http://mensnewsdaily.com/2010/04/05/feminist-censorship-and-language-reform/
At the beginning of the article, Dalrymple discusses "mankind" vs. "humankind" and the differentiation between the two. He discusses how he dislikes the interchangeability between the two because he thinks the reasoning and logic behind it is wrong.
" If Mankind is objectionable because of its masculinity, Humankind is no better. It still contains the dread word, or should I say syllable, “man.” Nor would “Hupersonkind” be better, because of the masculinity of the syllable “son.”"
It is interesting that words can be taken apart and used against a writer or that a society might disagree with a word because of the nitpicky details such as words within a word. Association of the meaning of the word with the word and parts of the word can create such turmoil even though that was not what the author had intended.
The article mainly discusses censorship and language reform. He is unhappy with the way society does not accept certain words or phrases and that it is in its own way an intangible but very real method of censorship. In other words, language and expression through language is being limited because of society's "burden" of not insulting the audience or reader.
I agree with the article being that language plays a very big part in our expression of opinion and if we are limited by how we can say or what we can say, then our freedom of expression is being limited too. So to what extent do we have a right to freely express ourselves and where can the line be drawn as to what should or should not be censored?
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Great topic! The balance of individual freedoms and the rights of others has been a hot topic of discussion for centuries. Many of the philosophical foundations for our current (more or less) democratic government go back to Rousseau’s formulation of the social contract. In it he tackles precisely this thorny issue of how do you make good trade offs between freedom and pretection from tyranny. Certainly imposing standards of language use so as to protect from discrimination falls into this set of considerations. As a hypothetical, do you think Dalrymple would be equally excited about keeping gendered language if the generic was feminine? For example, “Lady’s search for knowledge has led her to improve scientific methodology.”?
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a really interesting article. The debate over what language is politically correct and what language is not is continuous. I understand that some words may be blatantly wrong to verbalize, but should words like "mankind" and "humankind" be as scrutinized as they are? Most of the time, when people use the word humankind, they are not purposely degrading women. So then why do people worry themselves over this?
ReplyDeleteAs you pointed out, I also think that our language is being compromised by all these constraints. People cannot say what they really mean without receiving judgment, so many thoughts are left unexpressed. Instead of people having to censor themselves, maybe others should change their interpretations of certain expressions to allow a greater freedom of expression. But is this even acceptable to ask?