mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) (06/27/85)
[][][] > > [me:] > > I hope it's obvious to all that there are two different debates going > > on about gender-neutral[ized] indefinite pronouns: > > > > Debate # 1 WHETHER to adopt & encourage changed usage > > > > Debate # 2 HOW to adopt & encourage changed usage > > > [cs1@oddjob.UUCP (Cheryl Stewart) in article <813@oddjob.UUCP>] > > Gender-neutral pronouns are one thing--but there is yet a third > debate: > > Debate # 3 How & whether to adopt and encourage changed usag > as regards to gender specific NOUNS. > > Clearly, the way we reference a person directly in a sentence (man, woman, > person, joker, master, mistress, etc. etc.) has much, much more cultural > implications than the way we reference a person indefinitely with a pronoun. > WHAT IS AN APPROPRIATE GENDER-NEUTRAL NOUN? PERSON!!! RIGHT???!!! C.S. goes on, largely with tongue in cheek as far as I can tell, to support the contrary position, that "man" is the appropriate word. Of course it wouldn't do to simply declare it gender-neutral, since the stubborn people who use it in "Now is the time ... " or as a suffix in "repairman" etc would claim that that's already the case. So a further twist is necessary: > If people > just started using the word "man" UNIFORMLY as a gender-neutral noun, > as it is already in many contexts, we could lexically outwit and confuse > the enemy. ... > You see, as it stands now, sexists have an advantage. They can use > all of the cultural connotations of the word "man" to "inadvertently" or > "jokingly" or "seriously in private" reinforce traditional roles in > society. My suggestion that the word "man" be used uniformly as a gender- > NEUTRAL noun is intended to take away from sexists the power to use this > word like a weapon against women. In other words, "man" would cease to carry 'male' as part of its meaning (and, in a passage I've skipped, apparently "woman" wouldn't be used at all); so there would be no short way of being sex-specific, or of playing on ambiguities. Well, this is fun, but a triumph of the impractical. How to get all those people to stop meaning what they mean and stop understanding what they understand? It's easier to widen than to narrow. So I figure CS was being tongue-in-cheek (or whatever the keybboard equivalent would be). But let me take it up seriously, and propose the following principle: The goal involved in constructing and encouraging gender-neutral usages cannot be to DIMINISH the repertoire of what can be said shortly and conveniently (or at all). Rather it must ENLARGE that repertoire, to make non-sexist usage easier and more normal. This principle comes from two places. The first is the general pattern of language-change: new words, and new meanings for old words (and new syntactic constructions, and phonotactic possibilities, etc, which aren't real relevant here) come into a language before old ones die out. In general. But the second source of this principle, the one I mean to focus on here, is that the movement for non-sexist language is of course just one part of a broader social program. And (unless you're excessively Wharfian -- moderate Wharfians should be contented with point number 3 below) it's not the most important part, the secret spring, the hidden dynamo, etc. I don't want to belittle it: it's reasonably important, but not REALLY the main source either of people's attitudes or of objective social conditions. Consider four spheres of influence: 1. (Fairly universal) Getting rid of patently offensive terms (by making them socially unacceptable) is a worthwhile step, because it can spare people's feelings. The atmosphere has improved now that it is less acceptable to publicly use abusive terms for racial and national-origin groups. BUT it would be hard to contend that this has been a major factor in combatting actual racism. Analogize to sexism... 2. (Committed feminists) By hypothesis, these people already are concerned with finding and dealing with sexist assumptions they find within themselves; so we needn't ask about the effect of language reform ON this group. And as the source of language reform, what this group needs is rational discussion of just what usages carry sexist connotations, and what the alternatives are. They will want to create alternatives where no suitable ones come ready-made. They avoid sexist usage by choice, not by somebody else trying to remove some option from the language. 3. (Fence-sitters, the uncommitted, and those who say "I'm not sexist, since I'm for equal pay -- but I don't see any reason to fuss about ... and ... and ... and gender-neutral language and ...") This is the sphere where we can reasonably talk about the influence of language on thought (for #2 it's unnecessary, for #4 it's ineffective). They will adopt reformed language, a couple of steps behind group 2. "Chairs are made out of wood and metal and fabric. (And "chairperson" is clumsy.) So when we say we're looking for a chairman, that doesn't mean we want to exclude women." But after a few years of exposure to a new usage, they see that it doesn't really sound as odd as it did at first. "When the programmer begins a large project, she should carefully document ... " Shocking! Ridiculous! ... but not after the fifth or sixth exposure. So what I suggest works with this group is education by example, though there's room for convincing by discussion. And the ultimate point, the way it fits with the general social program, is that this group will then be encouraged (by changed language) to discover that they actually did have buried sexist assumptions. This is mildly Wharfian, but not silly. 4. (Sexists) Here I contend that language reform is pretty much irrelevant, except as something like a third-party tool. That is, if for example the newspaper has been persuaded to exclude sex-specific help-wanted ads, an employer who would like to exclude women from some job will be faced with more female applicants to deal with. But language won't prevent that employer from preferentially hiring men. That's a task for more general social reform, legislation, and direct persuasion on the issues. Public discourse can be affected, as urged in point #1 for blatantly offensive language. But even to the extent that public discourse may be weeded of more subtle sexist language, and that's to the good, still I wouldn't expect that change to much affect attitudes for group #4; nor, as CS suggests, their private discourse. Only in case #1 was there reason to support narrowing the options of language. To return to CS's original point, nouns and pronouns (and other elements of language) are entirely parallel insofar as we're talking about convincing people that adopting nonsexist language is worthwhile. This takes making general arguments to group #3 (fence-sitters etc); and making very particular arguments to group #2 (feminists) that the particular usage you want to deal with actually is worth bothering about. Where nouns and pronouns differ is in linguistic tractability. Nouns do not -- in general, as a category -- present the same problem that pronouns do as a category. That's not to say that finding a non-sexist noun is always easy. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes difficult. Take occupational titles again; "firefighter" for "fireman" was easy to construct, and easy for people to accept, but are you really happy with "server" for "waiter/waitress"? Any suggestions re "masseuse/masseur"? Etc. And that's why there has been considerable discussion of the pronoun question, discussion more on how than on whether -- because the how is hard. It doesn't reflect an assumption that pronouns are more important. -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago (linguistics) ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar