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Just how much should language be expected to change in the interests of political correctness? We've touched on this a bit again in our discussions of personal pronouns and being "one of the guys". At least on the surface, these seem fairly harmless, but can be perceived as having sexist underpinnings. On the other end of the spectrum is the aide to the mayor of Washington D.C. (who is black) who was summarily dismissed (later to be reinstated) for using the word "niggardly" in reference to a fund he administered. Incidents like this contribute to p.c.-ness itself taking on a politically incorrect connotation.
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Hoo boy, you ain't jus' whistlin' Dixie by openin' up that can o' worms, there, Bud! Here we go! I am anticipating
MUCH back-and-forth and round-about on this one!
Since no one else seems to have found this yet, I'll start with my two cents' worth. My opinion frankly varies according to the term used and the situation. I don't mind the use of the word 'Flagger" in place of Flagman in road
construction areas--a great many are women. On the other
hand, the word 'chairperson' seems to me not only cumbersome, but a bit ridiculous. (In this particular usage, I think a new, neutral title would be the best solution.)
There was a similar discussion here quite some time back, where a question was asked (to the best of my recollection) whether changing the language would actually result in
attitudinal changes. I said then, and still believe, that
using non-hurtful language is a matter of taking one small step at a time, as individuals become educated about what others think and feel.
"Political correctness" may or may not involve a real change in attitude. It is often used for the sole
purpose of avoiding retribution. I suppose this is better than uttering insults, but I'd prefer to see
genuine caring as the reason behind the change!
I can think of one example of how political correctness has asserted itself in television. I saw a re-run of a very old
show, where a famous line by the alleged comedian was, "To the moon, Alice, to the moon", as he raised his fist threateningly to his "wife". Apparently audiences thought that was riotously funny back then, but I was shocked. We don't hear that kind of thing any more, or rather, not so
overtly. Next?
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<We don't hear that kind of thing any more, or rather, not so
overtly. Next?>
I've always thought that to be a problem with too much PC-ness, that it turns covert racists and bigots into covert ones. Sure attitudinal change has to be gradual, but sometimes PC terms assume a euphemistic role in language
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I agree chairperson is an abomination. I would go with chair every time. According to "A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage" the use of chair for the person chairing a meeting goes back to the 17th century, so can hardly be called a piece of rampant PC.
Of course there is risible hypocrisy detectable in the PC movement, but at least some of it comes from urban legends industriously spread about by its opponents.
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>Of course there is risible hypocrisy detectable in the PC movement, but at least some of it comes from urban legends industriously spread about by its opponents.
I agree. I have posted before on this subject - it is somewhere in the archives!
As far as I can see the term "political correctness" was coined by those people who object to it. It is a reaction to the political movement which pushed issues of equal opportunities into the limelight. It is a simple conflict between those who would like to see change and those who would not. Inevitably, those who would not like to see change are/were in positions of power. Those who feel that they are less well represented in the corridors of power are those who are likely to want to see change.
The key term for me is “equal”. Not more, not less but equal. Equal Opportunities has been through many incarnations and has contributed a huge number of words to the English language in its wake. Some things are largely accepted as the norm: It really isn't great to boast about beating your wife any more; In many areas of the Western world if you threw someone out of your shop because of their colour, many of the rest of your customers would walk out too. Others are still matters of dispute. Some are trivial personal likes/dislikes of certain words. Others are less trivial attempts to re-define roles in society. Here the big issue seems to be choice. In some families both parents have no choice but to work (or not to work). In other families it is possible to choose who carries most responsibility for earning/childcare/cleaning. In many Western countries it is no longer automatically expected that people run their lives on strict gender demarcations.
As long as we live in a world with involuntary female circumcision or where unwanted girl children are left to die or where very young boys are sent out with firearms to play their part in war ….. the examples are sadly numerous then we live in an “unequal” society.
If changing our language is one small chink in the wall, then I’m with it.
So what I'm saying is that "political correctness" is more than just a few words. Its a whole way of life and is part of a bundle of other things. If one disagrees with the other political changes then it must be irritating to be
expected to change one's language.
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i think there is a lot of room for making fun of people who try too hard especially to call themselves something dignified, a la malvolio. i loved bart simpson hailing the post delivery with "here's the fe-mail man".
however, some changes fall into place, probably because the attitudes have already changed to prepare the way, as it were.
i feel that words like "wimmin" belongs to the former group, as does "person hole" for man hole.
"chair", or "chairwoman", is one of the latter i think, as is "waiter" (to cover both sexes).
unfortunately, we as people have held, individually or collectively, some pretty abominable beliefs. if we think removing the words that refer to those attitudes will change the attitudes we are fooling ourselves yet again.
"mentally retarded", "backward", educationally impaired" "one with learning difficulties" whatever we call something, if we don't respect the thing we are referring to, our discriminatory nature will catch up with us sooner or later.
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PC-ness has been carried way too far, IMNSHO. The other day I actually heard somebody referred to as a waitron rather than waiter or waitress.
Words like chairwoman, policewoman, and firewoman are an abomination, just as is womyn. "Man" can just as easily refer to the race of man as it does to a male of the species. Do other languages have this problem or is the "Man" - man problem confined solely to English? The purveyors of PC lingo should be made to keep that in mind. What next? She's a member of the huwomyn race???
Reminds me of Rene Descartes, who wandered into a tavern one evening. The barkeeper said to him, "Good evening, sir. Would you care for a beer?" Descartes replied, "I think NOT!" and poof, he disappeared.
Of PC-ness, I think NOT!
TEd
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What does IMNSHO mean and why does everyone speak in CAPITAL letters (like YCLIU) these days? Far more irritating than policewoman - at least it's a word!
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>"mentally retarded", "backward", educationally impaired" "one with learning difficulties" whatever we call something, if we don't respect the thing we are referring to, our discriminatory nature will catch up with us sooner or later.
It does and we are the poorer for it.
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>>What does IMNSHO mean <<
In my not so humble opinion.
We 'speak' in capitals because we're too lazy to type in full!
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>>Just how much should language be expected to change in the interests of political correctness? We've touched on this a bit again in our discussions of personal pronouns and being "one of the guys". <<
It's complicated, and hard, and everyone will have different ideas.
I agree that political correctness has gone too far, but I think that it is a good thing to think a little about the assumptions behind everyday speech. That more than anything is why I would use 'their' rather than 'his' as a generic singular.
Related to this idea of assumptions behind speech, I read an article once about 'making people disappear'. It described a teacher who put up various sentences for her class (I think they were age 8 or 10 or so) and asked them to work out who the 'disappeared' people were. Sentences such as 'Every kid dreams of growing up to be a racing driver.'
Apparently the girls in the class cottoned on much more quickly than the boys, but then they were the ones being 'disappeared'.
It sounds trivial, but compare
'Every little kid dreams of being a racing car driver.'
'Every little kid dreams of being a famous dancer.'
Liberal-minded egalitarian feminist that I am, I would still be more likely to slip over the first one without a blink than the second. Even after having read the article adn thought about it logically, I wouldn't necessarily pick it up in day-to-day speech. Attitudes are unfortunately ingrained deeply.
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>,,,why does everyone speak in CAPITAL letters (like YCLIU)
acronyms are capitalized so as to discriminate from *real words. 'wwftd' is a noted exception.
-ron obvious
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Forgot to say - the absolutely WORST piece of PCspeak I ever heard in person was 'dermatologically challenged' for 'black'.
The user was most definitely a covert racist too.
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>>I agree chairperson is an abomination. I would go with chair every time. << My mother, who chaired a lot of meetings, hates chairperson too, but could never quite work out if it was more insulting to be called a man or a piece of furniture! 
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>acronyms are capitalized so as to discriminate from *real words
And do we need all these new acronyms? I was merely pointing out that some ways of using language are every bit as irritating to some people (like me) as language which aims to remove gender issues is to others (like you).
It is so good that we have a forum like this to share our irritations.
I'm just off to kick the cat.
(It's OK animal lovers, I haven't got a cat)
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I rather like "circumferentially challenged". It has just the right feel about it and shows how the really silly things get translated into a joke in the end.
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>And do we need all these new acronyms?
actually®, no. but it's terribly hard to get along on the 'net without a working knowledge of them; happily, we have managed to avoid most of them on this site -- which in the event seems appropriate.
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TEd>Do other languages have this problem or is the "Man" - man problem confined solely to English? In the midst of your philippic  , you raise an interesting question. I hope some of our "foreign correspondents" chime in on this.
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>is the "Man" - man problem confined solely to English?
Of couse many other languages (eg Spanish, French) have many more male and females - tables, chairs, socks. We only have a few - ships are always female aren't they?
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>On the other end of the spectrum is the aide to the mayor of Washington D.C. (who is black) who was summarily dismissed (later to be reinstated) for using the word "niggardly" in reference to a fund he administered.
Interesting choice of example. I just heard on the news that the press are chasing Hillary Clinton for an (alleged) anti-semitic remark she made in 1974.
How does the saying go - The one thing we learn from history is ..
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>Of couse many other languages (eg Spanish, French) have many more male and females
In my language of choice (American Sign Language), masculine and feminine pronouns and identifiers do not exist as they do in most spoken languages. People and objects are defined and introduced spatially, not "sexually." If it does contribute to a broader acceptance of men-and-women-on-equal-footing, that contribution may be negated by the fact that most description is visually-based and therefore readily malleable to personal bias.
