Men and women: are we really worlds apart? - Features Do women and men talk differently? And, if they do, why? Kitty Sadler explores the theories Kitty Sadler, 13 March 2011 Everybody knows men are from Mars and women are from Venus. There's no denying it: no education or social conditioning has succeeded in erasing the differences between the language of men and women. For Otto Jespersen and other linguists from the early 20th century, a woman is not a man's counterpart; she is his wife. Despite an investigation into memory in which women came out on top, it was still asserted that it was men who had the higher intellectual capacity - it was easier to succeed in the test when the subject was enough of an airhead that they could make use of "the vacant chambers of the mind". It's not just old men born in the 19th century who have supported deficiency theory. Lakoff stated that women use phatic (empty) language; apologise too much and can't tell jokes, for example. A stance many readers may find more palatable is the theory of dominance.
Marjorie Rhodes, Ph.D.: How Generic Language Leads Children to Develop Social Stereotypes Consider the following statements: "Girls have long hair"; "Jews celebrate Passover"; "Italians love pasta." These statements make claims that we view as generally true of groups, even though we can easily call to mind exceptions (e.g., girls with short hair, Italians who dislike pasta, etc.). In linguistics these statements are called "generics." Nevertheless, recent research that Dr. Children were shown Zarpies one at a time. Hearing generic sentences had striking effects on children's beliefs. What does this mean? Second, the children who previously heard generics were more likely to view Zarpie traits as inborn and inevitable. Children who had previously heard generics were more likely to assume that the baby would still grow up to have Zarpie traits (e.g., being scared of, instead of liking, ladybugs). In a third study, we examined the circumstances under which parents produce generics when talking to their children. What do all these findings mean?
#Tweet #Tweet Founded in 2006, Twitter is the online social networking service that allows its users to communicate via text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as ‘tweets’. Communication in Twitter is fast-paced and it can be difficult to keep track of the talk that emerges, so a convention has arisen among Twitter users whereby a hashtag (#) can be used as a prefix to make the term searchable and then others can search for tweets that have that same topic. So, for instance, a search of #LFW this week in Twitter should produce a list of tweets relating to London Fashion Week. Page’s study investigates the way that Twitter members use hashtags as a way of gaining increased attention in order to self-promote, relating this to the notion of ‘self-branding and micro-celebrity’ (the idea of promoting one’s self in order to gain status or fame in the offline world). Overall, Page found that corporations and celebrities most frequently use hashtags.
Tone: A Matter of Attitude Gender-Specific Pronouns And we hope that the writer of the sentence above is working at an all-male school; otherwise, grief will follow him or her all his or her days. Our section on Pronouns already has a paragraph on avoiding gender problems with the singular "his," and we refer you to that document. Most gender problems can be avoided without the use of the clunky he or she/him or her construction or the more monstrous he/she by using the plural: "Students planning to graduate this spring should see their counselor at once." Avoid Sexist Terminology Avoid language based on hurtful assumptions about gender: The conversation above probably took place between some chap and the "girl" at the front desk. Copy Editor Bill Walsh has this to say about using the word "female": In most cases, use "woman" as the noun and "female" as the adjective. Being careful to avoid sexist language should not lead one into silliness. In the box below is a perfectly wonderful definition of a college.
Hoodies strike fear in British cinema | Film Who's afraid of the big bad hoodie? Enough of us, certainly, that the smart money in British cinema is going on those films that prey on our fear of urban youths and show that fear back to us. These days, the scariest Britflick villain isn't a flesh-eating zombie, or an East End Mr Big with a sawn-off shooter and a tattooed sidekick. It is a teenage boy with a penchant for flammable casualwear. What separates hoodies from the youth cults of previous moral panics – the teddy boys, the mods and rockers, the punks, the ravers have all had their day at the cinema – is that they don't have the pop-cultural weight of the other subcultures, whose members bonded through music, art and customised fashion. Greg Philo, research director of Glasgow University Media Group and professor of sociology at the university, traces our attitudes to hoodies back to the middle classes' long-held fear of those who might undermine their security. "If you go to these places, it's very grim," says Philo.
