From: dbshapco@napier.uwaterloo.ca (Brad Shapcott)
Subject: Re: Liberty (was something relevant about CO-2 long ago...)
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 18:27:08 GMT


> Chris writes:
>
>As George Orwell pointed out in Nineteen Eighty-Four, language and
>how we speak  *does* have significant impact on how we humans think.

That is only one half of the picture.  The relaionship is much more symbiotic
in that I think our culture and ideologies impact our language as well.
I tend to think the second part is stronger, and that people attack language
because it is an indicator or symptom of a mode of cultural thinking.
That is, I think people are sexist *before* they begin using sexist
language (I mean, sexual stereotyping starts before a person has a real
grasp of the language they have been born in to).  Sexist langauge doesn't
turn a person into a sexist.

I don't think you eradicate sexist or any -ist thought by wiping out the
words that it uses.  These words gain their meaning from repeated usage
and are merely a symbol of the meaning -- the meaning can easily be
attached to other symbols.  'Queer' for instance isn't a bad word, but
often had (or has) negative meanings attached to it and is used to
denigrate -- this was fought by reclaiming the word so that it had
positive meanings.

An unfortunate oddity of language is genderization, which makes pinning
down what is sexist in language or communication slightly more difficult.
Is a person using a masculine pronoun sexist?  Maybe -- but you can't
tell from *that* evidence.

People don't believe removing words like 'nigger' or 'spic' or 'slope'
from our langauge will end racism, nor (given the size of the problem)
that it would even be possible.  They might believe that if these words
passed out of usage it would be a sign of a marked decrease in racism.
Nor is the removal of gender from our language any more of a silver
bullet.  Or intelligent and equitable use of our language might be a
sign of positive change, however.

I prefer to use language in a way that challenges thinking, because I
don't believe improvisations will alleviate -ist thinking.  If the gender
I want to indicate is not important and I have free choice of pronouns,
I'll choose 'she' rather than 'he'.  I also don't like to use '-person'
suffixes in many cases because they scrub the language clean of intimacy
and character, but will use '-woman' or '-man' interchangeably when either
is appropriate, or an appropriate substitute (for instance, I like the
term 'police officer' rather than 'policewoman' or 'police man', or
'firefighter' rather than 'firewoman' or 'fireman').

        "If the police officer believes a crime is in progress, she should
         proceed to [blah, blah, blah] . . ."

I think gender free thinking is much more important than a gender free
language.  So English didn't provide us with neutral cases for many words --
we're not intelligent enough to get around this without resorting to
neologisms and clumsy, artificial constructs?

>Then again, to those who think "man" and "mankind" and the rest
>are "inclusive", one can ask, what is wrong with  this sentence:
>
>        "Man, being a mammal, breastfeeds his young"

Its poorly written.  Changing a few words won't help.

        "The young of the homo sapien, as with other mammals, are
         fed from the breast."


Brad