University of Kansas Student Senate Bans Gender Pronouns Because They’re Microaggressions (http://www.infowars.com/university-of-kansas-student-senate-bans-gender-pronouns-because-theyre-microaggressions/)
QuoteA governing body made up of students at the University of Kansas has voted to eliminate their use of gender specific pronouns, stating the terms pose “microaggressions†towards people who don’t fit traditional gender roles.
Last Wednesday, the KU Student Senate, in a 2/3 majority vote, passed a bill altering the Senate’s official Rules & Regulations which would require senators to use “inclusive†terminology, such as “they them or their,†as opposed to “his,†“her,†“he,†or “she.â€
https://twitter.com/hashtag/NationalOffendACollegeStudentDay?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc^tfw
"If you need a "safe space", you shouldn't be at a college/university, you should be in daycare"
The traditional college protest movement seems to be experiencing a pendulum swing.
Actually I prefer those. Not for any other reason than I think writing....."if he or she wants"...... is stupid whereas...'anyone who wants" is simply easier.
The concept of a microagression is bullshit. It bans language based on the possibility that someone may be offended by it. Why don't we wait until someone is actually offended by our language before we change it? Otherwise, it's a deep rabbit hole you can plunge down. (To see how stupid such a standard is, think of how many dyslexics may be offended by writing anything at all.)
This is where I get off the transgender bus. Would they prefer "it"?
Inclusive language can be used without eliminated pronouns, which is a lazy approach and creates as many problems as it solves.
I realize this thread really isn't about solving a perceived problem but I'm more offended by incompetence than gender politics, which doesn't interest me.
I will agree that English has evolved to become lazier. When was the last time anyone actually used words like "hence" or "hither" or "thither"?
Shit's just here or there nowadays. I hear "whom" is due to fall off the educational standard any time now by colloquial majority that just favors "who" in all cases. Whatever.
Pronouns will be much, much harder to shake. Imagine 200 years from now and sleazy harlequin romance novels from Walmart being akin to Beowulf with frustrated teenagers lamenting frustration over this "his" and "hers" and "he" and "she" stuff.
Good luck to them. It's much easier to stop using a word altogether than it is to train yourself to substitute another word, especially when they are words used so frequently.
Who would have thought the euphemism treadmill would work its way down to to two and three letter words? It's kind of impressive when you think about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM
Quote from: TomFoolery on November 11, 2015, 10:28:58 AMPronouns will be much, much harder to shake.
We already lost thou, so it wouldn't be unprecedented. Up until a few hundred years ago, 'you' was a plural which could also be used as a formal/polite singular. In this case it might be much easier, since 'they/them/theirs' is already widely used as a gender ambiguous third person singular. Hell, 'sie' can me she, they, or you in German. I support the change not because of 'microaggressions' or any nonsense like that, but because it might help to dislodge the psychological dissociation between genders. The fewer artificial distinctions there are, the easier it will be to understand which ones are real and potentially relieve the tension. On the other hand, an outright ban is obviously going too far, and will probably serve more to create opposition than anything.
It took hundreds of years for English to lose one pronoun, and it didn't happen in a concerted effort to stamp it out. It's because the distinction between politeness levels started to become a bit messed up â€" the polite, singular 'you' lost its politeness mark and migrated to where 'thou/thee/thy' was. 'Thou/thee/thy' also didn't disappear entirely everywhere. Quaker plain speech only lost 'thou' â€" it kept 'thee' and 'thy', with 'thee' replacing 'thou'.
Also, it's not as if it's all been downhill. In Southern American English, 'y'all' replaced 'you' as the plural. Though it's not a perfect replacement (singular usages have been observed), the notion that pronouns are 'going away' is mistaken. Even if they were, they will probably be because they will be replaced by some verb-inflection scheme that performs the same function.
Indeed, inflection is why German can distinguish the use of 'sie' as "she" vs. 'sie' as "they" â€" the pronouns look the same, but they're treated differently because they take different verb inflections. Polite 'Sie' takes the same verb inflection as plural 'sie', but is written differently; it's always capitalized, like German nouns are always capitalized when written. This indicates that they occupy different places in the mental lexicon. They're not the same word, but three separate words that sound the same.
The problem is that English has no suitable genderless pronouns. "it" is for inanimate objects; "they" works sometimes, but is awkward elsewhere. "he or she" and "he/she" are mouthfuls; "s/he" is unpronounceable. And monstrosities like "xe" and "zir" are laughably un-English.
