Timothy Lawler said:
The verbs "misunderstood" and "misstated" imply blame. Saying there was a "miscommunication" is more neutral. The noun simply describes the situation as having occurred, not who did it.
True enough. I was completly joking with that Animals reference, and didn't mean anything by it at all. But since you're spoiling for a little friendly debate...
Identifying the problem and placing blame are two seperate things. The great things about "misunderstood" and "misstated" is that the former identifies the problem as occuring on the receiving end and the latter on the sending end. "Miscommunication", OTOH, sounds like one of those state department euphamisms meant to actually deflect blame, and does nothing to identify or rectify any actual communication problems.
To use those words alone does not imply fault or blame. This is why God created adverbs!
. One could say that Chauncy "erroneously misstated", or that Hortense "honestly misunderstood" to show blamelessness. Or the simple tone or context of a message should be good enough for anything short of international diplomacy to indicate that the intent is not to place blame. After all, "You misundersood my meaning, I was actually agreeing with you" isn't exactly an inflamitory accusation
, and yet is also an accurate description of what happened. It's also far more to the point and far less clumsy-sounding than "There was a miscommunication here, I was actually agreeing with you".
G.
and you'd say I misunderstood, the neutrality of "there was a miscommunication" has obvious benefits. But I don't have a good song to quote.