Heard on the judges

[David A. Daniel]

>This morning a 30ish black woman, a landlord,

How come she is not a landlady or, at the very edge of compromise, a
landperson? It's getting curiouser and curiouser out there...

OK - I was going to leave it there but decided to add some more stuff: why
is it stigmatizing to identify that a woman is involved? Shhh. Don't say
landlady, they'll know it's a woman. But, wait a minute, we already know
it's a woman because he said "woman". So, it's OK to say woman, or she, to
identify that the person is a woman, but it is not OK to build the
identification into the activity itself. That is, it is OK to say "that
woman is a landlord" whereby we all know her sex and what she does, but it
is not OK to say "that person is a landlady" whereby we all know her sex and
what she does, but via unacceptable means. Further, interesting that it is
OK to identify the woman landlord as black. Woman - OK, Black - OK, Landlady
- not OK. Gotta be a sex-neutral job description. It's a funny old world out
there. So, for complete neutrality, how about: "This morning a 30ish
landperson". There, we have no idea as to sex or race, only activity. Well,
oops, we do have "30ish" which, of course, leads to ageism. We might get a
preconceived notion about the person due to the person's age. Therefore,
seems to me, we need "This morning a landperson..." If, that is, it is
deemed absolutely necessary to know what the person does in the context of
the information being communicated. Otherwise, we get, "this morning a
person" of unknown age, race, sex or activity. And this is acceptable if we
really must know that there is a person involved. Otherwise, we could have,
"this morning it was said that..." I guess I can stop here.
DAD

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org