It goes back to the covert issue; words are not necessary for ill will.
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<The one thing we learn from history is …>
Jo -- so glad you didn't use 'herstory' (or is it, pedantically, 'hertory'?)
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>>IMNSHO<<
I think it is "In My Not So Humble Opinion"
am I right, TEd?
...and in mine, I have always thought that if the newly-coined term describes the person without compromising either the dignity of the person, or of the thing the person is doing/being then it is acceptable.
The situation resembles current day business-speak, which attempts to describe everyday things and events in the most possible words, to make them appear to be more than they are.
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>So glad you didn't use 'herstory' (or is it, pedantically, 'hertory'?)
I don't know how many others are around at the moment from Europe. I wonder if we've had less of the silly stuff here than seems to be the case in America (I don't know about Australia & New Zealand).
I think its been a much quieter thing here and although the press are always happy to fill up a few pages during the silly season with "loony left" stories of children not being allowed to use blackboards it has largely gone without too much challenge. In schools, in particular racist or sexist language would make people feel quite uncomfortable.
We still have people being murdered in Europe because of their race or religion. Perhaps we've realised that we have to change our attitudes otherwise "Ethnic Cleansing" could be heading our way next.
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>>Perhaps we've realised [in Europe] that we have to change our attitudes otherwise "Ethnic Cleansing" could be heading our way next. <<
Jo, I wish I believed it was as you say - that's such an optimistic way of looking at things.
Having lived in the UK, Japan, Australia, Chicago and Toronto (and now Australia again) I'm not so optimistic. While the fuss about words may be different, there's a lot of overlap in the attitudes.
You could equally well argue (not that I am doing!) that Europe / Australia haven't gone down the PC route because so many people are unconcerned by the use of potentially offensive language.
I did read something once saying that a different ethnic population tended to be tolerated until it reached 15% or more of the total population. At that ratio it could be perceived as a threat and hence discrimination began. This might explain why in the US the strongest racism is against the blacks, in Australia against the Asians (and the Aborigines, but I'm in Sydney, there are far more Asians than Aborigines here and that's the racism I hear more!) and in the UK against the Indian subcontinent races (Pakkis.)
At least, it seems to fit my experience.
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Brandon.
Thanks so much for posting. I started learning Australian Sign Language (Auslan) once, and found it the most wonderful language I have come accross. I loved the way verb tenses were indicated spatially, but didn't learn enough to understand the structure of the language.
Would you please outline on a new thread the main differences you know between a signed language and signed or spoken English i.e relating to tenses, sequential vs simultaneous, "physicality" vs auditory, or whatever you think is relevant. I am truly facinated and would really appreciate it.
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Very well argued. I think you're raised the crux of the issue.
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>Jo, I wish I believed it was as you say - that's such an optimistic way of looking at things.
I'll modify it to "some people" have realised that we have to change our attitudes if you like. There is probably less difference country to country than is between urban and rural areas. I lived in London through the eighties where racial language was high on the political agenda. Over the same period it wasn't much of an issue in rural areas where, as you say, the population was less racially diverse.
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>And do we need all these new acronyms? I was merely pointing out that some ways of using language are every bit as irritating to some people (like me) as language which aims to remove gender issues is to others (like you).<
This use of the example of electronic acronyms raises the issues of deep and superficial meanings quite well. (Or to reiterate the "a word is a skin of thought" thread yet again - which is now probably a very tattered skin which is sorry it ever mentioned itself in the first place)
I agree that these acronyms are not particularly visually appealing as a word, nor do they trip off the tongue very easily as a contraction, and not everyone knows what they mean. Yet they are useful, and every subsequant post regarding them has defended their existance as a useful creation.
This contrasts sharply with the derision many of the new words which attempt to redefine nouns within an ideology have received. Words such as: chairwoman, wimmin, and herstory, some of which have been termed "an abomination". I find this facinating.
The emotional charge indicates to me that it is the underlying meaning which is offensive, as the words in themselves are not too awful as words. People know what they mean, you can pronounce them without too much difficulty, and don't have to go out of your way to press the caps lock button.
Yet, most posters (and I am resisting the temptation myself) have somehow distanced themselves from condoning them in any way, as if they somehow go "too far". I am wondering what "too far" is, as the inherent look/feel of the word isn't so bad as words go, compared with, say calling computer bits by numbers and acronyms like a 486dx with 16 MB RAM. What both "wimmin" and 486dx with 16 MB RAM have in common is a very recognisable "skin". We instantly know the meanings underlying each.
What is the meaning underlying chairwoman, wimmin and herstory? (I understand the etymology of "history" is not gender specific, I think the word is making a clear statement, however). What meaning makes it so contentious that even educated women avoid using it? How far is "too far", and why?
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>How far is "too far", and why?
For me, "too far" is simply when people try to change the language for frivolous reasons. I'll admit that "frivolous" is somewhat in the eyes of the beholder, but I'll use "niggardly" as an example. To me, this is a wonderfully descriptive word which connotes much more than mere stinginess and yet comes up short of miserly in that it lacks bad intent. It troubles me that we have to give up this word because of others' ignorance and/or ill behavior.
Another example is "business-speak" and the verbing of nouns, which was much discussed here earlier. In this case, I object to the creation of new words (where perfectly serviceable ones already exist), often out of just plain laziness. I would cite (if memory serves) the recent post which asked for a better word for the creation of a product than productize!!
Anyway, I would expand this argument to some of the words which have come out of the women's movement. What is inherently wrong with the word women? What could be more descriptive and (for the great majority) less pejorative? I think that most readers just react negatively to "womyn" and other such attempts. (I also, I hasten to add, abhor Rush Limbaugh's coinage "feminazi" :)
I considered posting this reply anonymously, because of my "history", but thought better of it since that would remove some of the context.
onymously yours,
michael
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Good heavens, Michael, after all that fear and trembling, I
would have thought you might have signed off "Ominously yours"! I for one don't think of you as some kind of monster or something. I do think you have very strong opinions, and tend to stick by them!
>>For me, "too far" is simply when people try to change the language for frivolous reasons<< I agree, Dear!
>>"frivolous" is somewhat in the eyes of the beholder<<
Here, Babe, you have hit the bull's-eye. And no, it isn't an accident that I used that particular term of address.
I used it as one example of just what you were talking about, not because I think of you as one! Some people wouldn't mind it, others would be aggravated or worse.
There are quite a few (okay, a lot of) things that irritate me beyond all reason, that others aren't bothered by at all.
The only thing I can think of that would make these
occurrences throughout the world less frequent calls for one very basic precept:
BE CONSIDERATE! BOTH parties! The offended one, rather than say something like, "You're an ignorant fool and a jerk to use that word", would get a lot further by an,
"Excuse me, that term really bothers me, because..."
The offender is less likely to give a defiant response,
and even if he/she is not willing to give up using the term,
hopefully will at least not belittle the person's concern or deliberately continue to provoke by use of the term.
I have never thought of myself as a real feminist, so
perhaps my opinion of the word 'women' or 'woman' is not
that of the majority. I see nothing wrong with them. I do
think "womyn" is ridiculous--to me it fits under that
frivolous category you mentioned.
But, on the other hand--I do know that there is still a very
great deal of discrimination against women, I'm pretty sure
worldwide. We are perceived, sometimes even by ourselves,
as less able, less worthy, than men, in many scenarios. It is less obvious here in the U.S. than it was a generation ago, but it still exists. (Glass ceiling, for ex.) If the
"radical feminists" hadn't been so radical--demanding the
stoppage of discriminatory terms, for one thing--women here
would still be under the same overt, widely-accepted and
VERY limited regard that we were held in back then.
This all goes back to who has the power, I think. Not only
women, but black people as well, had to secure special laws
just to be able to vote. Why? Because the ones who enacted the laws denying them this right were white males.
It is human nature for the "haves" not to want to give anything up, whether it be power or money. I am thinking here of salary discrepancies. Theoretical situation: the
owner of a company, a man, knows perfectly well that his
female vice-president is doing as good a job as his male one, but if she doesn't get paid as much, he won't offer her a raise to equalize the two salaries. He knows that the company's income is limited, and if he gives her more
money, there will be less for him. This is a NOT-frivolous situation, wherein the female will need to speak up for
herself.
It is in situations where the "haves" refuse to either listen or change that the "have-nots" might just decide to
get radical.
And, there are ALL KINDS of minorities (have-nots) whose
concerns are just as important to them. Foreigners and the mentally ill come to mind. Just who is "acceptable",
anyway?
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I was thinking about the word niggardly and how "pc-ness" (which BTW seems to be another created word which fits uncomfortably in the mouth, but is not considered an abombination)has stopped the use of this word. It struck me that perhaps the only role pcness has had in this situation is highlight how many people don't know what niggardly means. I don't think all of a sudden, with the rise of pcness, that vocabulary knowledge suddendly dwindled.
Perhaps when you were using the word before, some folks thought you meant "niggerly" and the baggage of connotations that carries with it and just didn't mind. Perhaps you were not delivering the exact message you meant, just didn't know it.