Retronaut - See history. What happened when I started a feminist society at school I am 17 years old and I am a feminist. I believe in gender equality, and am under no illusion about how far we are from achieving it. Identifying as a feminist has become particularly important to me since a school trip I took to Cambridge last year. A group of men in a car started wolf-whistling and shouting sexual remarks at my friends and me. For those men we were just legs, breasts and pretty faces. Shockingly, the boys in my peer group have responded in exactly the same way to my feminism. After returning from this school trip I started to notice how much the girls at my school suffer because of the pressures associated with our gender. I decided to set up a feminist society at my school, which has previously been named one of "the best schools in the country", to try to tackle these issues. What I hadn't anticipated on setting up the feminist society was a massive backlash from the boys in my wider peer circle. I fear that many boys of my age fundamentally don't respect women.
Skivers v strivers: the argument that pollutes people's minds | Politics "Skiver" v "striver". It suits Cameron's tabloid-slick delivery and Steve Hilton's blue-sky viciousness, but how did it go viral? Why does Ed Miliband now use "striver" as though it were an acceptable way to describe someone, by a stranger's groundless estimation of how hard they are hypothetically trying? Don't tell me it is because it rhymes. Sarah Teather, who on Tuesday was one of the pitifully few (four) Lib Dems voting against the welfare bill, described the so-called "skivers" she encounters in her constituency office: "People who come to my constituency office these days for help with some kind of error in their benefits often spend the first few minutes trying to justify their worth. How did this come about? People sometimes ascribe this adoption of "welfare" as an Americanism, designed to convey some of the US's sneering synecdoche where the name of the government support becomes shorthand for the person being supported.
Ideas Illustrated » Blog Archive » Visualizing English Word Origins I have been reading a book on the development of the English language recently and I’ve become fascinated with the idea of word etymology — the study of words and their origins. It’s no secret that English is a great borrower of foreign words but I’m not enough of an expert to really understand what that means for my day-to-day use of the language. Simply reading about word history didn’t help me, so I decided that I really needed to see some examples. Using Douglas Harper’s online dictionary of etymology, I paired up words from various passages I found online with entries in the dictionary. The results look like this: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. This simple sentence is constructed of eight distinct words and one word suffix. A second example shows more variety: Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. What follows are five excerpts taken from a spectrum of written sources. Passage #1: American Literature
Susan Sarandon: 'Feminism is a bit of an old-fashioned word' | From the Observer | The Observer Susan Sarandon photographed in Los Angeles for the Observer by Steve Schofield 2013. Photograph: Contour by Getty In Arbitrage, you play the wife of a multi-millionaire hedge fund manager who is stronger than she first appears. It's not the usual character arc for a female support role – was that part of the appeal? Arbitrage Production year: 2012 Country: USA Cert (UK): 15 Runtime: 107 mins Directors: Nicholas Jarecki Cast: Brit Marling, Laetitia Casta, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Tim Roth More on this film Absolutely and I was also taken by Nicholas Jarecki's enthusiasm and passion, and Richard Gere, I've known forever and I got to work with him. I think that what happens in a long relationship [like the one in the film] – and the longest I've ever had was 23 years – is that people have assumptions and firm habits in the way they relate to each other. You're known for playing strong women… Except I don't particularly think of them as strong. Would you call yourself a feminist?
Sexist Terms - and alternatives Sexist Terms - and alternatives This list of sexist terms shows not only what may be avoided but also how they may be avoided. If in the company of people who are made uncomfortable by sexist terms, there is a polite and linguistically acceptable alternative in most cases. The often quoted "person aperture cover" for "man hole" is both a hoax and a parody of the intention of the language. The following are becoming increasingly accepted and mostly are no longer an issue of contention. The following checklist of alternatives to sexist language was produced by a publisher giving advice to authors. 1. If the gender of the person being discussed is unknown or could be either female or male, there are several alternatives. The Female Leader Gerada said that if she had been a male leader she would have been referred to as "strong willed" or "open minded" but instead was described as "naive." Can we be neutral? A proposed set of "Spivak gender" pronouns includes "e, em, eir, eirs, eirself, sie."