From: alan@auntbea.austin.ibm.com (Alan R. Weiss)
Subject: Re: Liberty (was something relevant about CO-2 long ago...)
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 14:51:25 GMT
Organization: (barely maintaing that dignity we all so crave)

In article <1992Dec18.031152.21351@cbnews.cb.att.com> eleanor@cbnews.cb.att.com (Piglet) writes:
>In article <BzFIJw.7y0@austin.ibm.com> alan@auntbea.austin.ibm.com (Alan R. Weiss) writes:
>>On the other hand, politically-correct (PC) speech is really tedious.
>
>So is constantly being excluded from discourse about the "generic".
>You should try it sometime.  Try a group experiment--use only "she"
>and "her", etc., for a day.  You won't enjoy it.


Oh, sometimes we do.  God as She, pronouns "her" and "she" and all that.
Its kind of fun, actually, and gets the point across.  Then we
relax and forget all about it.


>>My daughters don't much care that a lot of their reading refers to
>>"he" and "him" - they have enough self-esteem to realize that
>>its just a lack of a good English language second-person-neutral
>>pronoun.
>
>Well, goody for them.  I do care.  I guess I just don't have
>enough self-esteem.  Or maybe it's that I finally do.


Maybe.  Maybe not.  Or, perhaps focusing upon gender-language
isn't as important an issue as other, more pressing demands?


>The use of the masculine for the generic didn't bother me when
>I was younger.  I rather passionately defended the purity of the
>English language on more than one occasion.

You mean, like Edwin Newman?


>  Then I developed more
>self-awareness--started noticing the mental pictures that went
>with text I was reading, whether I felt like I was part of the
>group being described, etc.


I dunno.  When I read about murderers and such, and the perps.
are male, I sure don't identify with them.  When I read about
Barry Bonds (American Baseball player) getting a $45 million  contract,
I (unfortunately :-)  don't identify much with him.



>Now, I say that language works for us, not we for it.  It's time
>there was a neutral pronoun in English.  Along with a neutral
>reference to "man" in the sense of "mankind", and so on.  All
>such constructs as "poetess" "actress" "sculptress" "authoress"
>should be shot at dawn and burned in effigy.  Along with "Miss"
>and "Mrs.".
>
>
>Piglet

Then propose something, and start a campaign to get people to use
it.  Howzabout these:

	woman		womyn
	his/her		just substitute the plural "their"
	him/her		herm
	He/She		Sheesh
	Edwin Newman	Edwin Newperson


English (and most other languages) evolve in response to demand.
But, as marketing people know, demand can be created.  But not by
anger or politically-motivated means -- people respond much better
if the new "good" or "service" is attractive.  Figure out a way
to make the new language attractive to use (instead of a grim
faced moralistic necessity), and people will jump on it quickly.
For example, if its hip to use gender-neutral/feminist-sensitive
language ......

-- 
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