《割伤》中写道，黑人妇女的这种特殊行为一直是人们的期望：“采取减少和不公的做法，不要为此而生气； 如果您生气了，您将为此受到惩罚，然后将您修复它，以确保每个人都感到舒适。” 这种期望将被边缘化的群体标记为值得受到虐待，除非他们与优势群体保持一致，摒弃文化习俗，规范甚至语言模式，以符合其正常生活方式被视为无效的标准。

Tone policing sets up a system wherein certain arguments are considered more valid simply because they align with the rules of the dominant group in a space.

音调策略建立了一个系统，其中某些论点仅由于它们与空间中占优势的群体的规则一致而被认为更有效。

These might seem like extreme examples, but they serve to highlight just how damaging it is to hold everybody to an acceptability standard defined and maintained by a dominant group, rather than recognizing and accepting that there is a multitude of ways to approach the world and all are worthy of consideration. Tone policing is a more insidious version of the above examples, and it also shifts the burden of change away from the group in power and onto the marginalized individuals. It essentially says the person with the “tone” is the problem because they don’t fit the artificial and often elitist standard of the space they are occupying.

这些似乎是极端的例子，但它们只是用来强调使每个人都遵守由主导群体定义和维护的可接受性标准是多么有害，而不是承认和接受存在多种方法来接近世界和所有人。值得考虑。 音调策略是上述示例的一个更阴险的版本，它也将改变的负担从权势群体转移到了边缘化的个人身上。 从本质上说，有“语调”的人是问题所在，因为他们不符合他们所占据空间的人为的，通常是精英的标准。

Everyday Feminism has an incredible comic explaining tone policing, along with some striking visual and textual examples, but a particularly painful one comes from the responses to a tweet by Ijeoma Oluo in 2017 around the movie Get Out and Black hairstyles:

每天的女权主义都有一部令人难以置信的漫画，它解释了音调策略以及一些引人注目的视觉和文字示例，但尤为痛苦的一部来自伊耶玛·奥洛(Ijeoma Oluo)在2017年围绕电影《 滚出去》和《黑色发型》 的推文的回应：

These two responses show racially privileged people dismissing an argument based not on its facts, but on its presentation and a perceived overstepping of the cultural norm of commenting on other people’s appearances. This tone policing shifts the focus of the conversation away from the broader cultural experience Oluo is discussing, avoiding the uncomfortable and important issue of cultural appropriation Oluo has brought up in favor of painting her as ignorant and rude.

这两个回答表明，具有种族特权的人不基于其事实，而是基于其表象以及对他人的外表发表评论的文化规范的过分推卸而驳斥这一论点。 这种语气策略将对话的焦点从奥洛正在讨论的更广泛的文化经验中转移出来，避免了奥洛提出的不舒服和重要的文化侵占问题，有利于将她描绘成无知和粗鲁的人。

如何避免音调策略 (How to avoid tone policing)

Tone policing doesn’t necessarily come with bad intent. Cursing might make some people uncomfortable and unable to focus on the point instead of the phrasing. Slang might confuse some people, and that confusion can make it easier to question the wording rather than the topic itself. Difficult discussions might trigger a “flight” response and lead someone to look for ways out of a conversation. Questioning the person rather than the idea is one way out.

音调策略不一定带有不良意图。 诅咒可能会使某些人不舒服，无法专注于重点而不是措辞。 lang语可能会使某些人感到困惑，而且这种混淆可以使质疑措辞而不是话题本身变得容易。 艰苦的讨论可能会引发“逃避”React，并导致某人寻找对话方式。 质疑人而不是想法是一种出路。

But to have the hard conversations, and to have conversations with people whose experiences don’t necessarily align with our own, we have to learn to avoid this behavior. Here are some steps to help:

