Told to ask here: Should this Q stay on IPS or move elsewhere, i.e. Linguistics, Psychology, or another? & Why?

Question

Here is the question I asked: Is there an existing concept for what I call "Verbal Cannonballs", which if avoided reduce conflict?

I was specifically told by someone on Meta to ask about this on the IPS or Psych Meta; but I'm only on the IPS Meta and this was asked first on IPS. That's the reason I'm asking here.

That question (above) is about whether there is a literature-backed "jargon" or name or term used by life coaching or counseling or "people skills" experts and professionals. I asked on IPS because it's not only about Psych. That site seems filled with ultra-big words and I thought this was too small.

Should this be on Psychology instead? Some applicable reasons would be nice.

Consider: As a new user, I know that "people skills" is a subcategory of Psychology, which is a broad topic. But, people skill also relates to sales, management, and arguably others. This leans toward Psych because it's about what I affectionately call "psychobable", AKA psychosemantics, which is very useful for those who actually understand it. Some people on IPS seemed to recognize the psychosemantics, many others didn't seem to recognize that as my question. So, perhaps more users on the Psych site would recognize it.

Please, I prefer input from users with high-rep on both IPS and Psych, since that is what this question is about.

Answer 1

I see a three-pronged problem with the question as currently written and IPS.

1. The people with the relevant background and experience are likely to be on Psychology.SE or one of the linguistic stacks. They may or may not be participants on IPS as well. But the expertise that is needed exists on another stack, while the question may be off-topic there. The question may or may not be on-topic here, but it's a stab in the dark to seek people with relevant expertise on IPS. Especially if the answer is negative-- it would take an extremely knowledgeable figure to meaningfully state that "no, no word currently exists to describe this".

2. The question, per my reading, is not obviously on-topic for IPS. The frame of the question seems to look for validation for the OP's concept, primarily in hoping to find that it's already a subject of study. As this is a case of language-as-used, Linguistics.SE seems like the best fit (possibly tagged with "Pragmatics"?). But regardless, whether or not the question is appropriate for another stack is irrelevant to whether or not it's on-topic here. There definitely exist good questions which are not good in the SE format, and even if IPS is the "best" fit that doesn't automatically mean that it fits here well enough.

3. I'm sure it's possible, but I'm struggling to see how a future question-asker might both find this question and benefit from it here. Without established terminology, a random Googler looking for IPS skills is unlikely to choose the same descriptions as the OP ("verbal cannonball", for example), and therefore unlikely to encounter the question. If established terminology does exist, then someone would probably need to already know it in order to find this question for the same reason. There are no other elements to the question, and so nothing else to draw people to it nor anything else for them to gain from it.

If the focus were on something other than the existence of a formal, accepted term (like, "does this effect exist?", or "how can I avoid/repair offence if I use a word like this", or even one that asserts the premise like "how can I de-escalate a conversation when one party uses words like these?") it could very easily be clearly on-topic for the site. For that matter I think it likely that a question more like one of those examples might elicit the very term the OP is seeking (assuming that one does exist and is known to someone reading the question).

But I don't think it's properly an IPS question as currently constituted. This might possibly be on-topic at Linguistics.SE.

Answer 2

Psych & Neurosci mod here.

I'll be frank (i.e., I'll skip the didactic first positive comment, and jump right into the critiques :-). The problem with the 'Is there a [scientific] term for X' questions is that they are often based on personal experiences, or anecdotes. However, I do acknowledge that in this case I think a lot of people will recognize the examples, but in my opinion the examples are very much context dependent, which makes the question too broad and answers will likely be primarily opinion based.

Further, we try to maintain a scientific stack, meaning questions have to be embedded in a neuro-scientific or psychological context. In this case it is not, as far as I can see, as the examples are context dependent.

While I think the question is interesting, it is unsuitable for Psych & Neurosci unfortunately.

Answer 3

I do not know the psychology stack, but I have been active on IPS for over a year. So I can't say whether it would be on topic over there, but in my opinion, your question is on topic here. These 'verbal cannonballs' can be used as an interpersonal skill. (Knowing what to say, when, and how)

But then, you are not asking how to apply verbal cannonballs to achieve a certain goal, but you are asking 'does this skill, that I have named verbal cannonballs, exist?'. Again, this is on-topic IMO (Questions about skills themselves are okay here) but you should not expect answers explaining different aspects of this skill, but rather an answer saying either:

yes this exists, it's called XYZ and here is a link to a trustworthy source where they explain everything about it.

or

no this doesn't exist, and this is why: ....