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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>As an educational resource in this "International Year of
Languages" I would love to see a website on language stereotypes that has
on it quotes of (at least) two sorts:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>1) Extolling one language (usually one's own) as inherently better
than all the others<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>2) Declaring one or more languages to be inherently inferior or
unsuited for various purposes<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>There's certainly a lot of material out there - perhaps there
are already some compilations? The point is or would be to highlight language
myths and prejudices which certainly (mis)inform public discussion and
policymaking.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> owner-lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
[mailto:owner-lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Ann Evans<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, March 05, 2008 10:55 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: Gender neutrality and language<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'>Nice writing style for a
computer scientist. <br>
<br>
The weak point lies on the cowpath. Apparently the female cows are not to
object to the path's trajectory. <br>
<br>
The other point which I take issue with is the "English--the richest, most
expressive language in the world" part. What insulting, ignorant,
and jingoistic rubbish. Such expressions as Putin's recent words (during
a press conference no less), "Such 'rumors'...they picked from a nose and
smeared onto their papers." were translated into dainty English, failing
to catch earthiness of Putin's remarks. The beauty of haiku?
The Italian of opera? How does xenophobia link to this issue?<br>
<br>
I am distressed by the he/she, he or she, s/he usage because of its awkwardness.
Did E. B. White really mean that his short book should become a proscriptive
bible? In acknowledging the cowpath, one suspects not. Given the
enormous changes which have occurred in English over the past 500 years or so,
we can hardly argue that we should freeze it in the 1970's when E.B. White was
writing his book. This awkwardness will get straightened out somehow,
perhaps by borrowing from some other language's clever skirting of the
issue. I wonder what issues are coming up in German, where
"maedchen," which means "girl," is neither male nor
female. <br>
<br>
Samuel Johnson wrote that the language was going to hell in a handbasket, and
by implication, the world in general. The Apocalyse is frequently
portrayed in recent work -- Cormac McCarthy's book, <i>The Road</i>, and in the
movies <i>Bladerunner</i> and <i>Children of Men</i>. According to this
writer, the linguistic apocalyse is also upon us.<br>
<br>
Ann<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal>On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 11:11 PM, Jacob Berg <<a
href="mailto:jsberg@gwu.edu">jsberg@gwu.edu</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>I'm
not sure if this Weekly Standard article has made the rounds. Apparently
we are all to blame.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>/Jake</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal>Feminism and the English Language <br>
Can the damage to our mother tongue be undone? <br>
by David Gelernter <br>
03/03/2008, Volume 013, Issue 24 <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p>How can I teach my students to write decently when the English language
has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Academic-Industrial Complex?
Our language used to belong to all its speakers and readers and writers.
But in the 1970s and '80s, arrogant ideologues began recasting English into
heavy artillery to defend the borders of the New Feminist state. In
consequence we have all got used to sentences where puffed-up words like
"chairperson" and "humankind" strut and preen, where <i>he-or-she</i>'s
keep bashing into surrounding phrases like bumper cars and related
deformities blossom like blisters; they are all markers of an epoch-making
victory of propaganda over common sense.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>We have allowed ideologues to pocket a priceless property and walk away
with it. Today, as college students and full-fledged young English teachers
emerge from the feminist incubator in which they have spent their whole
lives, this victory of brainless ideology is on the brink of becoming
institutionalized. If we mean to put things right, we can't wait much
longer.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Our ability to write and read good, clear English connects us to one
another and to our common past. The prime rule of writing is to keep it
simple, concrete, concise. Shakespeare's most perfect phrases are
miraculously simple and terse. ("Thou art the thing itself."
