Critical discourse analysis for fun and profit

[triskellian]

I've been thinking for a while about trying an experiment in the way I use language, and something that came up in my reading today made me decide to go ahead and do it.

The experiment is this: I will watch for times when I'm about to use "he" to refer to a person of unknown gender, and I will substitute "she" instead (I'm talking about speech; I take care to use non-gender-specific language in writing). I think I mostly do this with the drivers of nearby cars, when I'm predicting they're about to do something stupid ("He's going to pull out!"), so there's no value judgement involved, just an attempt to change the default setting on a switch, so to speak ;-)

I invite you to join me in this experiment if you wish, and to call me on it if you spot me using "him" as a generic (also if you wish!)


The reading that prompted this is for the Good Course (as opposed to the Bad one), which is on critical discourse analysis. The material we're currently covering is to do with the way ideology shapes language, and through it the world, and I've just finished reading a chapter on the way "common sense" encodes and enforces a particular way of understanding the world. (This same material is causing me to write and rewrite every sentence in this post as I notice the assumptions I'm building into the most innocent-looking phrases.)

Anyway. The words that solidified my intention to proceed with the experiment describe a way of foregrounding common sense, of making its working obvious and therefore open to question:

"the deliberate disturbance of common sense through some form of intervention in discourse"
(Normal Fairclough, Language and Power)

...And they're a reasonable description of my experiment, too. So that settled the matter ;-)

Comments

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

I find the area of how language defines thought to be very interesting.

I remember being fascinated by the concept that the Romans couldn't deal as well with abstract algebra because of their way of counting, and (from a very limited perspective) I have found that phrasing things in French did change my own perception of how I thought.

I imagine that a German speaker would think a bit differently as well, due to the need of having your verb worked out and held onto until the end of your current sentence. I don't know if that helps to explain their famous technical and musical abilities or not, but it's an interesting possibility.

Personally, I'm not going to go changing my 'neuter' pronoun to being expressly female, as I have in the past felt irritated by those who do. It also makes insulting other drivers on the road (at least in my mind - I don't actually say anything!) less acceptable. Insulting a female is something I have to specifically want to do, and needs a good reason. Insulting another male, on the other hand, is almost expected...

See a BMW for example - think 'wanker'. Nice and simple. ;-)

[triskellian]

Personally, I'm not going to go changing my 'neuter' pronoun to being expressly female,
I nearly included a line saying something about how the experiment makes much more sense when done by a woman. It's certainly possible I'd feel uncomfortable about you always using female pronouns. But, just as it makes sense for you to use male pronouns for generic people, it makes sense for me to use female ones.

as I have in the past felt irritated by those who do.
May I ask why it's irritated you, and whether your irritation depends at all on the gender of the speaker?

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

May I ask why it's irritated you?
It seemed convoluted is all. Disrupted the flow of conversation and 'jolted' me out of what someone was saying by the inconguity. I found I was thinking more about their deliberate use of the 'incorrect' pronoun than what they were actually saying.

and whether your irritation depends at all on the gender of the speaker?
Not as far as I recall, no. It's annoyed me in printed works too - examples that deliberately use 'she', for example, seem to be labouring a point.

That's not to say the point isn't a valid one, I'm just callin' it like I see it, obviously.

I like the line from Real Genius -
"I heard there was going to be someone new this term, are you it?"

[ex-kharin447.livejournal.com]

"It seemed convoluted is all"

Not actually that unreasonable - by definition gender pronouns are a closed set so introduction of new neutral forms is likely to be difficult in linguistic as well as social terms. 'Man' as a generic term for the species is an obvious example.

[triskellian]

I think he's talking about the use of "she" as a generic, rather than about new non-gender-specific pronouns...

[triskellian]

See, this sort of instinctive reaction to it is part of why I'm trying to do it - why should it be "correct" to use male pronouns for a person whose gender you don't know? Why is that person more a man than a woman?

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Count yourself lucky you aren't French - you'd have to answer this question for every single noun in the language rather than just for people of unknown sex.

