Re: The myth of sexist language

[Bill Burns <WBURNS -at- VAX -dot- MICRON -dot- COM>]

LONG ACADEMIC POST FOLLOWS.  HIT DELETE NOW TO AVOID THE WINDSTORM!

John Renish writes:

>Au contraire. Ludwig Wittgenstein says, "We don't so much say what we think
>as think what we say."

Ahem: [ruffles notes]

I agree here to an extent, so I'll throw in some additional support. I haven't
read Wittgenstein, but I'd assume this premise is based on deductive reasoning
rather than empirical evidence (being philosophy as opposed to science).  Lev
Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, did consider research on the concurrent
development of though and language.  His work suggests that though and
language both have tremendous influence on each other: thought allowing the
concepts required for linguistic structures to arise and language creating
conceptual constructs to enable more refinement in thought.  In his thinking,
language was as much a tool for thought as it was for communication.

Here's my perspective on the subject.  In the past, "he" was accepted as a
gender-neutral pronoun.  This may have to do more with the development of
English through the middle English period (when it lost its grammatical gender
distinctions).  Prior to this change, the masculine pronouns were "he, hiene,
him, his."  The feminine forms were "heo, hie, hiere, hiere."  The feminine
nominative pronoun was supplanted by the demonstrative "sio" ("scho" in the
north).  What was the neutral pronoun?  Hit, hit, him, and his.  Consider also
that these forms were used preceding and during the great Germanic vowel
shift.  What this means is that the vowel sound used for the neutral pronoun
were low vowels that correspond with our present pronunciation of "he."  The
accusative feminine form seems closest to our present masculine nominative
pronoun.  The stem he- was used for all parts of the third person pronoun.
Hence it was literally neutral because it had to be inflected to take a
gender.  (The etymological information above has been cited from the _Compact
Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary_.)

The issue now is that _he_ is literally not grammatically neutral since the
only remaining genders we have are in the pronouns we use to designate
individuals (and occasionally with inanimate objects like boats and ships).
We DO need an alternative, but it will only come into use with common
practice.  A committee won't be able to implement the change.

As far as words influencing thinking, just take a look at our common extended
metaphors.  How often do you say that you are going to save time, spend time,
waste time, and so on?  Can you really do these things with time?  In a
society that has this metaphor in its cultural framework, you at least have
that illusion.  (Interestingly, this metaphor was not part of our cultural
heritage until after the advent of industrialism.)

I agree with Geoff Hart's suggestion.  When the subject's gender is not in
question, write around it.  I find that it's practically engrained in my
writing style now.

Bill Burns                            *
Assm. Technical Writer/Editor         * LIBERTY, n. One of imagination's most
Micron Technology, Inc.               * precious possessions.
Boise, ID                             *
WBURNS -at- VAX -dot- MICRON -dot- COM                 *                     Ambrose Bierce