linguistics

Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning: Linguistic Practice and Politics

andrea — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Showcasing twelve articles by noted linguist Sally McConnell-Ginet, Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning weaves together some of her most provocative and influential work on language, gender, and sexual meaning-making from the last three decades. In her many fruitful collaborations with colleagues, students, and friends, McConnell-Ginet argues that language is not a passive craft, but rather, an active process of meaning-making that has its roots in the social identities, contexts, and statuses of the speakers and listeners.

Insisting upon a gendered reading of a host of subjects—among them high school cliques, name changes following marriage, assumptions in the phrase cleaning lady, presumptions of heterosexuality, and speech in cross-sex friendships—McConnell-Ginet’s writings have laid the groundwork for seeing gender in seemingly benign moments of communication, and in extending such gendered readings into the realm of other often-unnoticed power dynamics present within language. Language is never politically neutral or merely a string of words, but rather, deeply rooted in systems of inequality.

As a wonderful addition to the Oxford University Press series on language and gender, Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning serves both as a historical consideration of McConnell-Ginet’s impact on the field of linguistics, and as a collection of ideas that remain highly relevant. Beginning with a review essay that tackles the difference between intended and received meanings, the impossibility of “authentic selves,” and the role of gender in shaping content and social meaning, McConnell-Ginet establishes herself as accessible, clear, grounded in research, and persistently feminist.

From the seemingly mundane act of reading the Harry Potter series to the politicized language of phone sex workers, she traces the social and stylistic meanings of language across a broad range of modern scenarios. She then establishes the basis for a feminist linguistics by erasing the possibility of “mere linguistics” (Chapters 1 and 2) followed by clear arguments for gender within linguistics (Chapter 3) and linguistics within feminism (Chapter 4). The book delves into “communities of practice” like high schools and political organizations (Chapter 5) and returns to her groundbreaking Signs piece on gendered intonation (Chapter 6), along with her early work on gendered pronouns and assumptions of default masculinity (Chapter 9). The collection concludes with chapters on motives and actions in speaking (Chapter 8), naming and labeling as gendered (Chapter 10), and queer semantics (including a particularly astute critical analysis of the word lesbian) (Chapter 11).

While the book occasionally veers towards the more dry and technical aspects of sociolinguistics (for example, it helps to have a working knowledge of illocutionary and perlocutionary speech, lexical semantics, prosody, rules of phonology, and variationist sociolinguistics), she nevertheless offers access points both to those solidly within the field of linguistics and to those approaching it from the outside.

Reading Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning provokes questions about the basic assumptions present in everyday occurrences and commonplace linguistic practices. Readers will undoubtedly have many “aha!” moments when excavating their own communication habits, phrases, and ways of making meaning through words. The volume happily skips from subject to subject in order to expertly reinforce her conclusions: all language is tainted with assumptions about gender, and all forms of communication are inseparable from power. Collectively, McConnell-Ginet’s work provides a timely, convincing, insightful, and engaging basis for linking together the limitations, surprises, and possibilities of language.

Written by: Breanne Fahs, April 30th 2011

Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms

farhana — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Ralph Keyes

Little Brown and Company

Ralph Keyes’s Euphemania is so poorly written that, in spite of the rich and interesting subject matter, it is difficult to read.

On the one hand, Keyes insists that euphemisms—circumlocutionary words and phrases—signal both the pliancy and richness possible in human languages and the creativity of the human mind. On the other hand, he claims that by replacing strong clear words with softer and often foreign ones, our language is thereby made sterile and weak. Here he comes close to George Orwell’s famous (and better written and much more convincing) rant against dead metaphors and fancy Latinate replacement for simple Anglo-Saxon words in the English language. Keyes appears to attempt to make this point about language generally—not about the English languages specifically—and so bounces back and forth between endorsing and bemoaning the creation and use of euphemistic language.