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In Indonesian the basic third person singular pronoun is dia , which is used for everyone, male and female. Orang means person I suppose, but the usage is very different: for example you wouldn't say "a man" or "a woman", you'd say "seorang laki-laki " or " seorang wanita " (literally a man person or a woman person). You don't talk about your brothers and sisters you talk about your adik and kakak , your younger and older siblings. No need for linguistic engineering here. BUT nobody could reasonably claim that Indonesian society was somehow less sexist or discriminatory than the various Anglo-Saxon descended societies most AWAD posters come from.
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>"Excuse me, that term really bothers me, because..."
I'm with Jackie here. Where the probem lies, for me, is not with the use of terms which relate to race/gender/disability ... differences but the American obsession with litigation, which unfortunately is spreading to the UK. I'm told that no college lecturer is safe from accusation by the students if they make any "incorrect" remark.
I quite agree with twusm (oh no!) on a number of things. Anyone who checks the etymology of the words would know that niggardly isn't racist and history doesn't relate to "him". I remember a situation at a (very politically inspired) place I used to work. The Director (who prided himself on his careful language (but not, necesssarily the underlying attititudes)) said that he was getting in painters to "tart up" the building. Some of the staff pointed out that he may wish to rephrase that. There was a discussion about the implications of the phrase "tart up" and the day continued as before as it would if a more overtly anything-ist term had been used. No suspensions, no loss of jobs, just a discussion. Behaving in an overtly discriminatory way may have been treated in more serious way.
I've looked up various discussions about "herstory" and it appears that where it originated was an article which discussed the invisibility of women in history. This is a reasonable argument. The word was not intended to replace "history" merely to highlight a issue. That it was been picked up and carried further probably highlights the strength of feeling on the subject of a tradition of history written by men than anything to do with etymology.
Womyn is similarly an attempt to highlight an issue, not an attempt to universally replace a term. As we are around 52% of the population, it is as unlikely that we will have a single point of view as that the 48% of men will discard communism, monetaryism, liberalism, pessimism, ... and talk with one voice.
Like the other words we have discussed - productize - novelize - the words that resonate with people will survive, those that don't wont.
In the meantime what is needed is an atmosphere (like this, I hope) where words and attitudes can be debated without fear. Was it George Orwell's 1984 where everyone had to use "newspeak"? Perhaps it is Big Brother who we should fear, not the words themselves.
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>I'm told that no college lecturer is safe from
accusation by the students if they make any "incorrect" remark.
yes, and take that to a recent extreme and you have the Red Chinese "Cultural Revolution", where teachers were given dunce hats and mocked by students as tools of the bourgeoisie (on a good day).
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> yes, and take that to a recent extreme and you have the Red Chinese "Cultural Revolution", where teachers were given dunce hats and mocked by students as tools of the bourgeoisie (on a good day).
I agree. Not to mention burning a few books.
Convergence?
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jo,
you said what i wanted to say all along, but so much more eloquently!
the words that we need, we'll keep. the words we don't will die naturally.
one reason the world isn't under the control of big brother is that we are so different within all our various groups, even the ones at the top.
one question, why the acronyms? once you know them they are easy to read, but they seem to me to be a way of excluding the knows and the know nots.
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>a way of excluding the knows and the know nots.
unfortunately, for all the truly helpful folks you can find on the 'net, there are (not) a few who revel in being the "knows" of the web...
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Perhaps one of the knows would be so kind as to interpret YCLIU for this know not then.
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Apparently it means - You can look it up.
First posted Re: lexiphanicinism (Q&A about words)- 6th May by tsuwm, Explanation - 12th May - Pieman, same thread. Also mentioned somewhere re:segue (Miscellaneous).
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In reply to:
Apparently it means - You can look it up.
But how rude (the expression, jmh dear, not you). I mean if someone doesn't want to explain why can't they keep quiet? Posting isn't obligatory.
Only mildly tangentially, I wonder why some people prefer to ask somebody else and others prefer to look up whatever they want to know. Generalising wildly, Indonesians seem to be much more likely to ask someone than those of European-descended cultures (there must be an easier expression) are, and women are often alleged to be more willing to ask somebody for information such as directions than men are.
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>>But how rude. I mean if someone doesn't want to explain why can't they keep quiet? Posting isn't obligatory.<< I can think of three possible reasons: 1.) They do want to show off. 2.) They want to give others a learning opportunity (this is the least likely of the three, I think.) 3.) These things are so familiar to the users that they use them without even realizing that not everyone knows what they know. (Oh dear; too much repetition!) >>I wonder why some people prefer to ask somebody else and others prefer to look up whatever<< My opinion is that this is just due to the person's characteristics: whether he/she is self-confident, fearful, social, more of a loner, etc. Perhaps the supposed reluctance on the part of males to ask for help is due their feeling the primeval need to be the infallible bringer-home of the sabretooth, etc.
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>They want to give others a learning opportunity (this is the least likely of the three, I think.) why would you think this? if one is to use this medium to any extent there are some very basic and easy tools one can (should?) learn, for answering questions such as "what is the meaning of the word x" or "who was person y", and in the process avoid importuning others -- you don't even have to crack a book very often to Look It Up!
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Ok, first-- If I understood you correctly, Tsuwm, what you said just above means that it would be nice if people would learn how to learn, and then they wouldn't have to pester others for help. Would you believe I agree?  Though I will say that there are points where folks are so lost that they don't know what questions to ask, or that means of self-help are even available. I hope that people will be understanding, or at least forthcoming, in this case, as I am in that position frequently! >>Poster: tsuwm Subject: Re: YCLIU >They want to give others a learning opportunity (this is the least likely of the three, I think.) why would you think this? <<< My point here was based on the fact that things such as YCLIU, just as an example, get posted with no explanation. I think it is not very likely in that case that the post-er would be offering a learning opportunity. If that was the intent, then he or she would post the explanation as well, or at least give some clue as to a reference.
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>My point here was based on the fact that things such as YCLIU, just as an example, get posted with no explanation. and I agree, that would be rude. it's the same situation as in writing technical documentation, you don't use a *real acronym until you've introduced it parenthetically to the long form, otherwise you have discourse that is Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition (FUBAR). Once I've introduced You Could Look It Up to a thread, YCLIU is all you get if you are rude enough to continue to behave in a neanderthalish manner.
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Ohmigawd, 1.-- For the second time today, I have read something on the 'net and then gone out and seen the same thing! Just got back from a shop that had a sign behind the counter that read, "If you're ashamed to ask, then you're ashamed to learn. Ask, ask, ask...until you know it for yourself!" Ohmigawd, 2.-- Tsuwm is in agreement!! Whistles! Cheers! (After I recover from my faint! ) And, I am unable to resist taking the bait: "continue" is the operative word in your last sentence, sir. I feel sure that a fair number of these questions come from people who have not found the original post that explains things, in which case they are innocent of neanderthality (what about marking that one in your dictionary, william?) And then there are those who simply need more than one session to really take something in.
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>"pc-ness" (which BTW seems to be another created word which fits uncomfortably in the mouth, but is not
considered an abombination)
Gosh, I'd not have used IMNSHO and PC-ness if I had known I was going to raise a ruckus. I plead cultural ignorance on the first count (using an acronym that not everyone knew). In my very early days of doing this computer stuff, we used modems that were so glacially slow acronyms and any other shortcuts were absolutely essential. My first modem was, if I remember correctly, had a speed of 256 baud. That's less than one percent of the 28.8 speed with which I now connect. Connect time was also pretty expensive. I courted my wife, whom I met on the Internet, at those speeds! I plead guilty to not thoroughly checking out the culture before I made that "offending" post.
As to PC-ness, I used that term with a sneer in my fingers, and I just assumed that the disdain I hold for political correctness would bleed through. Our culture suffers when we can no longer call a shovel a shovel.
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>I'd not have used IMNSHO and PC-ness if I had known I was going to raise a ruckus<
Ted,
I don't think IMNSHO and PC-ness caused a ruckus. They're words I use regularly and happily. I just used them as a example of awkward new, made up words that nobody objects to, to show that perhaps it wasn't the form of the word that mattered.
Agreeing with many other posters, I think open debate is the precious and important thing. Long live it!
BTW if you had checked out the culture before posting, would that have been "pc" of you? ;)
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Aren't most of the discussions about terminology ways of mocking serious issues? Those of us old enough to remember the 60's saw how the feminist movement was treated. The issue was never about burning underwear, but that was a way of deflecting discussion. When you don't have a logical or ethical leg to stand on, use sarcasm.
The issue about words is not that a group of "Them" wants us to say "spokesperson" instead of a perfectly good neutral term like "representative." The issue is respect (as was previously posted.) There is a real difference between the people who refer to my son as "autistic", "developmentally delayed", or "mentally challenged" and the ones who call him "dumb", "weird", or a "retard". By making people think about what they say, and what it means, the "PC Police" are, on balance, doing us a favor. Certainly it is easy to find humor in terms such as "waitperson", but remember a time when labels based on skin color, gender, first language, creed (or lack of it), or even birthplace were used to decide who could live where, who had tax money spent on their education, who could run for office, who could vote, or even who could live.
It's easy to laugh about the fuss that was made at a recycling center. Seems that dyed and undyed paper are recycled differently, so two bins were marked respectively "White" and "Colored". On the one hand it is refreshing to know that the young man who posted the labels had no idea why anyone would find that offensive. On the other hand it is well within the lifetimes of many of us to have seen signs like that on public restrooms, drinking fountains, waiting rooms, or entrances to buildings. Those same signs also were on a lot of things, even when they weren't physically present. Oversensitivity? Maybe. After all, we all know how *those* people overreact to everything. On the other hand maybe we are just erring on the side of trying to be fair and kind to each other for a change.