[cigogne.livejournal.com]

No: it's slightly different, I think. In French, all of the nouns have apparently arbitrary genders. There's nothing arbitrary about the use of "he" for people of unknown sex. I think the question is more about "why do we consider he as the default" than "why do we use he for x and she for y?"

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

In French, all of the nouns have apparently arbitrary genders.

Even if they are arbitrary, and have no origin in any issues of sex, you could still investigate whether they influence attitudes, just as triskellian is doing for our "gender-non-specific" pronouns.

[triskellian]

I have an article around somewhere about an experiment where speakers of different languages with gendered nouns were asked to describe various objects that had different genders in their languages (eg, say in French car is feminine and in German it's masculine). The result was that the gender of the noun did influence people's perception of the object - in my made up example, the French speakers were more likely to say things like "curvy" to describe a car, whereas the German speakers were more likely to say things like "powerful".

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

in German it's masculine

Das Auto, surely (i.e. neuter)?

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

They're not, it's just the current rules of English.

Why should it be "correct" to spell 'lose' and 'loose' differently?

[triskellian]

They're not, it's just the current rules of English.
It did used to be the correct form, but it's a bit old-fashioned now, and certainly no longer set in stone to the extent that it's incorrect to use anything else. And language changes because of the way people use it, so to a small extent, I can change the language by the words I use. (I'm not frivilous about this - one of my hats is "editor", so I do know the blacks and whites and greys of current English usage.)

Why should it be "correct" to spell 'lose' and 'loose' differently?
Cos they're different words with different meanings and different pronunciation? ;-)

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Cos they're different words with different meanings and different pronunciation?

Explain 'bow' then.

[triskellian]

Yeah, the English language is made up of wildly contradictory bits of loads of other languages, so lots of it makes no sense. The difference is that the identical spelling of "bow" and "bow" isn't reinforcing any kind of power relationship, whereas much gender-specific language is.

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

I have friends who use weird (to me) "gender neutral"-type pronouns along the lines of "zie" and "zir" and so on. I am bound to say it grates on me a fair bit, when I read it, far more than the use of "she" does. Though the use of that does occasionally surprise (rather than irritate) when I see it in an academic text, or something.

As an aside, the shift from having he/him as "gender neutral" has occasionally caused me problems in middle Welsh; in some of the famous love poetry, they use "dyn" (man) to mean the girl they're writing the poem to, which causes me great confusion.

/this post brought to you by insomniac rambling inc.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I started on-purpose using neutral words instead of gender-specific ones a couple of years ago - both pronoun-ish ones (I use 'they' all the time) and role-specific ones (like police officer, chairperson, and so on). Within a couple of weeks it was utterly second-nature. I wasn't sexist-language-of-the-year winner before that, by a long shot, but I found there was still quite a lot of gender-specific-ness in my language when I started listening to every word I said or typed.

There are two things I noticed from this:

I'm far more aware of my inner assumptions/prejudices as a result. I *notice* when I make snap assumptions about gender - things like the mental image of a film director or a dj being male would be a simple example, but it's usually a lot more complicated than that. I didn't as easily notice that before.

I'm incredibly aware of people using non-gender-neutral language, both in writing and in speech, and it really bothers me. I find it difficult sometimes to restrain myself from correcting people. It also affects how I view what someone is saying, and I'm more likely to pick holes in an argument when someone uses gender-specific language.

[triskellian]

Thank you - that's what I'm aiming for :-)

I don't do it in writing, and I do use gender-non-specific language for a generic individual, but I've only just properly noticed that I do for specific people of unknown gender, and it's something I want to train myself out of.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

It should be (or at least, I found it to be) incredibly easy. I'd be interested to know how it goes.