The fact is that 99.7% of people are cisgendered, and the majority of transgendered people strive to look like their preferred gender, leaving an absolutely tiny tiny minority of people for whom traditional pronouns do not fit. Given that this is the case, the burden should be on them to inform others of how they wish to be addressed, and not on everyone else to hem and haw and wonder what pronoun to be used.
If you're of a nontraditional gender, I have no problem with that, but you should realize that it's to be expected that people will unwittingly and understandably use the wrong pronoun, given the structure of the English language. But note that they do not mean any offense to you.
Enough with the language policing.
Let them be offended. I seriously doubt people will care or even know about some students language policing.
Quote from: pr126 on November 11, 2015, 01:04:38 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM
That was brilliant.
Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on November 11, 2015, 01:59:53 PM
It took hundreds of years for English to lose one pronoun, and it didn't happen in a concerted effort to stamp it out. It's because the distinction between politeness levels started to become a bit messed up â€" the polite, singular 'you' lost its politeness mark and migrated to where 'thou/thee/thy' was. 'Thou/thee/thy' also didn't disappear entirely everywhere. Quaker plain speech only lost 'thou' â€" it kept 'thee' and 'thy', with 'thee' replacing 'thou'.
Also, it's not as if it's all been downhill. In Southern American English, 'y'all' replaced 'you' as the plural. Though it's not a perfect replacement (singular usages have been observed), the notion that pronouns are 'going away' is mistaken. Even if they were, they will probably be because they will be replaced by some verb-inflection scheme that performs the same function.
Indeed, inflection is why German can distinguish the use of 'sie' as "she" vs. 'sie' as "they" â€" the pronouns look the same, but they're treated differently because they take different verb inflections. Polite 'Sie' takes the same verb inflection as plural 'sie', but is written differently; it's always capitalized, like German nouns are always capitalized when written. This indicates that they occupy different places in the mental lexicon. They're not the same word, but three separate words that sound the same.
Sure, it happened in a different way, but it still happened. Who's to say it can't happen again? As I mentioned, people already use 'they' as a third person singular when gender is ambiguous. It's not hard to imagine that with enough people doing so intentionally it could catch on as a full replacement. Sweden's already trying it out with 'hen.' I also don't think the argument that 'sie' is three different words really stands up. Not that it isn't true, it just seems to me that it really works in the favor of the change. Written form aside, Germans pronounce and conjugate 'Sie' as in 'you' and 'sie' as in 'they' exactly the same way and are able to understand which is being used through context, so it stands to reason that the same could be true of singular and plural 'they' in English. The two would be different words by any reasonable definition. I'm not saying it's destined to be so or anything like that, but I also don't see any good reason to think the other way. Languages change, often in unpredictable ways.
Fun thought: what if 'him' and 'her' become the next 'nigger'?
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 11, 2015, 01:23:27 PM
We already lost thou, so it wouldn't be unprecedented. Up until a few hundred years ago, 'you' was a plural which could also be used as a formal/polite singular. In this case it might be much easier, since 'they/them/theirs' is already widely used as a gender ambiguous third person singular. Hell, 'sie' can me she, they, or you in German. I support the change not because of 'microaggressions' or any nonsense like that, but because it might help to dislodge the psychological dissociation between genders. The fewer artificial distinctions there are, the easier it will be to understand which ones are real and potentially relieve the tension. On the other hand, an outright ban is obviously going too far, and will probably serve more to create opposition than anything.
In order to overcome the ambiguity of the sing/plur "you" ... I haven't restored "thou" as the singular, but elevated "y'all" as the plural ;-) I am fine that English doesn't distinguish casual vs intimate pronouns. There is another ambiguous pronoun in English ... "one" as in "if one is smart, one can do that" ... but it only works singular.
The video of PC college students is great satire. But is anyone really like that, except in R-wing fantasy? Where are all the Ebonic-speaking colored folk, and bearded Muslims? Or is this just hate of Millennials, hate of young adults, hate of educated people?
In English, which is a creole, not a real language ... we lost the neuter gender ages ago. Russian still has it. Biblical Hebrew has four different "you" ... masculine sing, feminine sing, masculine plur, feminine plur. Democratizing has caused us to stop being Shakespearean ... saying "Whither goest thou?". We don't have much "class" speech in the US, but I guess it still exists in Britain. And it is mandatory in Japanese.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 11, 2015, 02:45:26 PM
Sure, it happened in a different way, but it still happened. Who's to say it can't happen again? As I mentioned, people already use 'they' as a third person singular when gender is ambiguous. It's not hard to imagine that with enough people doing so intentionally it could catch on as a full replacement. Sweden's already trying it out with 'hen.'
