When Mitchell enters a bait shop during his family vacation, he comes across the owner, which happens to be Scotty, a boy he had met on vacation when he was 13. He invokes cordial communication with Scotty, and attempts to discreetly apologize for the erratic kiss he had implanted from thirty years ago. For Scotty’s recognition, Mitchell reveals memories they once had together in the order from higher to lower abstraction.“Language operates at many levels of abstraction, ranging from very vague to very specific...High level abstraction: these are the most general and vague. Lower level abstractions are more specific and can help you understand more precisely what people mean”(O’Hair, Weimann, Mullin, Teven, 2015, pgs. 72-73). Mitchell singles …show more content…
If there had been no devolution of abstraction, Scotty would not have recalled the memories with Mitchell as vividly and thus their fond remembrance of their friendship would have faltered, and any future relations would be hesitantly frowned upon. Though it is conceived to be true that their varying levels of abstraction brings Mitchell and Scotty together, Scotty’s use of higher abstraction techniques like euphemisms and evasions result in conflict between the two. These techniques are believed to be forms of high abstraction that can do more positive than negative but in this situation, they commit to worse reactions. “Euphemisms are words or phrases with neutral or positive connotations that we use to substitute for terms that might be perceived as upsetting” (O’ Hair, et al., 2015, pg. 74). In the past, Scotty said that “he wasn’t ‘into this’” (Modern Family, 2017) when Mitchell unexpectedly kissed him, which led Mitchell to assume that Scotty’s sexual orientation was different from