When tracing the genealogy of families of euphemisms, Keyes offers confused and misleading information. For example, when writing about the status of children born to unmarried parents, Keyes equates the concepts of “bastard” and “legitimacy” with “child of sin.” That is to say, he squashes a lineage of concepts involving legal rights, inheritance, property laws, and status and a lineage of concepts involving metaphysics, sin, religious feeling, and moral commandments together as though there were no distinction.

The problems I have briefly noted are annoying and unfortunate. However, Keyes’s attitude toward women throughout his book is plainly offensive. What does Keyes mean to imply about the English Queen Victoria when he says she “was hardly dutiful”? Earlier in the book he explained that “duty” was an old Roman euphemism for sex—but the mother of nine children certainly “did her duty.” Earlier on the page, he mentions a “certain kind of dutiful sex”—is he implying that Victoria was a firecracker in the sack? How on earth would he know? Physical size and shape are prime targets for euphemistic language. Keyes, introducing the euphemism “Rubenesque,” tells us that the women Rubens painted would now be considered “candidates for gastric bypass.” This tells us far more about Keyes’s repulsion toward larger women than it does about Rubens’s art. When discussing words for genitalia, it becomes clear that Keyes is clueless about women’s anatomy: he claims that the offensive term “pudenda” (indicating shamefulness) is the “overall” term for women’s genitals, comprising, among other things, the vulva. Keyes is apparently unaware of the equivalence of vulva and pudenda, and of the preference for vulva.

Overall, this book is a waste of time. Do not put it on your shopping list. Do not give it to anyone who appreciates good writing, clear thinking or accuracy. Above all, do not give it to anyone who likes, supports, understands, or cares about women.

Written by: kristina grob, January 12th 2011

The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture

admin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:52:00 +0000

By Warren Hoffman

Syracuse University Press

Once homosexuality has been fully incorporated and accepted into “mainstream” society, I wonder what group will be placed at the bottom of the totem pole. I use the word incorporated because it symbolizes a capitalistic tolerance without a desire or need to understand a person's totality. What makes this subject matter doubly difficult is when being part of one group becomes the default for another.

In The Passing Game, Warren Hoffman explains how the term homosexuality was coined at the very same moment in history as anti-semitism, how the stereotypes of Jews from 1880 to 1920 included homosexuality, and how synonymous Jew and queer were at that time. Hoffman’s first example is the Yiddish play Got fun nekome (God of Vengeance) by Sholem Asch, which first appeared in 1907 and depicted prostitution and homoerotic female love. When the English version of the play was performed on Broadway in 1923, it caused a scandal, in which the entire cast was arrested and found guilty for performing an immoral drama. The issue of homosexuality was virtually non-existent and non-recognized by wider audiences in 1907, but Hoffman shows that the uproar in 1923 indicated a shift in thought on sexuality between 1907 and 1923.

Further along the book, Hoffman focuses on the term queer and its association outside of a sexual context. In the 1946 publication of Wasteland by lesbian writer Jo Sinclair (Ruth Seid), Hoffman explores the way in which this term is used in a non-sexual context, but still somehow tied to sexuality. The main character, Jake Braunowitz, is a second-generation heterosexual Jewish American, who is ashamed and embarrassed to be Jewish. Debbie is Jake’s sister, who learns through her psychiatrist to accept her lesbian identity. Jake seeks the help of this same psychiatrist, and learns that by accepting his sister as queer, he can also accept his Jewish identity.

In Hoffman’s examination of Got fun nekome (God of Vengeance) and Sinclair’s Wasteland, as well as his study of cross-dressing and gender ambiguity in short stories, shows how queerness can be related to subject matter outside the context of sexuality. For example, Hoffman analyzes how the feminization of the Jewish male has shaped many Jewish men and women as they have been forced to deal with their own sexuality.

Readers of Hoffman's work may realize how anything that deviates from the mainstream culture and society, be it, culturally, “racially”, or religiously, can be considered abnormal. The Passing Game reminds us why these predominant cultural and societal mores should be changed by any means necessary.

Written by: Olupero R. Aiyenimelo, September 17th 2009