I already use 'they' as a third person singular ambiguous gender pronoun. I still use 'he' and 'she' a lot, because for most conversation I actually
do know the gender of the person I'm referring to, and they have no problem with either 'he' or 'she,' and in fact would be insulted if I didn't. 'He/she' is only 'problematic' to identity politics twits.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 11, 2015, 02:45:26 PM
I also don't think the argument that 'sie' is three different words really stands up. Not that it isn't true, it just seems to me that it really works in the favor of the change. Written form aside, Germans pronounce and conjugate 'Sie' as in 'you' and 'sie' as in 'they' exactly the same way and are able to understand which is being used through context, so it stands to reason that the same could be true of singular and plural 'they' in English. The two would be different words by any reasonable definition. I'm not saying it's destined to be so or anything like that, but I also don't see any good reason to think the other way. Languages change, often in unpredictable ways.
There is some unpredictability, but it's not random. The more people use a language feature, the more it sticks around. The University of Kansas notwithstanding, in 99% of language use, 'he/she' are used with no problem, and would sound weird and stilted without them.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 11, 2015, 02:45:26 PM
Fun thought: what if 'him' and 'her' become the next 'nigger'?
Unlikely. There are actually very few contexts where an ambiguous singular third person pronoun would make sense. Outside those contexts, there's actually little call and cause for it â€" in most cases you are explicitly talking about people who would unambiguously identify with 'he' or 'she.' Even in the unlikely event they do become the next 'nigger,' they would be replaced with some kind of equivalent that those who find 'he/she' problematic would find equally problematic. There's simply no pleasing identity politics twits.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 11, 2015, 02:45:26 PM
Fun thought: what if 'him' and 'her' become the next 'nigger'?
CAUTION: Sounds and seems racist…..not really intended that way!!
Any of you ever listen to some blacks talking to each other anymore? They have regressed the language so much and taken so much excuse with pronunciation that even they cannot understand each other. I know some of you will get all pissy but listen. The conversation becomes a battle of asking twice what was said. Try it. Even face to face the conversion entails one person making a statement, the other person asking "what" then a repeat of the statement then the second person responding then the first person asking "what" to the first person repeating then the second responding to the first person asking "what" and on and on..really! Try it one time..very very depressing.
Quote from: aitm on November 11, 2015, 08:08:08 PMEven face to face the conversion entails one person making a statement, the other person asking "what" then a repeat of the statement then the second person responding then the first person asking "what" to the first person repeating then the second responding to the first person asking "what" and on and on..really!
(http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view6/2564012/lil-jon-what-o.gif)
Quote from: TomFoolery on November 11, 2015, 10:28:58 AM
I will agree that English has evolved to become lazier. When was the last time anyone actually used words like "hence" or "hither" or "thither"?
Shit's just here or there nowadays. I hear "whom" is due to fall off the educational standard any time now by colloquial majority that just favors "who" in all cases. Whatever.
Pronouns will be much, much harder to shake. Imagine 200 years from now and sleazy harlequin romance novels from Walmart being akin to Beowulf with frustrated teenagers lamenting frustration over this "his" and "hers" and "he" and "she" stuff.
Good luck to them. It's much easier to stop using a word altogether than it is to train yourself to substitute another word, especially when they are words used so frequently.
Who would have thought the euphemism treadmill would work its way down to to two and three letter words? It's kind of impressive when you think about it.
Interesting point that English is getting lazier, yet is still ridiculously more complex than other languages spoken in Western Europe. Many have universal pronouns and other words of dual context where English is less ambiguous. This is why the Romantic languages are regarded as much easier to learn than English (shorter vocabulary and simpler rules). It's harder to learn, but it's also the world business language. No doubt it owes this to being of the historically most world-dominant power, but I have often wondered if it deserves credit for more than that, for its facilitation of more precise exchanges - does it make communication breakdowns more preventable? If so, then maybe we should hold on to that complexity.
Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on November 11, 2015, 07:44:40 PM
I already use 'they' as a third person singular ambiguous gender pronoun. I still use 'he' and 'she' a lot, because for most conversation I actually do know the gender of the person I'm referring to, and they have no problem with either 'he' or 'she,' and in fact would be insulted if I didn't. 'He/she' is only 'problematic' to identity politics twits.
