[Ads-l] Berkeley and gender neutral words

[Laurence Horn]

FWIW, this is Miller & Swift’s summary of the study I was trying to remember: 

https://tinyurl.com/y6d6ztqn
 
And a related study with similar results:

https://tinyurl.com/y42dym4b

 The experimental protocols in both cases were different from the one Jon and Peter are discussing, and they don’t relate to what’s demeaning or offensive, but to which images are evoked by given “neutral” words, and by hypothesis to who feels included and who doesn’t.

LH


> On Jul 21, 2019, at 4:14 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> I was thinking the same thing. It seems like a non sequitur to jump from
> the described experiment to the conclusion that that the replacement of
> such words would be powerfully (or even marginally) beneficial.
> 
> BTW. "sacerdos" not only referred to either sex, its grammatical gender
> varied accordingly.
> 
> JL
> 
> JL
> 
> On Sun, Jul 21, 2019 at 12:23 PM Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Correct me if I'm wrong, but evidence of being "more likely" to select
>> certain kinds of photos in response to different words is not the same
>> as evidence of being "demeaning, offensive, sexist or the like."  Or is
>> there more to the study than you conveyed in the brief reference to it
>> here?
>> 
>> ------ Original Message ------
>> From: "Alice Faber" <afaber at panix.com>
>> To: ADS-L at listserv.uga.edu
>> Sent: 7/20/2019 5:31:28 PM
>> Subject: Re: Berkeley and gender neutral words
>> 
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Alice Faber <afaber at PANIX.COM>
>>> Subject:      Re: Berkeley and gender neutral words
>> 
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> 
>>> On 7/20/19 4:13 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>> Is there any pre-craze empirical evidence that women in general found
>> such
>>>> words demeaning, offensive, sexist, or the like?
>>> 
>>> Actually, there is. I don't remember the citation, but back when I
>>> taught intro linguistics and psycholinguistics, there was a study we
>>> discussed where the experimental task was to find pictures in magazines
>>> to illustrate specific words. When participants were finding pictures of
>>> firefighters, mail carriers, flaggers and the like they were more likely
>>> to select pictures of women than when they were finding pictures of
>>> firemen, mailmen, flagmen, etc. These participants may well have claimed
>>> not to think of the latter as inherently gendered terms, but they
>>> certainly acted as if they were.
>>> 
>>> AF
>>> 
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>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
>> 
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
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