[Lexicog] Re: First Lady

[Michael Nicholas]

Dear Claire, 
     The widescale tagging of new meanings to old words is I think a sign of a new style of prescriptive lexicography based on political correctness. If a dictionary claims to portray what a word means according to popularity of use, then it is open to all sorts of changes from pressure groups and interested parties. I believe that language shapes our perception of society. At this rate we should start thinking, as behoves people interested in lexicography, in coming up with a list of neutral terms. Spanish seems to be making up for lost time when it comes to new meanings added to existing words. We have "madre biológica" which is a type of mother, i.e. the one who actually gave birth to the child as opposed to, I imagine, mothers who don't give birth to a child.

Claire Bowern <bowern at rice.edu> escribió:
          
> A more important question is whether such redefinitions of “marriage” (in
> this case “husband”), which I reject from my Christian convictions, will
> ever enter the law (marital law) and the dictionary.

This has come up a lot in the US over the last few years, with laws 
seeking to *define* marriage as between one man and one woman (the 
phrasing is one I'm reproducing from memory, but it's almost always 
framed that way). There was a vote in Texas within the last year that 
wrote this definition of marriage into the Texas constitution. These 
debates have, for the most part, been based on the assumption that the 
legal and lexicographic definitions of marriage are the same, and that 
the issue is simply one of morals (which it isn't, by any means). There 
was a post or two on Language Log (www.languagelog.org) about the 
wording of the legislation and semantics.

Incidentally, I got married in Cambridge, Massachusetts shortly after 
the legislation allowing same sex marriages was passed. Some of the many 
forms we filled out at the council office had "Party A" and "Party B" 
where "husband" and "wife" had been, while at least one had "husband" 
and "wife" crossed out and Party A/B substituted.

Claire


         

 		
---------------------------------

LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo.
Llamadas a fijos y móviles desde 1 céntimo por minuto.
http://es.voice.yahoo.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lexicography/attachments/20061025/02fc1807/attachment.htm>