"A plague o' both your houses." "Can one desire too much of
a good thing?") The young Jane Austen is praised by her descendants
for having written "pure simple English." Meanwhile, in everyday
prose, a word with useless syllables or a sentence with useless words is a
house fancied-up with fake dormers and chimneys. It is ugly and boring and
cheap, and impossible to take seriously. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>But our problem goes deeper than a few silly words and many tedious
sentences. How can I (how can any teacher) get students to take the prime
rule seriously when virtually the whole educational establishment teaches
the opposite? When students have been ordered since first grade to put
"he or she" in spots where "he" would mean exactly the
same thing, and "firefighter" where "fireman" would
mean exactly the same thing? How can we then tell them, "Make every
word, every syllable count!" They may be ignorant but they're not
stupid. The well-aimed torpedo of Feminist English has sunk the whole
process of teaching students to write. The small minority of born writers
will always get by, inventing their own rules as they go. But we used to
expect every educated citizen to write decently--and that goal is out the window.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>"He or she" is the proud marshal of this pathetic parade. It
has generated a cascading series of problems in which the Establishment,
having noticed that Officially Approved gender-neutral sentences sound
rotten, has dreamt up alternatives that are even worse. So let's consider
"he or she." In some cases the awfulness of a feminist phrase
requires several paragraphs to investigate systematically. Such
investigations are worth pursuing nonetheless; our language is at stake.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>When the style-smashers first announced, decades ago, that the neutral
"he" meant "male" and excluded "female," they
were lying and knew it. After all, when a critic like Mary Lascelles writes
(in her classic 1939 study of Jane Austen) that "no reader can vouch
for more than his own experience," one can hardly accuse her of
envisioning male readers only. In feminist minds ideology excused the lie,
and the goal of interchangeable sexes was a far greater good than decent
English. Even today's English professors have heard (I suppose) of Eudora
Welty, who wrote in her 1984 memoirs--just as the feminist anti-English
campaign was nearing total victory--that every story writer imagines
himself inside his characters; "it is his first step, and his last
too." Was the author demonstrating her inability to write proper
English? Or merely letting us know that there is no such thing as a female
writer? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>E.B. White was our greatest modern source of the purest, freshest,
clearest, most bracing English, straight from a magic spring that bubbled
for him alone. With A.J. Liebling and Joseph Mitchell, he was one of a
triumvirate that made the <i>New Yorker</i> under its great editor Harold
Ross a thing of beauty and a joy forever. The <i>Elements of Style</i>,
White's revision of a short textbook by his Cornell professor William
Strunk, is justly revered as the best thing of its kind. In the third
edition (1979), White lays down the law on the he-or-she epidemic that was
sweeping the country like a bad flu (or a bad joke).<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style='margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt'>
<p>The use of <i>he</i> as a pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a
simple, practical convention rooted in the beginnings of the English
language. <i>He</i> has lost all suggestion of maleness in these
circumstances. The word was unquestionably biased to begin with (the
dominant male), but after hundreds of years it has become seemingly
indispensable. It has no pejorative connotations; it is never incorrect. <o:p></o:p></p>
</blockquote>
<p>(Warning: White died in 1985; a later edition of <i>Elements</i>
published after his death is a disgrace to his memory.) In his 1984 White
biography, Scott Elledge tells a remarkable story about "he or
she":<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style='margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt'>
<p><i>The New Yorker</i> rejected [in 1971] a parable White had written
about the campaign of feminists to abolish the use of the pronoun <i>his</i>
to mean "his or her." He told Roger Angell [his wife's son by a
previous marriage] that he was "surprised, but not downhearted, that
the piece got sunk. .<span style='font-family:"Cambria Math","serif"'> </span>.<span
style='font-family:"Cambria Math","serif"'> </span>. To me, any woman's
(or man's) attempt to remove the gender from the language is both funny and
futile." <o:p></o:p></p>
</blockquote>
<p>For the <i>New Yorker</i> to have rejected a piece by White, its darling
and its hero, the man who did more than anyone but Ross himself to make the
magazine the runaway, roaring success it became, and (by the way) a
thorough-going liberal, was a sure sign that feminism had already got
America in a chokehold.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>The fixed idea forced by language rapists upon a whole generation of
students, that "he" can refer only to a male, is (in short)
wrong. It is applied with nonsensical inconsistency, too. The same feminist
warriors who would never write "he" where "he or she"
will do would <i>also</i> never write "the author or authoress"
where "the author" will do. They hate such words as actress and
waitress; in these cases they insist that the masculine<i> </i>form<i> </i>be
used for men <i>and</i> women. You would never find my feminist colleagues
writing a phrase such as, "When an Anglican priest or priestess mounts
the pulpit .<span style='font-family:"Cambria Math","serif"'> </span>.<span
style='font-family:"Cambria Math","serif"'> </span>. " You <i>will</i>
find them writing, "When an Anglican priest mounts the pulpit, he or
she is about to address the congregation." Logic has never been a
strong suit among the commissar-intellectuals who have bossed American
culture since the 1970s. True, "he" sounds explicitly masculine
in a way "priest" doesn't, to those who are just learning the
language. Children also find it odd that "enough" should be
spelled that way, that New York should be at the same latitude as Spain,
that 7 squared is 49, and so on. Education was invented to set people
straight on all these fine points.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>He-or-she'ing added so much ugly dead weight to the language that even
the Establishment couldn't help noticing. So feminist authorities went back
to the drawing board. Unsatisfied with having rammed their 80-ton
16-wheeler into the nimble sports-car of English style, they proceeded to
shoot the legs out from under grammar--which collapsed in a heap after
agreement between subject and pronoun was declared to be optional.
"When an Anglican priest mounts the pulpit, they are about to address
the congregation." How many of today's high school English teachers
would mark this sentence wrong, or even "awkward"? (Show of
hands? Not one?) Yet such sentences skreak like fingernails on a
blackboard.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Slashes are just as bad. He/she is about to address the
congregation" is unacceptable because it's not clear how to pronounce
it: "he she," "he or she," "he slash she"?
