Language, literacy and hierarchies.

[Damsili]

I've been thinking about how languages have evolved within systems of hierarchies and how that must have influenced the form and flavour of the words and phrases that are used. Before we even have the ability to really question the words and phrases we use, we are fluent in our native tongue, habitual in its structures and even have our thought processes informed by the structure of our language.

Continuing with that, I recall someone recently quoting Sandi Toksvig as saying that the alphabet helped men maintain power over women. (Slightly throwaway remark on R4, but still!) Certainly the ability to read and write is used as a tool to minimise female power in many countries and throughout history - but does literacy itself actually aid patriarchy? In thinking about how language develops, I can certainly see that it maintains the habitual reinforcement of sexist themes.

With that in mind, I'm also wondering if social media has simply exposed existing misogyny or whether the rise of the written word in communication can be correlated with a rise of sexist vitriol directed at women.

I'm learning a little nederlands (dutch to you) and, whether it's just my course I don't know, but it's noun groups are referred to as 'common' and 'neuter'. It's a Hugo-3-month course (just to give me a start). Also the 3rd person plural is zij, which is the same word as 'she' (or feminine 3rd person singular).

I'm not an expert on languages but it's relation to cultural concepts is complicated and self-feeding. The social structures form the language and the language forms social structures too, in my view. The latter half tends to be played down by those whom it doesn't affect but I thought feminist theoreticians all knew it, in practice if not in theory.

and yes I'm Hungarian

I should ask my SIL 1 & 2. they are Belgians and speak Flemish (and also French and English)

It would be interesting to know why the noun groups are called 'male' and 'female', since from the dutch example they don't have to be... I wondered about that for a while, with knowing a bit of french and having a tiny bit of exposure to Italian and german, they are all described like that. Are they taught like that to natives? Or is it an English description? Answers on postcards please...

x-post, yes it would be interesting to know, zing.

By the way, how could I forget Latin, the mother tongue of the romance family. Also very divided male/female, in verbs as well as nouns. Roman society was of course very sexist. God knows how that was taught.

I recommend reading Dale Spender's "Man Made Language"

From what I understand, the Dutch did have masculine and feminine, but it became neuter, so that's a more recent thing.

I know it's wiki(sorry!) but here's a list of languages broken down by the type of genders they use.

Oh and I'm Russian descent, but learned it from birth along with English. So I have 'native' terms in both languages which can be a bit confusing.

Queen

since I learnt Russian from a Russian in Hungary I'm sure the gender word terminology (whether its male/female/neutral (definitely neutral I Hungarian!! ) or masculine/feminine/neuter) comes with each language that uses them..It would have to because that's how they learn their own languages too.

is that what you mean?
(sorry but I have a migraine so it literally hurts to think!)

and the Dutch are really so laid back I can't help but thinking one day they just went "tts, this is too much hard work, let's not worry about it. Let's have some nice cheese and stroopwafels instead"

(we have a lot of Dutch friends. they don't seem to comprehend stress )

Language is a neutral tool, but like any tool it can be used to oppress or liberate. A knife can be used to kill someone or save their life in surgery - it's not an intrinsically evil object. I see language the same way. So far many male-dominated societies have had the power to determine how language and literacy are used to their advantage. One thing we can do to counteract this is pick people up, eg, every time they use 'he' without thinking when it could be a reference to a man or woman. Or question why the school/lea has chosen no books by female authors as set texts, etc. I'm a translator working in partnership with several others, and one of our core principles is never to write 'he' unless specifically referring to a man; it should never be used as a lazy shorthand for 'one / everybody'. We also try to sneak in the occasional 'she or he' instead of 'he or she'. It's interesting that German has the word 'man', which actually means 'one'. Of course to English speakers it sounds horribly male-centred, but actually it's completely linguistically neutral. Now that 'one' sounds so old-fashioned, English is sorely missing a third-person ungendered pronoun.

"Das Maedchen" (girl) is also neuter - not sure why (esp. as "Der Junge" - boy - is masculine!).

This is because the word Maedchen is a diminutive form of the word Magd (die Magd), ie the maid. All words using the -chen ending are necessarily neuter. Just like all words using the -lein ending are feminine. After spending most of my life in Germany it still does my head in sometimes when people refer to a girl - Maedchen - as 'it' but a computer - der Rechner - as 'he'.

Oi, Zing - stop outing me!

That's exactly what I meant. In fact I know more of the Russian terminology for it, because I was taught Russian grammar very formally, than I do English, as it was in the 70s and there was a distinct laissez faire attitude towards grammar.

Arch

I agree, and the lack of a gender"free" 3rd person pronoun is actually quite frustrating.
it's just tedious having to say "he" or "she" or even type out "s/he".

we had 5 boys in a row to start with so having called all my children "he" for 11 years I took for ages to get used to saying "she" after DD was born.
I actually try to avoid that problem altogether and use baby's name straight away. (but then I'd and up calling newborn by the name of the second youngest and start using "baby" which is just too impersonal)

funnily enough now that we have another baby boy I forever keep saying "she/her/hers" when referring to him.
this whole she / he business drives me nuts.