I don't know if I would use the word 'problematic' considering the group that word has become associated with in gender politics, but I don't think 'he' and 'she' are innocent. Language has a marked effect on psychology, exemplified in studies which have shown a link between the number of 'standard' color words in a language and the ability of the speakers to perceive and remember colors. Here's an article on one such study, though there are plenty to choose from: http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb05/hues.aspx
QuoteThere is some unpredictability, but it's not random. The more people use a language feature, the more it sticks around. The University of Kansas notwithstanding, in 99% of language use, 'he/she' are used with no problem, and would sound weird and stilted without them.
True, but it has to start somewhere. English has lost an incredible amount of conjugative variation - many if not most verbs no longer conjugate at all between person and number, only tense and mood have stuck around mostly intact for whatever reason. I don't doubt that would sound weird and stilted to, say, Chaucer. What he knew as 'luvien, I luve, thou luvest, he/sche/hit luveth' has become 'to love, I love, you love, he/she/it loves.' Four conjugative forms became two. It would certainly sound weird and stilted to start saying 'he/she/it love,' but that's essentially what happened to 'luvest' and 'luvien.'
QuoteUnlikely. There are actually very few contexts where an ambiguous singular third person pronoun would make sense. Outside those contexts, there's actually little call and cause for it â€" in most cases you are explicitly talking about people who would unambiguously identify with 'he' or 'she.' Even in the unlikely event they do become the next 'nigger,' they would be replaced with some kind of equivalent that those who find 'he/she' problematic would find equally problematic. There's simply no pleasing identity politics twits.
Yeah, that wasn't a serious point. They'll try though, these people are Poe's Law incarnate. Every time someone comes up with an absurd parody to mock them with, they actually adopt it into their worldview (see: transniggers, white people who identify as black).
Transblack? Really? Is that the opposite of Oreos? Or more obtuse ... reverse trans-black? Isn't that what Obama really is?
Or just moving toward the Bladerunner model?
http://bladerunner.wikia.com/wiki/Cityspeak
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 11, 2015, 08:53:09 PM
I don't know if I would use the word 'problematic' considering the group that word has become associated with in gender politics, but I don't think 'he' and 'she' are innocent. Language has a marked effect on psychology, exemplified in studies which have shown a link between the number of 'standard' color words in a language and the ability of the speakers to perceive and remember colors. Here's an article on one such study, though there are plenty to choose from: http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb05/hues.aspx
You know who uses the most color words? Painters and interior decorators. They have an extensive specialized vocabulary for colors, because their professions are critically dependent on the use of colors. I might not be able to tell the difference between dark beige and roasted sesame seed, but I'm sure that someone whose livelihood depended on telling the difference could tell at a glance, and placed side-by-side, I can visually see that they are distinct colors. But a rich color language didn't cause painters and interior designers to become very good at color choice; that rich color language was developed for use by those professions. The long and short of it is that at best such studies only show a correlation, but not causation, between psychology and language.
Japanese doesn't have grammatical gender, but the Japanese culture is absolutely aware of the human sexual dichotomy. In fact, the Japanese and the assorted Chinese cultures (both have no grammatical gender) are some of the most sexually divided societies I know of.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 11, 2015, 08:53:09 PM
True, but it has to start somewhere. English has lost an incredible amount of conjugative variation - many if not most verbs no longer conjugate at all between person and number, only tense and mood have stuck around mostly intact for whatever reason. I don't doubt that would sound weird and stilted to, say, Chaucer. What he knew as 'luvien, I luve, thou luvest, he/sche/hit luveth' has become 'to love, I love, you love, he/she/it loves.' Four conjugative forms became two. It would certainly sound weird and stilted to start saying 'he/she/it love,' but that's essentially what happened to 'luvest' and 'luvien.'
Who says it has to start
anywhere? It is the height of linguistic hubris to assume that
anyone knows where the English language is going, much less direct it anywhere (the French tried, but utterly failed). Human language always evolves to fit the golden mean between richness of expression and brevity.
Ironically, by making gender a big deal, identity politics twits may be doing more to ensure that 'he/she' continues to be used past its lifetime were they to just leave well-enough alone.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 11, 2015, 08:53:09 PM
Yeah, that wasn't a serious point. They'll try though, these people are Poe's Law incarnate. Every time someone comes up with an absurd parody to mock them with, they actually adopt it into their worldview (see: transniggers, white people who identify as black).