I keep meaning to write up some sort of ramble on what I noticed, and what was easy and what hard, and the - oh, this sounds terribly self-help know-thyself - insights into all manner of Bad Thinking that lurk in my head. But it's all a bit unstructured, and involves writing down all about the sexist and classist and racist and *everything*ist assumptions (because once I started noticing one set, I started noticing all the others too) that I am capable of making, and that scares me a bit, because it's almost like going 'Hey! I'm nasty!'. I am trying to console me with thinking that *everyone* has these, and at least I notice and can therefore quash mine.

I might try getting that written up next week, actually, now that you've gotten me thinking (and wittering all over your journal) about it.

[triskellian]

I'd love to read that if you do write it up.

boys who like boys to be girls who do girls like they're boys who do boys like they're girls

[kauket.livejournal.com]

I have a couple of text books who opt for gender non-specific description (the Director, the convenyancer etc) and it tends to annoy me as it tends to increase the length of sentences and can get quite confusing, as the description often appears several times in a sentence. I like simplicity in my reading. I also dislike the he/she his/hers things that some of my books do. I know enough that not all criminals are men, not all people buying houses are men etc. On the flip side, my criminal law books often give examples of the idea they are trying to convey and swap between using male and female names. But to be honest it's not something I notice especially. They could use initials for all I care :>

More interesting to me, is the use of insults, and the gender-specific nature of them. There are a number of insults that are particularly related to the fact that you are a woman - bitch, whore, bint, slut, slag, slapper. Other insults, such as bastard, git, bugger can be used to describe either sex, and whilst probably these are used more with men, can be interchangable. I can't think of as many insulting descriptions which apply specifically to men, as my first list do to women. I also find some of the insults that are 'female' much more insulting than the general ones - for example the word bint is completely repulsive to me, and i've rarely, if ever, used it. Similarly, the phrase mother-fucker. I'm not even entirely sure why this is an insult, although I could hazard some guesses. But we don't have father-fucker.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I got to write a list of semi-swear words, so I guess my work here is done.

Re: boys who like boys to be girls who do girls like they're boys who do boys like they're girls

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

or example the word bint is completely repulsive to me,

Odd that bint in particular should irk you, considering it means: "A girl, a woman". Granted it's often used derogatively, but compared to slut or whore, it's a much more innocuous word.

I'm not even entirely sure why [mother-fucker] is an insult

"You fuck your own mother." I can see why some people might find that insulting.

Re: boys who like boys to be girls who do girls like they're boys who do boys like they're girls

[kauket.livejournal.com]

But why is it more offensive to suggest someone fucks their mother than tto suggest someone fucks their father? Am I being really dense here?

Re: boys who like boys to be girls who do girls like they're boys who do boys like they're girls

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Maybe 'father-fucker' is just too alliterative to sound like a good insult.

Cue chorus of "Shut your fucking face, uncle-fucker..."

Re: boys who like boys to be girls who do girls like they're boys who do boys like they're girls

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Related to this is the use of parts of the anatomy as insults -- eg. 'cunt' is more used as an insult against males then females in the UK, but I've heard that in the US it's more the other way round. In general though this is a bit weird, because, why is comparing someone to a cunt insulting? Cunts are lovely ;-)

Re: boys who like boys to be girls who do girls like they're boys who do boys like they're girls

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I can't think of as many insulting descriptions which apply specifically to men, as my first list do to women

It may be that the ones which now are in the category "used more against men" were until recently used almost entirely against men.

If so, then the question is more specifically "why have people started using the male insults against women, but not so much the female ones against men?" rather than "why are there no male insults?".

Also note that of your 6 female insults, 4 of them are about promiscuity and/or prostitution. If that turns out to account for most of the difference, then again the question can be made more specific: "why is promiscuity used as an insult against women but not against men?", to which the answer (although not any kind of justification for the answer) is probably obvious.

Finally, there are a number of insults relating to homosexuality, which are used almost exclusively against men. I don't wish to sound as though I'm condoning that, but I do point out that it reduces the disparity you mention.

[cuthbertcross.livejournal.com]

Something I picked up in childhood was the habit of calling a single person of unknown/immaterial gender "they" in conversation. e.g. "They look cold", or "they made a mistake".