I'm going to start calling my kids "it" it1, it 2....

Can anyone help me out on this one? I quite frequently, in informal speech or emails to friends, use "they" as a neutral 3rd person singular pronoun (despite the fact that it's grammatically correct - I'm deliberately choosing to say "my desire for a gender neutral pronoun that isn't hopelessly clunk - 'he or she' - trumps grammar"). Now I'm sure I remember a few years ago coming across a Shakespeare play where he uses "they" in precisely this way - as a gender neutral 3rd person singular pronoun. And I remember being terribly excited by this discovery, but not noting down which play or where it was...

Am I just imagining this, or has someone else noticed this on?

Damn, why didn't I just google?

wikipedia entry on usage by established authors

Not just Shakespeare - Chaucer, Austen, Thackeray and Shaw.

lurcio

so is "they" instead of he/she correct grammatically or not?
I'm confused (unless you made a typo, sorry).

I actually thought it was very common to use they that way - I admit I don't actually remember if it's grammatically correct or not.

it might be, if it's a similar irregularity to how I was, you were, she (or he!) was are used but "I were" is also corect if you use it like in the famous song in Fiddler on the roof
"If I were a rich man..."
Am I making any sense?

*correct

Ok, this is an interesting topic for me. But my comment is not so much about the structure of language or the use of male words as default, but the actual use of written language (literacy) itself.

I do think that literacy is connected to patriarchy. The connection is through economics. Literacy made it much easier for people to trade over large distances and in large quantities as it allowed for much easier transfer of information about what is traded, by whom, of what quality, how much money it's making, what the costs are, etc. With large trade we get capitalism. With capitalism we get exploitation in the sense of somebody makes the goods and somebody sells them and the latter are not necessarily fair to the former. As it happens, that people who make the goods are very often slaves or women or, preferably, both. Within a large-scale trade arrangement, women are stuck producing things not just for their household/village, but for wider sale and they do not necessarily see the benefits as immediately as they would doing stuff for their own household because they are not the ones who receive the money from the sale.

There is a fascinating book "Women's Work - the first 20,000 years" by Elizabeth Barber. It's about the history of textiles. There are a couple of fascinating chapters in their about the textile trade in antiquity. Basically, slaves and women manufactured the cloth in vast quantities that was then sold off to foreign lands (also in vast quantities) by free men.

Literacy allows for easier control of more complex systems like large-scale long-distance trade or large societies. And a complex system, once it's viable, will have more specialisation, stratification and, ultimately, inequality, than a small system.

It looks (from the wiki article) as though it was made into a hard and fast rule by the Victorians (who loved making arbitrary rules about things!) and up till then English usage had been a lot more fluid.

The use of "were" you cite is correct, because it's a subjunctive.
"If it were the case (it is not actually the case, but if it were), then such and such would follow." I love the subjunctive mood, but it's falling into disuse in modern English, and most people now would write "If it was the case, then..."

I iz riight, aint I?

Yu iz alwiz rite, Zing.

Just to add British Sign Language in to the mix. Traditionally deaf children went to boarding school, some of the signs used in girls schools are only ever used by women, when in a mixed setting the 'male' sign is used.

I don't see how the grammatical idea of masculine and feminine is relevant, because apart from those actual labels there doesn't appear to be any connection with actual human gender.

I think more relevant is the use of terms such as "fireman" rather than "fire fighter" for creating expectations and norms.

Vivacia, I agree - and wonder why, then, we have those labels. Particularly if they are shared in other languages, i.e. as zing says the gender label comes with each language that uses hem and that's how the native speakers learn it too. Just curious, why not call it, oh right and left, or whatever. .

I'm not convinced about a lnk between literacy and patriarchy. Literacy has only been widespread very recently and was limited in both men and women. Weren't scribes in history regarded with some contempt - by that kind of male - as well as being held in esteen by those in the know?

The link Autumn details through economics can be picked apart - for a start trade does not equal capitalism. Theres been trade throughout human history and not capitalism - plus russia and china exist now, whatever system rhey claim to be on now.

Scuse typos, I'm on a smaller keypad than I'm used to....
I've always used 'they' as a 3rd person sing, no one ever pulled me up on it.

ZingOfSeven - Hebrew is very heavily gendered. Like French, all nouns are either masculine or feminine, and groups of mixed gendered people (or items) default to the male collective as soon as one man is included. So, when speaking to a group of women you would refer to them as "aten" (female plural "you"), but as soon as a manly man turned up to share his manly views, you'd have to say "atem" (male plural "you") to refer to everyone.

Another charming example is the word for man is "eesh" and the word for women is "eesha". However, while the word for wife is still "eesha", the word for husband is "ba'al" (owner!!!!).

When referring to my husband in Hebrew I call him my "eesh" and I've heard other Israeli women do this, but since I don't live there any more I can't say if this is a widespread revolution against the word "ba'al".