但是要进行艰难的对话，并与经验不一定与我们自己相符的人进行对话，我们必须学会避免这种行为。 这里有一些步骤可以帮助您：

1. Pause before responding if your response is going to question an individual’s delivery rather than content.如果您的回答是要质疑个人的交付而不是内容，则在回答前先暂停。
2. Ask yourself a series of questions. Why am I irritated? Am I frustrated with an argument or with the technical details of what this person said? If my mother said it, would I feel the same way? If my college-educated brother said it, would I feel the same way?问自己一系列问题。 为什么我会生气？ 我对这个人所说的论点或技术细节感到沮丧吗？ 如果妈妈说的话，我也会有同样的感觉吗？ 如果我受过大学教育的兄弟这么说，我会有同样的感觉吗？
3. If the language is making you feel like you don’t understand the point, clarify by repeating what the person said: “I want to make sure I understand what you’re saying. What I’m hearing is…”如果语言使您觉得自己不明白要点，请重复此人说的话来澄清：“我想确保我理解您在说什么。 我听到的是……”

4. If you overhear someone else questioning delivery instead of content, gently call them in and ask why the language is important. Remind them that if someone is getting emotional about a discussion that’s personal, it’s not anyone else’s place to question this. Rather, it’s important to continue to focus on the topic at hand.

   如果您偷听别人质疑交付而不是内容的问题，请轻柔地打电话给他们 ，问为什么这门语言很重要。 提醒他们，如果有人对个人讨论感到激动，那么这不是别人质疑的地方。 而是，继续专注于手头的主题很重要。

And remember it’s likely going to feel weird to do this! That’s okay. Get used to the discomfort because it’s important to both consider your own biases as well as speak up for others. (But not in place of others.)

并记住，这样做可能很奇怪！ 没关系。 适应这种不适感，因为既要考虑自己的偏见也要为他人代言 ，这一点很重要。 (但不能代替其他人。)

Tone policing on the company level is equally damaging and potentially far more dangerous. This behavior can and has become structural in many areas, as has been shown by repeated examples of employees being censored and punished for speaking out against inequality and discrimination: Google employees getting fired for speaking out against racism and sexism and a Yelp employee fired for criticizing the company’s low wages are just two well-known examples. To reverse this trend, companies first have to recognize that they are reacting to the wrong issue. The issue isn’t individuals who speak up against wrongdoing, like discrimination or poor treatment, whether or not they use civil language to discuss it. The issue is the wrongdoing itself. But since this type of behavior is often so common and so infrequently reprimanded, it’s become normal, and thus the burden of civility is pushed off onto those who object to the wrongdoing itself. And second, companies have to protect the employees who speak out against discrimination and other issues, regardless of the language they use to do so. Taking action against those who work in favor of more diverse, more equitable workplaces is a clear sign that the employer doesn’t actually care about having a more diverse, more equitable workplace.

在公司级别进行警务监控同样具有破坏性，并且可能更加危险。 这种行为在很多领域都可能而且已经变得结构化，例如通过反复说明员工因反对不平等和歧视而受到审查和惩罚的例子表明： Google员工因反对种族主义和性别歧视而被解雇，Yelp员工因批评而被解雇公司的低工资只是两个著名的例子。 为了扭转这种趋势，公司首先必须意识到他们正在对错误的问题做出React。 问题不是那些反对歧视或不良待遇之类的不道德行为的人，无论他们是否使用民间语言进行讨论。 问题是不道德的行为本身。 但是由于这种类型的行为通常如此普遍且很少受到谴责，因此它已成为正常现象，因此， 将文明的负担推卸给那些反对自己行事的人。 其次，公司必须保护大声疾呼的员工不受歧视和其他问题的影响，无论他们使用哪种语言。 对那些支持更多样化，更公平的工作场所的人采取行动，这清楚地表明雇主实际上并不在意拥有更多样化，更公平的工作场所。

技术可以提供帮助的方式 (Ways technology could help)

Tone policing online is a thorny issue. The asynchronous nature of most online communication can make it harder to call folks in. Heated discussions — which can easily happen when someone is told to cool it when talking about an issue that is close to their heart — can be hard to follow when in a forum space.

在线调警是一个棘手的问题。 大多数在线交流的异步性质可能使人们更难以打扰。激烈的讨论(当有人在谈论与他们的内心息息相关的问题时被告知要降温时，很容易发生)在社交网络中很难遵循。论坛空间。

Existing technology could be reconfigured, improved, and reused to help folks retrain themselves as they work at better communication across identity lines. Here are a few suggestions.

