jack@rlgvax.UUCP (Jack Waugh) (08/15/83)
There has been enough discussion of nonsexist language here
to convince me that many people won't be budged from their
opinion. Anyway, I thought I'd throw in two bits.
I like "firefighter" and "letter carrier". Not only are they
nonsexist, they is also explicit. A "firefighter" clearly
fights fires; a "fireman" could be someone who starts fires,
as in Ray Bradbury's book *Fahrenheit 451*.
On the other hand, I find coinages that take a word
containing "man" and substitute "person" awkward, and don't
use them. A woman can be a chairman. The "man" in
"chairman" is not stressed in speech (in fact, it's
pronounced more like "mun"), and I'm pretty sure that for me,
it has no masculine connotation.
I am convinced, however, that language affects prejudices. I
used to think that "he" was the pronoun I should use for a
person of unknown sex, since that's what my English teachers
told me. What changed my mind was using a college textbook
that used "she" for this purpose part of the time (never
switching between "he" and "she" for the same antecedent).
I'd be jolted by the "she", when a picture of a man had
already formed in my mind. If I had had no prejudice, my
mental image would not have specified sex. I think I am less
prejudiced now, because of the language the authors of the
book chose. I now emulate them in use of "she" part of the
time for an unspecified person.
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the canned signature of Jack Waugh
Computer Consoles, Inc., Reston, Va.
seismo!rlgvax!jack