Re: CHAT: TRIVIAL CHAT: Political spelling (was: Re: Odd orthography)

JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Sep 1998, Tom Wier wrote:
>
> > one political-correctism that I detest is "herstory", based on the false
> > belief that the writing of history, having naturally been dominated by
> > men for the last several hundred years because of the culture in which
> > it was written, was a compound of <his> and <story>, the story of what
> > happened to men.  Whatever the case, this false folk-etymology is used
> > with what are IMO class-warfare overtones often, and so I am always
> > wary of the intentions of the people who use it.
>
> I'm sure that "herstory" began life as a play on words, rather than as
> a serious attempt to 'correct' a piece of sexist etymology.  Punning and
> other forms of wordplay seem to be quite common in postmodernist
> literary/cultural criticism, from what little of it I've read.  In fact,
> my sense is that a lot of what we call politically correct terminology
> began as a more or less tongue-in-cheek effort to 'deconstruct' traditional
> society by means of this kind of wordplay.  The stifling
> super-seriousness came later.  Or at least, that's my impression.
I see your point, but I think that I read that in this case, the word was actuallyused by
feminists in a rather serious way, as an attempt to alter something
that was misperceived based on its apparent morphological etymology.
At least this is what I've read; otherwise, I would agree with you that it
would sound more like an attempt at weak humor [ :) ] than a serious revolt
against what was perceived as a linguist artefact of the oppressive patriarchal
male societal establishment.

Whatever the case, the usage, besides being a bad pun, could only serve
to weaken their cause if they were to use it in earnest.

> I'm actually more offended by "wymyn", myself.  Well, not offended
> by the word per se.  Rather, I'm bothered by (a) the assumption that the
> origin of "woman" as "wife-of-man" has anything to do with its current
> usage, and (b) the conceit that you can somehow erase a word's etymology
> by changing its spelling.  If certain feminists object to the word "woman"
> (and there's no reason why they shouldn't, I guess), they should
> propagate a new word.  Trying to revamp an old one is silly.
Exactly.  There is no reason why people can't start saying pretty much
anything they want.  But when you try to come up with neologisms such as this,
sometimes they sound so affected that to use them outside one's social niche
(in this case, among other likeminded feminists) would single one out as
some sort of irrational radical and rebel, and would just plain alienate
otherwise possible adherents to your cause.

I read some time back that some sort of group was trying to do something
closely related to this by making gender neutral pronouns for English (despite
the fact that the plural form "they" etc. has been being used for several
hundred years at least).  Their forms "ey / eir / em" (transparent derivatives
of what is already used: "they") I highly doubt will ever catch on.  If they do,
something really weird will have to shake the English linguistic world to do it
(and perhaps, by extension, the rest of the world too).


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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

We look at [the Tao], and do not see it;
  Its name is the Invisible.
                 - Lao Tsu, _Tao Te Ching_

Nature is wont to hide herself.
                 - Herakleitos
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