可以对现有技术进行重新配置，改进和重用，以帮助人们重新培训自己，以便他们更好地跨身份界进行交流。 这里有一些建议。

1. Add the capability to existing autocorrect software to detect questions regarding tone. We already have smart suggestions for spelling, sentence completion, and so on. Many of these types of tone policing questions might involve the same types of words — for example, “calm down,” “too emotional,” “overreacting,” etc. A simple solution might be for the autocorrect software to ask if a user is sure this message is what they want to send. A more complex solution might be to explicitly say “we think this message is tone policing — want to take another look?” Grammarly’s tone detector is one existing example of this type of technology, and there’s room for many more applications like it.

   将功能添加到现有的自动更正软件中，以检测有关音调的问题。 我们已经有了有关拼写，句子完成等方面的明智建议。 这些类型的语气管制问题中的许多可能涉及相同类型的单词，例如“冷静”，“太情绪化”，“React过度”等。一种简单的解决方案可能是自动更正软件询问用户是否确保此消息是他们想要发送的。 一个更复杂的解决方案可能是明确地说“我们认为此消息是语音策略-想要再看看吗？” 语法检查器是这种技术的一个现有示例，并且还有更多的应用空间。

2. Create an app or website to help proactive people who want to learn to better communicate with folks across identity lines. This software could present sample discussions using different tones or dialects. One might use lots of curse words, another might use African American Vernacular English (AAVE), one might use words that indicate a Southern accent, and so on. This tool could help train individuals to react to the content of a discussion rather than the presentation of the words.

   创建一个应用程序或网站来帮助主动学习的人，他们希望学习更好地与不同身份的人们进行交流。 该软件可以使用不同的音调或方言呈现示例讨论。 一个人可能使用很多诅咒词，另一个人可能使用非裔美国人白话英语(AAVE) ，一个人可能使用表示南方口音的单词，依此类推。 该工具可以帮助训练个人对讨论的内容而不是单词的表达做出React。

3. Force ourselves to take a moment before reacting to an online discussion where we might tone police someone else. Technology is good at training us: Many people check social media apps constantly because we’ve been trained to do so. We can use this constant on/off behavior to train ourselves to step away from these spaces, however briefly, when engaging in discussions, and in particular in those discussions that make us uncomfortable. By doing so, we can give ourselves space from the emotion of our response and make sure we are responding to the content of an argument rather than the presentation behind it.强迫我们花点时间对在线讨论做出React，在这里我们可能会调动其他人的警力。 技术擅长于培训我们：许多人会不断检查社交媒体应用程序，因为我们已经接受过培训。 在进行讨论时，尤其是在那些使我们感到不舒服的讨论中，我们可以使用这种恒定的开/关行为来训练自己走出这些空间，无论时间如何短暂。 这样，我们可以从回应的情感中释放自己的空间，并确保我们回应的是辩论的内容，而不是背后的陈述。

Tone policing is a sometimes hard-to-identify issue that forces assimilation to a dominant or elitist paradigm by silencing those who fail or refuse to present their words “nicely.” It’s a tool that more privileged people use to pull attention away from the discussion at hand and put it onto the individual behind the words. It delegitimizes valid arguments simply because they are not occurring under the terms the privileged individual is comfortable with, and it serves as a tool of distraction and suppression. But tone policing is also easy to correct, and doing so will allow for far richer and more productive conversations across experiences.

语气警务有时是一个难以辨认的问题，它通过使那些失败或拒绝“巧妙地”表达自己的话语的人沉默，迫使其同化主流或精英主义范例。 更多特权的人可以使用此工具将注意力从手头的讨论中移开，然后将其放在单词后面的个人身上。 它使合法论点合法化，仅仅是因为它们不是在特权个人习惯使用的术语下发生的，并且它是分散注意力和压制他人的工具。 但是，音调策略也很容易纠正，这样做将使跨体验的对话更加丰富和富有成效。