[Lexicog] stereotypical beliefs and lexicography

[Margarita Correia]

You focus one point I would like to have expressed before and that only
my deficient English expression prevented me for doing.
 
I don't consider expressions as the one you mention being strictly
sexist. They are facts of the language. When I talked about sexist
expressions, I was thinking about things like "sexo fraco / sexo forte"
to refer to, respectively, female and male people.
I also do not consider that saying from something "It's Greek to me" is
offensive to the Greek people: I can argue that if they do difficukt
things, it's because they are intelligent, more intelligent than we are.
I also don't feel offended by expressions about Portuguese people like
the French "Les portugais sont toujours gais", or by the many jokes
Brazilian tell about us.
Of course I consider offensive expressions about Jews (we also have them
in Portuguese!) or about Black (we have many of them!), because they
attempt against human basic principles, like freedom, honesty, etc., and
they remind us historical facts which are shamefull (like slavery,
expulsion of Jews from Portugal during the 16th century, nazism, etc.).
 
But of course these are all very personnal ways of seeing things, they
vary across cultures, they vary with time, social class, etc.
This is why I previously said that, as a lexicographer, I don't feel apt
to decide alone what is or is not correct in the society I live in.
 
Margarita

-----Mensagem original-----
De: Fritz Goerling [mailto:Fritz_Goerling at sil.org] 
Enviada: terça-feira, 22 de Fevereiro de 2005 20:19
Para: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Assunto: RE: [Lexicog] stereotypical beliefs and lexicography


Could you conceive of marking certain words as "sexist" in a general
dictionary which are considered as "sexist"
by certain people, like: 
 
mankind, man-made, manpower, manslaughter, manhole
 
Fritz Goerling
 
 
 

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