I can see where some concepts of a woman's language are appealing. As I said, what brought this back to mind was that I'm in a gender and linguistics class right now.
There is definitely a bias toward males in some aspects of language--I've always loathed the "-ess" suffix, and even terms of address are different among males and females. However, she implies that language itself, instead of certain linguistic forms, is somehow male. She also ignores important nonverbal aspects of language, such as intonation.
I suppose what annoys me the most, besides the vocabulary itself, is her premise that linguistic change facilitates social change. This is definitely not true--look at attempts at creating politically correct terms for a good example of it NOT working. Language change tends to lag behind social change. This is the same as your commment that there can't actually be a women's language until we live in a post-patriarchal world.
Thanks for the input, though. I'm glad to get some different opinions!
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 06:24 pm (UTC)There is definitely a bias toward males in some aspects of language--I've always loathed the "-ess" suffix, and even terms of address are different among males and females. However, she implies that language itself, instead of certain linguistic forms, is somehow male. She also ignores important nonverbal aspects of language, such as intonation.
I suppose what annoys me the most, besides the vocabulary itself, is her premise that linguistic change facilitates social change. This is definitely not true--look at attempts at creating politically correct terms for a good example of it NOT working. Language change tends to lag behind social change. This is the same as your commment that there can't actually be a women's language until we live in a post-patriarchal world.
Thanks for the input, though. I'm glad to get some different opinions!