Sorry for the length of the post, it just hurts to see good ideas fail because people want to make fun of them rather than think about them.
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>>Sorry for the length of the post<<
No need to, JMike. I think it tied the thoughts of a few of the different threads together. Nice to see you posting.
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jmike
wonderful ideas, and i see exactly what you mean.
ideas can fail because of too much sarcasm and conservatism.
when you put "white" and "coloured" in that context it's impossible not to feel what you feel!
and i think everyone should be careful as much as possible. but sometimes people aren't aware of the references they are inferring.
in these kinds of cases surely it's better to explain to them their "brick" than to fire them.
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Exactly, William. I do not advocate litigation, fines, or other punishment for using "wrong" words, especially when it is completely unintentional. There is a huge difference between ignorance and malice - the former can be readily fixed. I do think however that anything which makes us try to avoid *consciously* hurting anyone cannot be all bad.
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JMike,
I don't recall opening my heart for you to read the words written on it, but you did. Love you too.
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tsuwm >>if one is to use this medium to any extent there are some very basic and easy tools one can (should?) learn, for answering questions such as "what is the meaning of the word x" or "who was person y", and in the process avoid importuning others -- you don't even have to crack a book very often to Look It Up!<< Jackie >>I feel sure that a fair number of these questions come from people who have not found the original post that explains things<< I have to say I asked someone privately what YCLIU meant, because I didn't know and I felt that in the context I came across it (on this board), I 'ought' to. My behaviour here is exactly equivalent to my behaviour in the 'real' world. If someone uses a term I don't know and I feel comfortable, I ask. If someone uses a term I don't know and I don't feel comfortable asking, I ask someone I trust privately, or look it up - whichever is easier / faster. I know more about words than about web resources to help me with words. I wouldn't know where to start looking up acronyms on the web, so it was easier to ask a person. One option might be a links page to reference resources, so that anyone could check before posting a question. But reference resources aren't interactive and don't put a human spin on things the way a discussion board (or a private email) does. And one of the things I get out of this board is 'conversation'. I think it's a shame that I felt unable to ask publicly what YCLIU meant. (I'm over it now I'm a journey(wo)man! ) Also, tsuwm, I reacted badly to your suggestion that asking a question like this was 'importuning'. I looked up 'importune' - 'unfit, troublesome, grievous; inopportune, untimely, unfit; persistent in solicitation; irksome through importunity.' I don't think asking about the meaning of a word or acronym on a board which serves to facilitate discussion about words and language fits any of those definitions!
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Thank you Bridget, I couldn't agree more. I could have gone to Onelook to look up YCLIU, but since I was here any way, why not ask in a forum about words?
I still think it is a rude response to a request for information, but now I know what it means I also realise the people who use it are the last people one should ask its meaning.
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and, while we're deciphering these acronyms, would some kind soul please let me know what LOL means?
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>>some helpful person<<
IL'dIU. FYI: Information that comes across as "Here, you
blithering idiot" is not likely to be perceived as helpful.
I think in cases like that, the messenger rather kills the
message.
To repeat something that has been said several times in other threads, part of the problem may be due to the fact that we are using words on a screen. There is no possiblility of being able to see the giver of information
smiling in understanding, for example.
I do realize that those of you whose jobs or interests involve using this method of communicating all day every day have had to learn to shorten the time it takes you to
get your message across. I'm just trying to remind you
that what to you is merely an efficient time-saver can
appear to some people as something rather more negative than that.
I think this can be likened to the child who is told that
he is getting an immunization shot "because it will help
you". He may hear the words, but all that gets through
is the sting.
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here's a funny thing: I don't recall anyone here actually advocating the use of this stuff (other than in the interests of saving time in olden days). HTH.
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> would some kind soul please let me know what LOL means?
Laughing Out Loud.
Others are:
ROFL = Rolling On Floor Laughing
ROFLKFIA = ROFL Kicking Feet In Air
TEd
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To all other know-nots besides myself:
IL'dIU, and HTH= hope this helps.
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IL'dIU What????? (See, I told you now I'm a journeywoman I'm not afraid to ask!  )
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>>IL'dIU
What?????<<
Sorry, all you deer-I mean Dears (just finished reading all about those sheep!).
I made this one up! Hoped the 'd would give the clue. ==
I looked it up.
If turn about = fair play, I still don't get the license
plate on the black convertible Golf, though I did catch
the bug. (I think that bug would qualify as one of Australia's "odd" animals.)
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> Forgot to say - the absolutely WORST piece of PCspeak I ever heard in person was 'dermatologically challenged' for
'black'.
The user was most definitely a covert racist too.
I believe that we are all racist (though I am sure that there are many of you who will deny this to the death) but some of us are simply more tolerant or accepting than others. But that is not to detract from your point. The 'person' in question obviously takes some inane pleasure from coining an extremely bigoted racist remark.
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> >>I wonder why some people prefer to ask somebody else and others prefer to look up whatever<<
> My opinion is that this is just due to the person's characteristics: whether he/she is self-confident, fearful, social, more
of a loner, etc. Perhaps the
supposed reluctance on the part of males to ask for
help is due their feeling the primeval need to be the infallible bringer-home of the sabretooth, etc.
I disagree strongly on this point. I don't feel there is any machismo involved wahtsoever. I am not a sociologist or a psychologist but my observations lead me to believe that women tend to ask for advice more often than men because they are socially more astute. Men are more solitary in comparison and therefore tend to believe that they must find out answers for themselves. This does not in anyway make either group more or less intelligent. It just highlights the way that men and women gather information. During my university days I found that the girls in my class would ask questions far more often than the men but that they also relied heavily on study groups and interaction with the men in the class. Whether this is significant or not I do not know but there is definitely a pattern.
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>"mentally retarded", "backward", educationally impaired" "one with learning difficulties" whatever we call something, if we don't respect the thing we are referring to, our discriminatory nature will catch up with us sooner or later.
Another point about PC words is that when people change their points of view they need this kind of words and, if necessary, new words must be coined.
I’ll try to explain myself. You can teach people not to eat rice but you need to provide those people with another food, because if not they would have to choose between doing what they should not or starving.
And contrarily to the point quoted I think that certain words by themselves can alter our mental patterns making us having more or less respect for any subject. This thing I believe could be explained as a feedback caused by some words, so by using a pejorative word people would tend to disregard the subjects of this word and by using a PC word this same people would become more attentive with this same subject.
Juan Maria.
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>Forgot to say - the absolutely WORST piece of PCspeak I ever heard in person was 'dermatologically challenged' for 'black'.
Mine was “celibately challenged”.
Juan Maria.
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>Do other languages have this problem or is the "Man" - man problem confined solely to English?
We have a different problem that, sometimes, can be exacerbating. Every Spanish noun has a definite gender, for example a clock is male and a towel is female. But nouns or adjectives that define persons, animals, professions etc. can be made male by ending in “-o” or female by ending in “-a”. And the sexist question arrives when we use plurals. Conventionally is established that “-os” termination must be used when referring a group or mixed sexes and only if the whole group is composed of female members we can use “-as”.
Modern PC usage, mainly in administration, is forcing us to use the cumbersome termination “-os/as” instead of the old “-os”. So when writing a school program a teacher must write “Los alumnos/as, los niños/as, los profesores/as”.
This is definitely cumbersome but the alternative is definitely sexist so we are waiting for some ingenious invention that can solve this problem.
Juan Maria.
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>I still think it is a rude response to a request for information
Speaking of rudeness one of the worst is RTFM -Read The Fantastic Manual-.
As you can think this is used mainly by charitable people.
Juan Maria.
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juanmaria,
what do you do when people start using your new word in a pejorative way?
i think we look for new words to escape from the fact that we want to express something cleanly even though we haven't really changed our ideas at all.
history is long. it's pure arrogance that makes us think we're in the driver's seat now more than any time in the past. people were as smart as us 50, 500, or 5000 years ago, and they talked about the same things.
and they invented new words, just like us. and strangely, these words haven't changed a single aspect of our characters yet. we still use them to hurt no matter how free of these associations they seemed at the time of their installation.
this doesn't mean i don't think language should change - i'm not a conservative at all. but a word is just a sound to describe something. its use is up to many more people than its inventor could dream of.
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>history is long. it's pure arrogance that makes us think we're in the driver's seat now more than any time in the past. people were as smart as us 50, 500, or 5000 years ago, and they talked about the same things.
and they invented new words, just like us. and strangely, these words haven't changed a single aspect of our characters yet. we still use them to hurt no matter how free of these associations they seemed at the time of their installation.<
Sadly, yes, the 'bad' parts of the human character are still here - but so are the good ones. Juanmaria's example is a case of hope that things might improve and an attempt to make a fresh start (at least that's how it appears to me).
The world is hard enough as it is - if we all stopped hoping it could be better and trying to do something about it, how much worse it would be!
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>>Modern PC usage, mainly in administration, is forcing us to use the cumbersome termination “-os/as” instead of the old “-os”. So when writing a school program a teacher must write “Los alumnos/as, los niños/as, los profesores/as”. << Look on the bright side, JM. It could be worse: "Lo/as alumno/as, " etc ad nauseum.
