Rhetoric in Retreat (The Good, the Bad, and the Ridiculous)
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Rhetoric in Retreat (The Good, the Bad, and the Ridiculous) Some Serious Semantics Nothing is more apt to insult someone than fun-poking around issues important to a subgroup of humankind—whether circumscribed by ethnicity, gender, height, weight, etc. "Posterminaries" hazards into this linguistic no man's or woman's land because too often we see language squirm self-consciously in stilted phraseology as it tries to navigate from guidepost to guidepost along boundaries demarcating good taste from offense. (This article itself is a prime example.) For the mine field ahead, it would be nice to apply the eloquence of a poet, the incisiveness of a surgeon, the diplomacy of a statesperson, and the wisdom of a sage. We must, however, settle for the hamhandedness (no porcine offense intended)1 of this scribe.
Sexual Semantics or the Ultimate D Fence: (Bad)
The assertion is made that defaulting to the male pronoun as generic both legitimates the status quo and perpetuates stereotypes. It is therefore a factor itself in entrenching bias. Language is at once both villain and victim. Gender bias has therefore created the worst conundrum for the grammarian in the workplace. This is particularly hazardous territory where, to borrow Koshland's2 words, only angels and editors would venture and wise men [sic] fear to tread. Why? Because juxtaposing the immense issue and fact of bias against the disadvantaged majority with an apparently inconsequential choice of pronoun for ideologically correct speech risks both trivializing the significant and overemphasizing the trivial, to everyone's dismay. Nevertheless, we forge ahead. Divergence of the Ds: (Good) "Generic he has disappeared from How do we recognize and describe most scientific publications, after a fierce diversity, a quality both humankind and fight. . . . Further work awaits the linlanguage enjoy? We can be distinguistic reformer, for in this hard-fought guished, differentiated, discriminated, and diversified. Being distinguished is still battle, pronouns are but prelude," according to Anne Eisenberg.3 Although OK, and as yet carries no baggage of inequity. Differentiation is also still OK in a speaker's "or she," self-consciously appended to a "he," can be greeted with calculus and, in a technical biological empathetic grins, and even though it is sense, it is the very process through healthy not to take ourselves too seriouswhich our traits are determined. It has ly, there is something less than funny escaped both positive and negative here. Strings of gender-presumptive implications. usages represent micro-inequities which To be discriminating smacks of an sum to substantive discounts of the omitacceptable level of snobbish selectivity ted sex. Thus the battle has been joined. when applied to food, wine, literature, and perhaps automobiles. However, disBefore Degenderization truncates all crimination, per se, as applied to species chairmen and chairwomen to chairs and Homo sapiens, has fallen into disrepute all spokesmen and spokeswomen to and is ethically, morally, a
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