New report warns of dangers of trashy avatars

Ahh the old nature versus nurture argument. Who would have suspected that all these years reading Dilbert on the toilet would have stood you ins such good stead Argent?

The fact that you can cite the date too suggests perhaps more fibre in your diet might be a good idea, or maybe it's the most comfortable seat in your house. I don't know.

Either way, following your logic, Maklin's opinion is still that anyone wearing a suit is a "dink" and/or to be under suspicion of dishonesty.

Whether they were born great or had greatness thrust upon them is neither here nor there.

One of the unsung advantages of irritable bowel syndrome, I guess.

That male centrism in language goes back beyond Old English.

Not that I care. I was educated in the early to mid 1960s and not only my teachers, but even my mother, as traditional a woman as you might expect, told me that various uses of "man" meant "humankind" and had nothing to do with gender. People instinctively knew this long before certain folks decided, contrary to all evidence, that it was meaningfully exclusive. But sometimes I just enjoy correcting minor misperceptions.


Possibly because Old Lithuanian is more closely related to the alleged original Indo-European language that is the ancestor (father? *LOL*) of all European languages, and therefore the cite gives a clearer view of how old this sort of thing actually is?

Truth.

I made the transition from dressing ultra casual to business casual for my job and after you get through the initial purchases to change your wardrobe and the feeling you get when you start wearing new clothes you pretty much go back to the normal routine in a short while. Business outfits aren't more restrictive or uncomfortable and they don't really change your attitude. It's just different fabric and how it's cut.

What do you mean by "business casual"? That doesn't normally include a suit and tie... for guys at least it's pretty much "no jeans or shorts, shirt has a collar and buttons".

For me, it means nobody raises a fuss about my shiny red boots. (^_^)y

Good point about the androcentricism of languages, generally. I'm not an absolute martinet about the exclusionary language thing, but the fact is that "man" used "generically" does exclude. Trying substituting "woman" for it, and see what happens. The exclusionary aspects of the language may not have existed 50 years ago, but they certainly exist now because so many of us SEE them in the language. And, in the final analysis, meaning in language is mutable and determined by usage. If people now SEE exclusion in such words, such exclusion, de facto, exists by virtue of that fact.


Yikes. (And thanks Nika for the excerpt.) It's obviously way too long since I did that "History of the Language" course . . .

Your human-centric languages amuse me.

Fixed. (^_^)y

A thing exists purely because someone says it exists? If that works, then it must also be valid that a thing does not exist because someone says it doesn't exist.

No. Some people, for emotional reasons, see exclusion where there is none. Other people, for political reasons, or reasons of personal gain, declare that there is exclusion when none can be demonstrated.

Language is a special case: it changes over time as usage changes. That's why we don't still speak the same language as Chaucer. Or Shakespeare. Or Virginia Woolf, for that matter.

That is also why the best dictionaries, the OED of course among them, are descriptive, and not prescriptive: they acknowledge that attempts to "fix" the meaning of language are doomed to failure. The English have never tried; unlike the French, who established a language academy in the eighteenth century, they actually recognized that the mutability of language was an index of liberty, and that attempts to "freeze" it or define it from the top down represented an assault on freedom. For which, see George Orwell.

The meaning of words does change over time. And a word like "mankind" does NOT "mean" the same thing now that it did 40 or 50 years ago, at least to a sizable proportion of the population. They are language users too; they help define usage.

Your suggestion that words like "chairmen" or "mankind" are seen as exclusionary only by the "emotional" is a somewhat different issue. As I've said, I am not one of those who gets overly uptight about this sort of thing, but, sorry, I have been in contexts in which such language was MEANT and felt as exclusive. I can only congratulation for your good fortune in never having felt that way yourself.

If saying "chair" instead of "chairman" in order to ensure that members of your audience don't feel excluded seems "too much" for you, then you are not merely lacking in sympathy, but also in rhetorical skill. Why alienate those to whom you are addressing yourself? This kind of rigorous application of the dead letter of an imaginary "rule" of language defeats the very purpose of language: effective communication.

I prefer to use 'Chairman' and 'Charwoman'.

Pep (No typo)

No argument there.



Or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.



I was not aware that there was a problem with the word "mankind" amongst a sizeable proportion of the population-- quite honestly.



There is a huge difference between everyday usage of words and someone purposefully using language to attack a person or groups of people.



OK, Scylla... I know we could go around about this (and I think we have before) but nobody can be responsible for everybody else's perceptions without going quite mad.

I believe the word "chairperson" would have come to my mind, but I cannot guarantee that, and I certainly have no qualms about calling a woman a "chairman." I don't take the word "man" in that word literally any more than I take the word "chair" in the word literally (man who sits on a chair??? ). That's all I gotta say about that... But it is good to have some idea of your audience's expectations-- and I would hope someone would clue me in if I was a addressing an audience of radical feminists, for example

"YOUR THEORY HAS NO HONOR!"

Sorry Scylla, but I just had to post this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8qcccZy03s

I thought this thread was about trashy avatars, come on people, focus!

We need pictures, lots and lots of pictures of trashy avatars. And their owners, if the owners are female and have naked pictures.

Hey, it's not my theory! Anyway it's just a hypothesis. Although a lot of it makes sense to me personally.

BTW is that a quote from something, cause if so I don't get it? lolz

PS - I <3 Big Brother.


EDIT:... OMG my Trekkie license was just revoked LOLz

Yeah, that will get this thread back on track!!!

Sleeveless t-shirts. Not a particularly hard term to grasp and far more accurately descriptive than naming a popular article of clothing after an incident of domestic violence which may desensitize young people to violence against women.

(trashy - just for you)

That's enough to make me start reading the news )))))

"A" shirt is the correct term I think Or muscle shirt.