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>I believe that we are all racist (though I am sure that there are many of you who will deny this to the death) but some of us are simply more tolerant or accepting than others.<
'Brick, I think this relates to the point (only about racism, not sexism) that I was trying to get at in my first post on this thread.
It's very easy to change our intellectual, uninvolved opinions on a subject and decide what we think.
It's much harder (close to impossible) to change our attitudes and what, in our deepest subconscious, we feel.
Unfortunately actions are more often driven by feeling than by thinking. In this context, speaking and choice of words is an action. 'PC-ness' is good in that it might encourage us to think about some of those unconscious attitude and feeling-driven choices. Unfortunately it doesn't necessarily encourage us to do that especially once it has been taken to extremes that enable us just to mock it rather than think about why anyone cared in the first place.
It's all part of that battle between what we think we 'ought' to be and what we actually are!
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the theme for this month's kids classes is "colours".
the colours i have in my crayon box include one described as "hadairo", skin colour.
it doesn't look much like skin to me, more like pale candle wax.
i've heard that saying skin colour is "out" because of the many different possible colours this could mean but doesn't.
what's the new word?
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>>i've heard that saying skin colour is "out" because of the many different possible colours this could mean<<
Yes, that happened here, with the giant Crayola crayon
company. Up until just a few years ago, one of their colors was labeled "flesh". Of course it was pink-toned.
Now the label reads "peach". This goes to show what has
already been said, about how such a seemingly insignificant
term can have such far-reaching impact. Since Americans are so strongly influenced by advertising, maybe a marketing change could actually help change attitudes?
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from the Crayola Crayon Chronology (YCLIU), submitted without comment:
Prussian Blue - name changed to "midnight blue" in 1958 in response to teachers' requests
flesh - name voluntarily changed to "peach" in 1962, partially as a result of the U. S. Civil Rights Movement.
Indian Red - renamed Chestnut in 1999 because of educators who felt some children wrongly perceived the crayon color was intended to represent the skin color of Native Americans. The name originally was from a reddish-brown pigment found near India commonly used in fine artist oil paint.
24 new colors added in 1998, including "Pig Pink"...
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Ah, the tsunami strikes again!
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>This is definitely cumbersome but the alternative is definitely sexist so we are waiting for some ingenious invention that can solve this problem.
Juan Maria:
I disagree; the use of -os to describe a group is not in and of itself sexist. That's an evil fiction that has been visited upon us by people who are just too darned sensitive for their own good (and ours). Certainly there are words that are sexist, such as calling the lady who works down the hall "honey" because the obvious intent is to denigrate her, to make her less of a person thanthe male speaker, to relegate her to a subordinate position. But to say, and pardon me if I get the Spanish wrong, los profesoros to refer to a faculty group that could be all male or part male part female, is simply using language to communicate.
I have not separated the males from the females, so I have not made the women of lesser stature than men. Granted, if I say las profesoras, I have designated a group of faculty that is all female. But unless I have done so in a way that devalues them, I have simply been descriptive.
The counter-argument is that if the person hearing my communication PERCEIVES that I have denigrated women in some way, then I have indeed done so. I reject that. If in the totality of what I say there is a pervasive aura of sexism, then I would indeed be guilty. But if I have been only descriptive of a group or subgroup without assigning value judgments, then it is purely communication.
There do exist words that are now considered so racist as to be beyond the pale, even though they were ostensibly not racist 200 or even a hundred years ago. Mark Twain's use of "nigger" is frequently cited in this regard. Somewhat paradoxically, I reject the idea that this was not racist. It was. Regardless of what many people now say, Twain's use of the word was not desciptive, it was categorizing into a group that had a lesser stature and was definitely pejorative in usage. Mind you, I still think Twain's stuff is great literature, but to say that he was not racist is to ignore the entire culture of the period during which Twain wrote.
I have seen attempts to change he and she to (s)he. I have seen people take his and hers and change them to hirs. These are grotesqueries that deserve all the abomination we can heap upon them. When I write regulations, training manuals, articles, whatever, I routinely alternate between the masculine and feminine pronouns. But it would not bother me a bit to use she and her and hers exclusively if that would stop the language Nazis from carping. Though milder grotesqueries, I avoid saying "his or her" or "she and he" because they clog up sentences with unnecessary junk. I've never succeeded in making a sentence flow properly with these constructions.
It's time, my friends, to reclaim our language from the clutches of those who would gut it to the point of absurdity. And that applies to other languages. I have to admit that I'm a bit surprised that political correctness has struck Spanish. I'd love to know if the French have paid any attention to political correctness.
Thud!
Ted jumps down off the soapbox
TEd
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>people were as smart as us 50, 500, or 5000 years ago, and they talked about the same things and they invented new words
William,
I agree with that, but intelligence has nothing to do with respect or sensibility. While I wrote my previous posting I had my mother in law -who is 83- in mind. She is as clever as anyone can be and uses to employ pejorative words when referring to some groups of people, specially when referring to incapacitated children. And the worst of all, she means them.
From this attitude I can deduce that or my mother in law is specially mean, which probably she is, or that when she was younger everybody talked the same way, which must be true too. And I cannot help but imagining a time when everybody talked this way and despised openly every other who was different.
And the words they invented were mainly meant to be descriptions of the differences between “normal” ones and different ones. For example my mother in law calls “tontito” (silly, idiot) to children who I learned to call “mongolico/subnormal” when I was a kid. Now I call them “Down children”. The first words were descriptive of the limitations or physical aspect of those children and the last one is, simply, a syndrome name. So in this case I think the evolution has been positive. What is more important, when my mother in law was my age she could employ those words in a scornful way and, probably, only the child’s parents would have been offended. Now, I can tell you, the worst arguments I have had with her have been about this kind of speaking and, of course, it not only offends me but almost everybody else.
I agree that lots of changes are still needed in our attitudes but I think that we have changed more in the last few generations than in thousand years of history.
I’m still thinking that words by themselves, in a very subtle way, can act like casts molding our thoughts and attitudes. It surely is easier for a kid being cruel with an idiot than with a Down’s syndrome.
Juan Maria.
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In reply to:
I have seen attempts to change he and she to (s)he. I have seen people take his and hers and change them to hirs.
These are grotesqueries that deserve all the abomination we can heap upon them. When I write regulations, training
manuals, articles, whatever, I routinely alternate between the masculine and feminine pronouns. But it would not bother
me a bit to use she and her and hers exclusively if that would stop the language Nazis from carping. Though milder
grotesqueries, I avoid saying "his or her" or "she and he" because they clog up sentences with unnecessary junk. I've
never succeeded in making a sentence flow properly with these constructions.
I find that using the generic term 'they' a perfectly acceptable form of address for those of both sexes. Otherwise I refer to people using the formal term 'one'.
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>I find that using the generic term 'they' a perfectly acceptable form of address for those of both sexes. Otherwise I refer to people using the formal term 'one'.
The problem is that doesn't fit in with a lot of the writing I do at work. I frequently have to write scenarios about military pay, such as:
An Army member, enters a combat zone on the third day of the month. To compute her entitlement to hostile fire pay, (apply this formula). As a result she will be entitled to...
"They" is a plural construction so it doesn't work very well in this context. And for me, "one" is just too formal. I'm supposed to be writing to a 6th-8th grade level, which is not easy to do. And it was a struggle to get to that point. Originally my marching orders were to write to a third grade level.
See the Army member. See his gun. He goes to war. He shoots his gun. He gets extra pay. The extra pay is $10 a day. The extra pay starts on the first day of the month.
I actually wrote a regulation somewhat similar to this to illustrate the point that writing to a second or third grade level was next to impossible without being demeaning to the mentality of the reader.
TEd
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juanmaria,
i love the mother in law story. i know exactly what you mean and have had many many similar experiences with older generation australians (including one whose relationship to me shall go unmentioned) who can't seem to grasp that "abos" is not an okay abbreviation. and there are millions more examples i'd be happy to go into some other time...
i think the changing of these kinds of words is a result of the (thankfully) changing attitudes. but i don't think it works the other way around. would it make any difference what words your mother in law used? i find that people who can't change their attitudes are also unwilling (unable?) to change the terms they use.
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In reply to:
Poster: TEd Remington
Subject: Re: political correctness
>I find that using the generic term 'they' a perfectly acceptable form of address for those of both sexes. Otherwise I refer
to people using the formal term 'one'.
The problem is that doesn't fit in with a lot of the writing I do at work. I frequently have to write scenarios about military
pay, such as:
An Army member, enters a combat zone on the third day of the month. To compute her entitlement to hostile fire pay,
(apply this formula). As a result she will be entitled to...
Ah, I didn't intend for my answer to be a panacea! In the case of 'her' and 'she' above you can simply use the more generic 'the individual' etc. etc. ad nauseum.
In reply to:
"They" is a plural construction so it doesn't work very well in this context. And for me, "one" is just too formal. I'm
supposed to be writing to a 6th-8th grade level, which is not easy to do. And it was a struggle to get to that point.
Originally my marching orders were to write to a third grade level.
Yup. I guessed this. I knew that the plurality would be a problem but I thought that you would have picked up on some of its useful interpretations. Again, not to be used universally.