The unclarity is a nuisance, and each possibility sounds awful. Writing
English is like writing music: One lays down the footprints of sounds that
are recreated in each reader's mind. To be deaf to English is like being
deaf to birdsong or laughter or rustling trees or babbling brooks--only
worse, because English is the communal, emotional, and intellectual net
that holds this nation together, if anything can. Occasionally one sees
"s/he," which shows not indifference but outright contempt for
the language and the reader.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>And it gets worse. At the bottom of this junkpile is a maneuver that
seems to be growing in popularity, at least among college students: writing
"she" instead of neutral "he," or interchanging
"he" and "she" at random. This grotesque outcome
follows naturally from the primordial lie. If you make students believe
that "he" can refer only to a male, then writers who use
"he" in sentences referring to men and women are <i>actually</i>
discussing males only and excluding females--and might just as well use
"she" and exclude males, leaving the reader to sort things out
for himself. The she-sentences that result tend to slam on a reader's
brakes and send him smash-and-spinning into the roadside underbrush,
cursing under his breath. (I still remember the first time I encountered
such a sentence, in an early-1980s book by a noted historian about a Jesuit
in Asia.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Here is the problem with the dreaded she-sentence. Ideologues can lie
themselves blue in the face without changing the fact that, to those who
know modern English as it existed until the cultural revolution and still
does exist in many quarters, the neutral he "has lost all suggestion
of maleness." But there is no such thing as a neutral "she";
even feminists don't claim there is. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>"The driver turns on his headlights" is not about a male or
female person; it is about a <i>driving </i>person. But "the driver
turns on her headlights" is a sentence about a <i>female</i> driver.
Just as any competent reader listens to what he is reading, he pictures it
too (if it <i>can</i> be pictured); hearing and imagining the written word
are ingrained habits. A reader who had thought the topic was drivers is now
faced by a specifically <i>female</i> driver, and naturally wonders why.
What is the writer getting at? To distract your reader for political
purposes, to trip him up merely to demonstrate your praiseworthy
right-thinkingness, is a low trick.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>White's comment: "If you think <i>she</i> is a handy substitute for
<i>he</i>, try it and see what happens." <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Sometimes a writer can avoid plastering his prose with feminist bumper-stickers
and still not provoke the running dogs of the Establishment by diving into
the plural whenever danger threatens. ("Drivers turn on their
headlights.") White's comment:<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style='margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt'>
<p>Alternatively, put all controversial nouns in the plural and avoid the
choice of sex altogether, and you may find your prose sounding general and
diffuse as a result. <o:p></o:p></p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the real problem goes deeper. Why should I worry about feminist
ideology while I write? Why should I worry about anyone's ideology? Writing
is a tricky business that requires one's whole concentration, as any
professional will tell you; as no doubt you know anyway. Who can afford to
allow a virtual feminist to elbow her way like a noisy drunk into that
inner mental circle where all your faculties (such as they are) are
laboring to produce decent prose? Bargaining over the next word, shaping
each phrase, netting and vetting the countless images that drift through
the mind like butterflies in a summer garden, mounting some and releasing
others--and keeping the trajectory and target always in mind? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Throw the bum out.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>It's a disgrace that we graduate class after class of young Americans
who will never be able to write down their thoughts effectively--in a
business report, a letter of application or recommendation, a postcard or
email, or any other form. Our one consolation is that the country is
filling up gradually with people who have been reared on ugly, childish
writing and will never expect anything else. But the implications of our
spineless surrender go deeper. We have accepted, implicitly, a hit-and-run
vandalizing of English--the richest, most expressive language in the world.
Languages such as French are shaped and guided by official boards of big
shots. But English used to be a language of the people, by the people, for
the people. "The living language is like a cowpath," wrote White;
"it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it,
follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs."
