I just got up from conversation with a couple of older black men, that I said “well I got to go back to work and start cracking the whip.” And it occurred to me then that it was probably a really insensitive stupid thing to say.
Sadly, it hadn’t occurred to me until it’s already said.
Descriptively speaking, I think that it’s more complex than it looks like - the determination depends on the linguistic community, not just the listener.
Whether offense exists is more on the listener (or audience rather). Whether any action (a simple “sorry” or more severe) should be expected is the complicated part.
The offence existing or not can’t depend solely on the listener, because existence is an objective trait and feeling offended is subjective. Your parentheses get it though - it includes the audience (the linguistic community, not just the listener). I’ll use a silly example to show that.
Let us suppose that someone (“Bob”) got offended by your usage of the word “listener”, claiming that you’re insensitive towards people who communicate through sign languages, and since they’re mostly deaf that you would be ableist. (It’s insane troll logic, but bear with me.)
Bob can certainly feel offended by that. But that won’t change anything, if other people do not consider it offensive. At most they’ll tell Bob “you’re making shit up, touch grass” and call it a day.
The picture however would change if Bob got offended by something and people around him agreed with him.
Both are complicated, I believe.
Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. I’m now thinking about someone going off on a racist tirade alone in the woods. I guess that’s offensive.
But with your example, if you are offended by “listener” then offense exists. The greater community advisory corrective action could be “no action required, don’t even say ‘sorry’ is you don’t want to”. What action is taken does not change the fact that I offended someone. There could be a social-sphere that actually comes down on the other side and says “we don’t use that word here”, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t feel right trying to argue about.
I want to be clear to anyone reading this, no I do not think there is or should be anything like a formal committee. Just the social-sphere you wish to inhabit.