In reply to:
See the Army member. See his gun. He goes to war. He shoots his gun. He gets extra pay. The extra pay is $10 a
day. The extra pay starts on the first day of the month.
I actually wrote a regulation somewhat similar to this to illustrate the point that writing to a second or third grade level
was next to impossible without being demeaning to the mentality of the reader.
I can understand your frustration. Methinks that the language above would be better adopted by the crewcutted grunts.
Alternative suggestion for phrasing that sentence. This seems like the kind of military speak I'm used to hearing:
1. See the [enter rank of serviceman/woman here]. 2. See [the serviceman/woman]'s [state design and specification of firearm/weapon of mass destruction here]. 3. The [serviceman/woman] goes to [enter state of emergency/hostility/war/police action/insurgency/liberation from (evil) Islamic/Communist/non-US conforming/Saddam Hussein led/Colonel Ghaddafi led/tyrannical empire here]. 4. The [serviceman/woman]'s [see 2 above] is fired (legally according to the 2nd Amendment) by the [serviceman/woman]. The [serviceman/woman] gets extra pay. The extra pay is $10 a day. The extra pay starts on the first day of the month.
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ps i also wonder if these changes are long lasting.
we have lots of time to think about such things and of course in our context they are well worth thinking about.
in some future time - as in some past time - our worries may be forgotten in the search for water that doesn't give us all some syndrome.
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I am reminded of the old saying
Join the army. Travel the world. See people from all over the world and shoot them.
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One ridiculous example of fall-out from political correctness was reported in "The New York Times" on February 27, 1994. A tenured professor at the University of New Hampshire was suspended for comments he made during a writing class. He said that focus in writing could be compared to sex; later that year, he paraphrased the belly dancer Little Egypt who, he said, had remarked, "Belly dancing is like Jell-o on a plate with a vibrator under the plate." Three students complained. A university tribunal found the professor guilty of sexually harassing students verbally. He was suspended without pay and ordered to receive counseling.
Also in 1994, the California Board of Education banned Alice Walker's very moving and sensitive (my opinion, of course) story, "Am I Blue?", saying it was "anti-meat-eating." The story portrays a woman's reflections on the loneliness of a horse that had been kept in solitude in a paddock. The woman concludes that human beings have little compassion for the animals they use, and she spits out the steak she had been eating.
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<See the Army member. See his gun. He goes to war. He shoots his gun. He gets extra pay. The extra pay is $10 a day. The extra pay starts on the first day of the month.>
I still think the rewrite of this should be-
"See the Army member. See their gun. They go to war. They shoot their gun. They get extra pay. The extra pay is $10 a day. The extra pay starts on the first day of the month."
Really when you get used to it, it doesn't seem cumbersome, and quickly assumes the "transparency" which good plain writing should have.
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Also, picking up the past postings on PC terms and the supplanting in the USA of "black" by "African American", how are white folk described now? "American-American" ( - silly)? "European-American"? (- misleading). And having been away from the UK for 12 years now, i don't know whether the usage has spread to there, in which case is it "African-British" (or possibly "West Indian - British")?
My tongue is slightly in my cheek, but it does perhaps illustrate the reductio ad absurdum. But I certainly agree with the post-modernist notion that our appelation for something very much influences the way we think about it - a rose by any other name would definitely not smell as sweet!
Steve Biko the murdered South African lawyer/apartheid victim wrote a very good essay on the use in English of phrases with negative or pejorative connotations which include the word "black" (blackball, black sheep, even denigrate itself). It is referred to in Donald Woods's "Cry Freedom".
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"See the Army member. See their gun. They go to war. They shoot their gun. They get extra pay. The extra pay is $10 a day. The extra pay starts on the first day of the month."
>Really when you get used to it, it doesn't seem cumbersome, and quickly assumes the "transparency" which good plain writing should have.<
in my opinion the only thing transparent about this rewrite is its overweening political correctness -- to put it in simpler terms, I don't think I'll quickly get used to it. (for me, make member and gun plural and it reads better.)
by the way, regarding combat pay, doesn't the U.S. military still have a policy of not sending women into combat?
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>I disagree; the use of -os to describe a group is not in and of itself sexist. That's an evil fiction that has been visited upon us by people who are just too darned sensitive for their own good
>It's time, my friends, to reclaim our language from the clutches of those who would gut it to the point of absurdity
Well, it seems that you consider sexist what is offensive or discriminative. In this case can I agree with you. Nobody is willingly discriminating anyone ONLY by using language in a way that, after all, is the correct way to use it.
The reality is that I have always thought like you, that we have a language that is our heritage and, even if in its origins some uses have been developed out of a disregard to women as equals, now we use them out of custom and because it is the way it is. I also dislike radical feminist and PCist.
But I cannot help but wondering that, being part of the unoffended group, it is too easy for me forgiving everything, making tabula rasa and saying “Now that we’re modern and equal, let’s start playing nice”.
I also wonder that, if it is fair for a group to have “the clouds”, will they ever get them if they don’t ask for “the moon”. How many rights that we have now have been won after by radical movements asking for utopian ones?.
I doubt, therefore I am.
Juan Maria.
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>we have lots of time to think about such things and of course in our context they are well worth thinking about. in some future time - as in some past time - our worries may be forgotten in the search for water that doesn't give us all some syndrome.
I sadly agree with you about this. In a “Mad Max” world this discussion would be like wondering about angels’ gender.
Juan Maria.
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<in my opinion the only thing transparent about this rewrite is its overweening political correctness -- to put it in simpler terms, I don't think I'll quickly get used to it. (for me, make member and gun plural and it reads better.)>
I think we're all agreed that as the language currently stands there is no ideal answer.
He/she, he/she and (s)he are all inelegant; the simple "he" and cognate forms ignore and render invisible 52% of the population. Alternate he and she forms are incredibly distracting. None of these can survive in the long term. Nor do ordinary users of the language recast sentences as a purist would have them do.
Logicallly only the "they" 3rd person singular alternative form can endure. Shouldn't we all just embrace it now??
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the army member goes to war, shoots the gun and gets extra pay.
this is how i would write it (in the interim before "they" and "their" come to sound smooth).
but the things i write may be much more flexible.
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I'm going to ask this one more time, as it keeps getting glossed over. Why not stick to his and her, skip the artificiality of alternating them, and just use the author's or speaker's gender as the referent. This is natural, simple and could easily be engendered (no pun) in school so that everyone would simply utilize his natural personal pronoun without all of this agonizing.
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>why not stick to his and her
the simple answer is that so many people obviously want a change. they feel that "his" and "her" are gender specific and so exclusive. why be exclusive if you can be inclusive?
>use the speaker's gender as the referent
i don't follow why using "his" if you're male and "her" if you're female is natural, if you're not writing about yourself.
this seems to confuse things more. what if you don't want to indicate your gender? what if you're somewhere in between genders? what if there's more than one writer?
i think the sound of "their" needs time for our ears to get used to it. but they surely will. stravinsky was once considered agonising.
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>i don't follow why using "his" if you're male and "her" if you're female is natural, if you're not writing about yourself. this seems to confuse things more.
why are you taking this usage literally when you want to ignore the natural "pluralness" of they? I'm just suggesting a different convention.
>stravinsky was once considered agonising.
some still so consider him. how do you feel about John Cage?
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How about we propose a compromise. People should be welcome to write in a way that sounds right to them.
You can use the convention of writing using the gender of the author and it will irritate some of us.
Some of us, who seem to find it less of a problem, can use the convention "they" and it will irritate you.
After 50 years we can come back and review it and see which one was more widely accepted.
In the meantime some one can get busy re-writing Jane Austin's books, Frankenstein and a few others using "she" instead of "he" where the gender was not specified. Not to mention a few others like PD James, AS Byatt and JK Rowling who have preferred write their first books whilst choosing not to let readers be influenced by knowing whether they were male or female.
It's not like 2+2 (to the base 10), there is never going to be a simple answer. If we stick to the Darwinian theory of words - survival of the fittest - only time will tell.
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tsuwm,
the pluralness of "they" and "their" really sticks doesn't it!
i may (!) understand:
when it follows a non specified person (as in "everyone can choose their own hairstyle"), it reads fine to me. but when it is specific (as in "the soldier fires their gun") it sounds strange.
i know "they" and "their" are not perfect answers.
"they" doesn't always sound naturally plural to me. i'm hoping it can stretch to cover singular as well.
tsuwm, is it really such a horrendous stretch?
in both cases i mentioned above?
i really think your suggested convention won't catch on. i don't like the idea of referring to everyone as "he" or "she". i won't do it. it feels worse than a "misused" plural.
i'm sure there are unfans of my friend stravinsky.
my point is that a dissonance can become an emotion in a few years.
that the more you wonder about silence, the more you wonder at the composer's genius in setting it aside.
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>"they" doesn't always sound naturally plural to me. i'm hoping it can stretch to cover singular as well. tsuwm, is it really such a horrendous stretch? in both cases i mentioned above? for me both cases are quivalent, I suppose because it was drummed into my head that "the soldier" and "everyone" are equally singular. but no. it is not a horrendous stretch. my point (and it was the whole reason for starting this thread) was that some of these issues MIGHT be best resolved by just leaving things the way they are. and of course, time will tell -- but if teachers are FORCED to change the "rules", that will certainly influence the outcome. and now, magically, a new topic suggests itself.... p.s. - hey jazzo, don't look now but this thread is gaining on the "graduation" thread -- but I'm sure it won't have the legs that that one has.