We have allowed our academic overlords to plow up White's cow-path and
replace it with a steel-and-concrete highway, hemmed in by guardrails and
heavily patrolled by police. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Of course all languages change. A feminist might say that he-or-she is
merely the latest twist in our ever-changing cowpath; that he-or-she was
the will of the people. But this too is a lie, and in fairness to my
opponents I have never heard them deploy it. They know that Americans of
the late 1960s were not struck en masse by sudden unhappiness over the
neutral he or the word "chairman." Such complaints never did rank
high on the average American's list of worries. (Way back in the 1970s,
"chairperson" was in fact a one-word joke: an object lesson in
the ludicrous places you would reach if you took Feminist English
seriously.) In fact the New English was deliberately created and pounded
into children's heads by an intellectual elite asserting its control over
American culture. The same conclusion follows independently from a
language's well-established tendency to simplify and compress its existing
structure (like a settling sea-bed) to make room for constantly arriving
new coinages. Words like "authoress" would almost certainly have
disappeared with no help from feminists. But "he" transforming
itself into "he or she" is like a ball rolling uphill. It doesn't
happen unless someone has volunteered to push.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>The depressing trail continues one last mile. What happens to a nation's
thinking when you ban such phrases as "great men"? The
alternatives are so bad--"great person" sounds silly; "great
human being" is a casual tribute to a friend--that it's hard to know
where to turn. "Hero" doesn't work; "Wittgenstein was a
great man" is a self-sufficient assertion, but "Wittgenstein was
a hero" is not. Was he a war hero, a philosophical hero? (Yes and
yes.) "Wittgenstein was a great heart" (also true) can't be
rephrased in hero-speak, and can't substitute for "great man"
either. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>We happen to know also that the <i>idea</i> of "great men" has
been bounced right out of education at every level. Nowadays students are
taught to admire celebrities and money instead. We might well have
misplaced the "great man" idea anyway, but losing the phrase
didn't help. Civilization copes poorly with ideas that have no names.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>And what should we say instead of "brotherhood"? "Crown
thy good with siblinghood"? "Tolerance" is no substitute for
"brotherhood"; it's passive and bland where
"brotherhood" is active and inspiring. "Brotherhood"
has accordingly been quietly stricken from the list of good things to which
Americans should aspire. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>We allowed ideologues to wreck the English language. Do we have the
courage to rebuild?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><i>David Gelernter, a national fellow of the American Enterprise
Institute and a contributing editor to</i> THE WEEKLY STANDARD<i>, is a
professor of computer science at Yale.</i><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'>© Copyright 2008,
News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid black 1.5pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 4.0pt;
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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>-----
Original Message ----- <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='background:#E4E4E4'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'> <a href="mailto:rkephart@unf.edu"
target="_blank" title="rkephart@unf.edu">Ronald Kephart</a> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>To:</span></b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'> <a
href="mailto:lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu" target="_blank"
title="lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu">lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu</a> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Sent:</span></b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'> Tuesday, March 04,
2008 9:17 AM<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Subject:</span></b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'> Re: Gender
neutrality and language<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.5pt'>On
3/3/08 9:12 PM, "Ann Evans" <<a href="mailto:annevans123@gmail.com"
target="_blank">annevans123@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
> <span style='color:blue'>It's interesting that this post has degenerated
into a religious discussion <br>
> ....<br>
</span>> <br>
And I apologize for that, since it was my fault. I am especially sensitive <br>
to this issue this semester because I am teaching a cultural anthropology <br>
course that seems to have an unusually high number of creationists, <br>
intelligent designists, and theistic evolutionists. So when a poster here <br>
seemed to suggest that the male first, female second order of things was put <br>
there by a god, my anti-nonsense reflex went into overdrive. Sorry.<br>
<br>
At the same, though, I agree with Lynn that this wasn't necessarily a <br>
"degeneration." Folk models of language play an important, sometimes <br>
Determinative, role in language policies, and beliefs and values regarding <br>
the supernatural are often a part of those folk models.<br>
<br>
> <span style='color:blue'>...when something extremely pertinent is at hand.
How are we to express the <br>
> gender-neutral pronoun? I tell my classes that it will be up to them
to <br>
> figure this one out, but I would like to be a of a little more help to
them <br>
> than that. Is it true that "they" was once legitimately
the gender-neutral <br>
> third-person singular pronoun? How else, other than rewriting
sentences, can <br>
> this issue be resolved. One posting recently mentioned
"yo" as a <br>
> gender-neutral pronoun, but I don't see that catching on. Any other <br>
> inventions lately?<br>
> <br>
</span>Yes, "they" has been, historically, used as a generic pronoun,
and by some <br>
pretty good writers, too. For example:<br>
<br>
There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were <span
style='color:red'>their <br>
</span>well-acquainted friend <br>
— Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, Act IV, Scene 3 <br>
(1594)<br>
<br>
"To be sure, you knew no actual good of me -- but nobody thinks of that
when <br>
they fall in love."<br>
__Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)<br>
<br>
A person cannot help <span style='color:red'>their </span>birth.<br>
— Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1848)<br>
<br>
And so on. So, I don't think we need to invent anything, and in any case <br>
inventing a pronoun (closed lexical class) is a lot harder than inventing <br>
nouns and verbs, which are open classes. (Note though that we already <br>
invented "y'all" and "youze," and "you-uns" to
express second person plural, <br>
which "standard" English lacks, and some African American communities
<br>
borrowed the Igbo second plural; "unu" to fill this gap.)<br>
<br>
The simplest and most elegant way to fix this, in my view, is to make <br>
generic sentences plural, so that "they" doesn't upset the Grammar
Police.<br>
<br>
Ron</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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