Every now and then someone misinterprets this, assuming I'm referring to more than one person, and they (see, I'm doing it now!) almost always try to "correct me" into using he/she instead. I prefer my way though, I'm just used to it!

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

*sleepybee*
Mmph, are we on Sapir-Whorf atm?
*zonks again*

[triskellian]

No sign of Sapir-Whorf explicitly, although it's some of the same ideas from a different angle: how the dominant ideology enforces its own dominance by language choice. I guess it kind of assumes Sapir-Whorf as a basic building block.

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

Ooo. ok :-) I still have my Trudgill Sociolinguistics knocking around somewhere.

Is it really horrible to say that the girl in your icon looks as though she is listening to an ipod? It's the insomnia, I think, it took me ages to work it out this morning... more coffee, grommit.

[triskellian]

Argh! I'm now tempted to edit out the ribbon, cos that's what it looks like to me as well, now you've pointed it out ;-)

(It's Sarah from Labyrinth, if that helps, although I guess if you've seen it you'd probably recognise her, so it probably doesn't help...)

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought I recognised her! I'm sorry about that, though - I'm getting so many people in these days plugged into them, I automatically parse that shape as ipod. (saw a physics tutor with one in this morning, which for some reason really surprised me...)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

The material we're currently covering is to do with the way ideology shapes language

Ooh, fun ! Are you also going to cover how language limits and directs ideas ? I think that might be the single academic issue that interests me the most outside mathematics. So often it's made very, very difficult to talk about something because there's no word for it. In fact never mind "talk", the same often applies even to "think".

[triskellian]

I think that's sort of the same issue, taken to extremes. Much of what we're covering isn't to do with the required words not existing, but to do with the fact that they're not available to you at the time, because for example you've had to accept the built-in assumptions of the situation in order to enter the discourse (I've got a half-formed analogy about having to climb the steps to enter the house, but if you start attacking the steps once you're inside, the house falls over, or you fall out or something...)

Anyway. It's all making me want to reread 1984 :-)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Much of what we're covering isn't to do with the required words not existing, but to do with the fact that they're not available to you at the time

Thing is, you can train yourself to get around that as marnameow remarks above. When a word doesn't exist at all, the problem you have is with the listener. It's not too bad if you're in the kind of 1-1 conversation where you can get continuous feedback from the person you're talking to. In other cases you end up having to substitute a sentence or even a paragraph or worse still you end up being completely misunderstood.

First example that springs to mind: no male noun corresponding to "tart". Of course in the modern world a lot of people would simply apply it to men anyway, but I wanted to pick a suitably uncontroversial one.

[triskellian]

I think even in marnameow's examples there's a problem with the listener - compare what al_fruitbat says above about being irritated by the use of non-gender-specific language. (Not meaning to imply that Al's attitudes are necessarily a 'problem', but that he and Marna would have a problem to overcome if they were to meet ;-)

Your 'tart' example is interesting, though, because as you say, it's not that the word doesn't exist, just that it carries different shades of meaning depending on the gender of the person it's applied to: there's no value-neutral word for a promiscuous woman, and no negative-value one for a promiscuous man. (Of course, I've just surmounted that problem by using two words in each case, but part of the reason that works is that I can be reasonably certain that you share my opinion of the relative merits of male and female promiscuity ;-)

[kauket.livejournal.com]

I have a copy if you don't, and want to borrow it.

[triskellian]

I've got it, thanks. I might even have two copies, I'm not sure ;-)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I've actually been attempting a similar thing recently, although not dignified with any experimental value ;-) -- prompted by when I started driving, I realized sharply how often I refer to other cars as 'he'. I guess this is a holdover from childhood, but it seems very difficult to overcome in the heat of the moment.

[sumbitch.livejournal.com]

i do this pretty much reflexively. it annoys people. it's my little way of discomfiting the comfortable.

interestingly, the one that i haven't been able to break myself of is referring to unknown dogs as "he" and unknown cats as "she". psychoanalysts, start your engines!