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>I'm sure there are unfans of my friend stravinsky
I must say, I do adore Stravinsky. Perhaps accepting "their" and loving Stravinsky go together.
Not sure about "unfans" though???
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>Perhaps accepting "their" and loving Stravinsky go together. nope.
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In reply to:
In the meantime some one can get busy re-writing Jane Austin's books, Frankenstein and a few others using "she" instead of "he" where the gender was not specified.
Actually Jane Austen was quite happy to use their etc. to refer to an indefinite antecedent. See http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/austheir.html .
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>Actually Jane Austen was quite happy to use their
Well, there you are now.
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>by the way, regarding combat pay, doesn't the U.S. military still have a policy of not sending women into combat?
Well, that depends on what you mean by "combat". There are a bunch of areas int he world where things are "hot" enough that the area has been declared a combat zone. Inside the combat zone an enlisted member gets total Fedceral tax exemption. An officer gets a limited exemption. The President decides this. Then there are areas which are hot enough (basically you have a chance of getting shot at) that are called hostile fire zones. These are the areas where the members get the extra pay.
Interestingly enough, the two areas aren't exactly the same in most declarations. During Desert Storm, a member could get combat zone tax exclusion without actually being in a hostile fire zone. One of the best magazine articles I wrote was about this, published in April 1995. I wrote it very tongue in cheek and because it was published during tax month I called it "The Ides of Taxes are Upon You". I didn't tell the editor that there was no Ides in April, though there was one in March. She changed it to "Beware the Ides of Taxes" if I remember correctly. I preferred mine, but what writer doesn't???
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>Nobody is willingly discriminating anyone ONLY by using language in a way that, after all, is the correct way to use it.
This is a bit long, but I think everyone will appreciate the absurdity.
Red Riding Hood oppresses Wolf:
There once was a young person named Little Red Riding Hood who lived on the edge of a large forest full of endangered owls and rare plants that would probably provide a cure for cancer if only someone took the time to study them.
Red Riding Hood lived with a nurture-giver whom she sometimes referred to as "Mother," although she didn't mean to imply by this term that she would have thought less of the person if a close biological link did not, in fact, exist. Nor did she intend to denigrate the equal value of nontraditional households, although she was sorry if this was the impression conveyed.
One day her mother asked her to take a basket of organically grown fruit and mineral water to her grandmother's house.
"But Mother, won't this be stealing work from the unionized people who have struggled for years to earn the right to carry all packages between various people in the woods?" Red Riding Hood's mother assured her that she had called the union boss and gotten a special compassionate mission exemption form.
"But, Mother, aren't you oppressing me by ordering me to do this?" Red Riding Hood's mother pointed out that it was impossible for women to oppress each other, since all women were equally oppressed until all women were free.
"But, Mother, then shouldn't you have my brother carry the basket, since he's an oppressor, and should learn what it's like to be oppressed?" And Red Riding Hood's mother explained that her brother was attending a special rally for animal rights, and besides, this wasn't stereotypical women's work, but an empowering deed that would help engender a feeling of community.
"But won't I be oppressing Grandma, by implying that she's sick and hence unable to independently further her own selfhood?" But Red Riding Hood's mother explained that her grandmother wasn't actually sick or incapacitated or mentally handicapped in any way, although that was not to imply that any of these conditions were inferior to what some people called "health."
Thus Red Riding Hood felt that she could get behind the idea of delivering the basket to her grandmother, and so she set off.
Many people believed that the forest was a foreboding and dangerous place, but Red Riding Hood knew that this was an irrational fear based on cultural paradigms instilled by a patriarchal society that regarded the natural world as an exploitable resource, and hence believed that natural predators were, in fact, intolerable competitors.
Other people avoided the woods for fear of thieves and deviants, but Red Riding Hood felt that, in a truly classless society, all marginalized peoples would be able to "come out" of the woods and be accepted as valid lifestyle role models.
On her way to Grandma's house, Red Riding Hood passed a woodchopper, and wandered off the path in order to examine some flowers. She was startled to find herself standing before a wolf, who asked her what was in her basket.
Red Riding Hood's teacher had warned her never to talk to strangers, but she was confident in taking control of her own budding sexuality, and chose to dialog with the wolf.She replied, "I am taking my grandmother some healthful snacks in a gesture of solidarity."
The wolf said, "You know, my dear, it isn't safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone."
Red Riding Hood said, "I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop an alternative and yet entirely valid worldview. Now, if you'll excuse me, I would prefer to be on my way." Red Riding Hood returned to the main path, and proceeded toward her grandmother's house.
But because his status outside society had freed him from slavish adherence to linear, Western-style thought, the Wolf knew of a quicker route to Grandma's house. He burst into the house and ate Grandma, a course of action affirmative of his nature as a predator. Then, unhampered by rigid, traditionalist gender-role notions, he put on Grandma's nightclothes, crawled under the bedclothes, and awaited developments.
Red Riding Hood entered the cottage and said, "Grandma, I have brought you some cruelty-free snacks to salute you in your role of wise and nurturing matriarch."
The wolf said softly, "Come closer, child, so that I might see you."
Red Riding Hood said, "Goodness! Grandma, what big eyes you have!"
"You forget that I am optically challenged."
"And Grandma, what an enormous - er - what a fine nose you have."
"Naturally, I could have had it fixed to help my acting career, but I didn't give in to such societal pressures, my child."
"And Grandma, what very big, sharp teeth you have!"
The wolf could not take any more of these specialist slurs, and, in a reaction appropriate for his accustomed milieu, he leaped out of bed, grabbed Little Red Riding Hood, and opened his jaws so wide that she could see her poor grandmother cowering in his belly.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" Red Riding Hood bravely shouted. "You must request my permission before proceeding to a new level of itimacy!"
The wolf was so startled by this statement that he loosened his grasp on her.
At the same time, the woodchopper burst into the cottage, brandishing an ax.
"Hands off!" cried the woodchopper.
"And what do you think you're doing?" cried Little Red Riding Hood. "If I let you help me now, I would be expressing a lack of confidence in my own abilities, which would lead to poor self-esteem and lower achievement scores on college entrance exams."
"Last chance, sister! Get your hands off that endangered species! This is an FBI sting!" screamed the woodchopper, and when Little Red Riding Hood nonetheless made a sudden motion, he sliced off her head.
"Thank goodness you got here in time," said the wolf. "The brat and her grandmother lured me in here. I thought I was a goner."
"No, I think I'm the real victim, here," said the woodchopper. "I've been dealing with my anger ever since I saw her picking those protected flowers earlier. And now I'm going to have such a trauma. Do you have any aspirin?"
"Sure," said the wolf.
"Thanks."
TEd
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Pooh-Bah
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Old news Ted.
Here's a selection:
(i) From The Thurber Carnival (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1945) 246-7.
The Little Girl and the Wolf
ONE aftemoon a big wolf waited in a dark forest for a little girl to come along carrying a basket of food to her grandmother. Finally a little girl did come along and she was carrying a basket of food.
"Are you carrying that basket to your grandmother?" asked the wolf. The little girl said yes, she was. So the wolf asked her where her grandmother lived and the little girl told him and he disappeared
into the wood.
When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother's house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on.
She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead.
Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.
This has been much copied. Little Red Riding Hood usually gets out a .44 Magnum in more recent versions
Here's an extract from Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner. Copyright 1994 by James Finn Garner. Published by Macmillan Publishing USA.
There once was a young person named Red Riding Hood who lived with her mother on the edge of a large wood. One day her mother asked her to take a basket of fresh fruit and mineral water to her grandmother's house--not because this was womyn's work, mind you, but because the deed was generous and helped engender a feeling of community. Furthermore, her grandmother was not sick, but rather was in full physical and mental health and was fully capable of taking care of herself as a mature adult.
So Red Riding Hood set off with her basket through the woods. Many people believed that the forest was a foreboding and dangerous place and never set foot in it. Red Riding Hood, however, was confident enough in her own budding sexuality that such obvious Freudian imagery did not intimidate her.
On the way to Grandma's house, Red Riding Hood was accosted by a wolf. who asked her what was in her basket. She replied, "Some healthful snacks for my grandmother, who is certainly capable of taking care of herself as a mature adult."
The wolf said, "You know, my dear, it isn't safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone."
Red Riding Hood said, "I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop your own, entirely valid, worldview. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be on my way."
Red Riding Hood walked on along the main path. But, because his status outside society had freed him from slavish adherence to linear, Western-style thought, the wolf knew a quicker route to Grandma's house. He burst into the house and ate Grandma, an entirely valid course of action for a carnivore such as himself. Then, unhampered by rigid, traditionalist notions of what was masculine or feminine, he put on Grandma's nightclothes and crawled into bed.
Red Riding Hood entered the cottage and said, "Grandma, I have brought you some fatfree, sodium-free snacks to salute you in your role of a wise and nurturing matriarch."
From the bed, the wolf said softly, "Come closer, child, so that I might see you."
Red Riding Hood said, "Oh, I forgot you are as optically challenged as a bat. Grandma, what big eyes you have!"
"They have seen much, and forgiven much, my dear."
"Grandma, what a big nose you have, only relatively, of course, and certainly attractive in its own way."
"It has smelled much, and forgiven much, my dear."
"Grandma, what big teeth you have!"
The wolf said, "I am happy with who I am and what I am," and leaped out of bed. He grabbed Red Riding Hood in his claws, intent on devouring her. Red Riding Hood screamed, not out of alarm at the wolf's apparent tendency toward crossdressing, but because of his willful invasion of her personal space.
Her screams were heard by a passing woodchopperperson (or log-fuel technician, as he preferred to be called). When he burst into the cottage, he saw the melee and tried to intervene. But as he raised his ax, Red Riding Hood and the wolf both stopped.
"And just what do you think you're doing?" asked Red Riding Hood.
The woodchopper-person blinked and tried to answer, but no words came to him.
"Bursting in here like a Neanderthal, trusting your weapon to do your thinking for you!" she exclaimed. "Sexist! Speciesist! How dare you assume that womyn and wolves can't solve their own problems without a man's help!"
When she heard Red Riding Hood's impassioned speech, Grandma jumped out of the wolf's mouth, seized the woodchopperperson's ax, and cut his head off. After this ordeal, Red Riding Hood, Grandma, and the wolf felt a certain commonality of purpose. They decided to set up an alternative household based on mutual respect and cooperation, and they lived together in the woods happily ever after.
Little Red Riding Hood
from Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner. Copyright 1994 by James Finn Garner. Published by Macmillan Publishing USA.
There once was a young person named Red Riding Hood who lived with her mother on the edge of a large wood. One day her mother asked her to take a basket of fresh fruit and mineral water to her grandmother's house--not because this was womyn's work, mind you, but because the deed was generous and helped engender a feeling of community. Furthermore, her grandmother was not sick, but rather was in full physical and mental health and was fully capable of taking care of herself as a mature adult.
So Red Riding Hood set off with her basket through the woods. Many people believed that the forest was a foreboding and dangerous place and never set foot in it. Red Riding Hood, however, was confident enough in her own budding sexuality that such obvious Freudian imagery did not intimidate her.
On the way to Grandma's house, Red Riding Hood was accosted by a wolf. who asked her what was in her basket. She replied, "Some healthful snacks for my grandmother, who is certainly capable of taking care of herself as a mature adult."
The wolf said, "You know, my dear, it isn't safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone."
Red Riding Hood said, "I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop your own, entirely valid, worldview. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be on my way."
Red Riding Hood walked on along the main path. But, because his status outside society had freed him from slavish adherence to linear, Western-style thought, the wolf knew a quicker route to Grandma's house. He burst into the house and ate Grandma, an entirely valid course of action for a carnivore such as himself. Then, unhampered by rigid, traditionalist notions of what was masculine or feminine, he put on Grandma's nightclothes and crawled into bed.
Red Riding Hood entered the cottage and said, "Grandma, I have brought you some fatfree, sodium-free snacks to salute you in your role of a wise and nurturing matriarch."
From the bed, the wolf said softly, "Come closer, child, so that I might see you."
Red Riding Hood said, "Oh, I forgot you are as optically challenged as a bat. Grandma, what big eyes you have!"
"They have seen much, and forgiven much, my dear."
"Grandma, what a big nose you have, only relatively, of course, and certainly attractive in its own way."
"It has smelled much, and forgiven much, my dear."
"Grandma, what big teeth you have!"
The wolf said, "I am happy with who I am and what I am," and leaped out of bed. He grabbed Red Riding Hood in his claws, intent on devouring her. Red Riding Hood screamed, not out of alarm at the wolf's apparent tendency toward crossdressing, but because of his willful invasion of her personal space.
Her screams were heard by a passing woodchopperperson (or log-fuel technician, as he preferred to be called). When he burst into the cottage, he saw the melee and tried to intervene. But as he raised his ax, Red Riding Hood and the wolf both stopped.
"And just what do you think you're doing?" asked Red Riding Hood.
The woodchopper-person blinked and tried to answer, but no words came to him.
"Bursting in here like a Neanderthal, trusting your weapon to do your thinking for you!" she exclaimed. "Sexist! Speciesist! How dare you assume that womyn and wolves can't solve their own problems without a man's help!"
When she heard Red Riding Hood's impassioned speech, Grandma jumped out of the wolf's mouth, seized the woodchopperperson's ax, and cut his head off. After this ordeal, Red Riding Hood, Grandma, and the wolf felt a certain commonality of purpose. They decided to set up an alternative household based on mutual respect and cooperation, and they lived together in the woods happily ever after.
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"The Ides of Taxes are upon you!" cried the wolf to Little Red Riding Hood. "Don't be ridiculous," said Red, "April doesn't have any Ides!" Just then the tin woodsman smashed in the door with his vorpal blade and exclaimed, "Of course April has an Ides, it just happens to fall on the 13th of the month, which rather ruins the point of this whole story." THE END
p.s. - the Ides of each month of the Roman calendar were calculated by counting backwards from the calends!
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>>the more you wonder about silence, the more you wonder at the composer's genius in setting it aside.
william, that is beautifully put! Made me aware for the first time that there really is a difference between creating sound, and setting silence aside.
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tsuwm:
Thanks for setting me straight. Somewhere I had gotten the idea that there were ides only in March, May, July and October, which were the months in which the ides occurred on the 15th rather than the 13th.
My statement should have been that I didn't inform the editor that the date tax returns are due is no on the Ides of April, or as I was making the pun, "the ides of taxes."
Thanks again!!
Ted
TEd
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today's "Maven's Word of the Day" discusses 'freshmen'; I submit this without further comment: http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/
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> today's "Maven's Word of the Day" discusses 'freshmen'; I submit this without further comment
So freshman is now politically incorrect. I propose that we create a new word based on the concept we find in sophomore, which literally means wise and foolish from the Greek. How about calling people who haven't become wise-foolish foolish-foolish. Voila! moromore. Which would make a sad freshamn from the southern Philippines a morose Moro moromore. Heck, even Shakespeare talked about a six-pack of 'em -- two Moros and two Moros and two Moros.
Hmmm. I think I just fell in that damned French river again.
TEd
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>I propose that we create a new word based on the concept we find in sophomore, which literally means wise and foolish from the Greek. this must be the natural followup -- today's "Maven" debunks this notion, claiming the 'soph' in sophomore is more akin to the Sophists, who were "clever", the other meaning of sophos. http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/
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Bill Buckley, in his (admittedly pedantic) defense of the old style of using gender-loaded language, points out that there is actually a linguistic trope which "legitimizes" this language; i.e., the synecdoche. per Merriam-Webster a synecdoche is a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (as society for high society), the species for the genus (as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species(as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (as boards for stage). Buckley's point seems to be that such constructions will always be be warranted in literature and the arts, for the mere sound if nothing else.
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Pooh-Bah
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>I propose that we create a new word ...
Interesting debate and completely alien to me.
We have a rather quaint way of naming people at university.
People in their first year are called - First Years
People in their second year are called - Second Years
People in their third year are called - Third Years
No problem with gender differences there.
During the week at my university (and I assume, others) there was a "Freshers Fair" where those new to the university, Freshers, could go along and select clubs or activities to join. I started in 1978 and I cannot recall ever having heard the word "Freshman", so it either died out years ago or was never used. I don't think we were called Freshers for more than the first few weeks, after that were just called first years. I have only come across Sophomore in films and was never really sure which period of time it related to.
So the short answer is you don't need to study Greek to replace "Freshman" you could call people "Freshers", "First Years" or perhaps even ......."Newbies"
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>this must be the natural followup -- today's "Maven" debunks this notion, claiming the 'soph' in sophomore is more akin to the Sophists, who were "clever", the other meaning of sophos.
Alas, I am at work and my OED is at home. All three dictionaries I have access to here say sophomore arises from sophos plus mor rather than from sophemer or however it was she spelled it. I'm certainly going to check on it when I get home this evening. The article in Mavens' Word a Day sounds convincing, though possibly just a tad on the glib side. Meanwhile,
Ted wanders off singing:
My OED's outside, covered with snow,
The New Net's a lonely town,
when you're the only surfer boy around.
TEd
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stranger
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Here's a humorous addition to this thread. It's from the (online) University of Victoria's Writer's Guide. The Genuine Canadian Buzz-Phrase Generator provides a model for creating meaningless phrases for use in a business or scientific report. Combine one word from each column.
Col 1 Col 2 Col 3
integrated management options
overall organizational flexibility
systematized reciprocal mobility
parallel digital programming
functional logistical concept
The list continues, but you get the picture!
(Just previewed this post and it looks like the columns and words ran together; sorry I don't know how to fix this.)
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jackiemw--
Yep, sounds like Dilbert-speak to me!
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enthusiast
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>>Yep, sounds like Dilbert-speak to me!
Jackie,
"Dilbert" was what first flashed in my mind when I read this thread. Unfortunately, (and this is why Dilbert is so popular) corporate America is laden with these kind of phrases. I'm guessing most MBA programs have a required class in Corporate-Drivel
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enthusiast
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>>Yep, sounds like Dilbert-speak to me!
Jackie,
"Dilbert" was what first flashed in my mind when I read this thread. Unfortunately, (and this is why Dilbert is so popular) corporate America is laden with these kind of phrases. I'm guessing most MBA programs have a required class in Corporate-Drivel.
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