Yes. Sadly, these idiots will always be with us.
Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on November 12, 2015, 12:47:16 AM
You know who uses the most color words? Painters and interior decorators. They have an extensive specialized vocabulary for colors, because their professions are critically dependent on the use of colors. I might not be able to tell the difference between dark beige and roasted sesame seed, but I'm sure that someone whose livelihood depended on telling the difference could tell at a glance, and placed side-by-side, I can visually see that they are distinct colors. But a rich color language didn't cause painters and interior designers to become very good at color choice; that rich color language was developed for use by those professions. The long and short of it is that at best such studies only show a correlation, but not causation, between psychology and language.
These are developmental studies performed in children, not done by asking people how many colors they can name and then testing their abilities to perceive it. The antithetical theory would be that the people speaking the languages inherently have different abilities to perceive color, leading to the linguistic difference. The fact that the children who didn't yet know color terms had similar test results in both English and Namibian children, only to differ once their respective languages' color terms were taught to them, does not lend much support to that theory. This is also far from the only area in which language has been shown to effect psychology. People who speak languages with no future tense have been shown to be far more predisposed to saving money: http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/keith.chen/papers/LanguageWorkingPaper.pdf
QuoteJapanese doesn't have grammatical gender, but the Japanese culture is absolutely aware of the human sexual dichotomy. In fact, the Japanese and the assorted Chinese cultures (both have no grammatical gender) are some of the most sexually divided societies I know of.
Japanese doesn't have pronouns referring specifically to men or women, but they do have pronouns exclusively used by men or women. That's arguably a much stronger linguistic gender barrier. You certainly have a point with Chinese, but I'm still unconvinced. It's not that I think he/she pronouns are the only source of the tension between genders, just that it's an unnecessary one. Clearly the historical and cultural forces in China have far outweighed it, whatever degree of influence you might think it has. Still, there is a huge array of languages with no gender pronouns:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Gender_in_Pronouns.png)
It stands to reason that within that group there would be a wide spectrum of relationships between the sexes.
QuoteWho says it has to start anywhere? It is the height of linguistic hubris to assume that anyone knows where the English language is going, much less direct it anywhere (the French tried, but utterly failed).
Sorry, I phrased that poorly. I meant more to say that any given linguistic change has to have started somewhere. Also, the French may have failed to change French, but they certainly succeeded in changing English ;)
QuoteHuman language always evolves to fit the golden mean between richness of expression and brevity.
It's a factor, but if it were the only one I don't think we'd see nearly as much linguistic variation as we have today. Culture, relationships between neighboring languages, and good old fashioned random bullshit all have prominent roles to play, and more importantly, they all holistically interrelate with one another and with psychology.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 12, 2015, 10:34:46 AM
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Gender_in_Pronouns.png)
well, if you have told me you could find a graph that depicts the usage of pronouns in various languages......
A Brief History of the English Language (http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/62761/A-Brief-History-of-the-English-Language)
QuoteIn the beginning there was an island off the coast of Europe. It had no name, for the natives had no language, only a collection of grunts and gestures that roughly translated to "Hey!", "Gimme!", and "Pardon me, but would you happen to have any wood?"
Then the Romans invaded it and called it Britain, because the natives were "blue, nasty, br(u->i)tish and short." This was the start of the importance of u (and its mispronunciation) to the language. After building some roads, killing off some of the nasty little blue people and walling up the rest, the Romans left, taking the language instruction manual with them.
The British were bored so they invited the barbarians to come over (under Hengist) and "Horsa" 'round a bit. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes brought slightly more refined vocal noises.
There is more...
You know, all this policing of protected free speech could lead our society down a very dark road - 'scuse me if I'm racist for saying that!
Thai has gender distinctions in the first person, in the formal register. There is also a feminine 3rd person pronoun, which is not always used.
Thai has LOTS of pronouns. Many registers, including intimate, familiar, formal, vulgar, clerical and royal. It's quite a maze!
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 12, 2015, 10:34:46 AM
These are developmental studies performed in children, not done by asking people how many colors they can name and then testing their abilities to perceive it. The antithetical theory would be that the people speaking the languages inherently have different abilities to perceive color, leading to the linguistic difference. The fact that the children who didn't yet know color terms had similar test results in both English and Namibian children, only to differ once their respective languages' color terms were taught to them, does not lend much support to that theory.
The studies you cite test children's their ability for them to be primed on certain colors, and noting that the color differences they do see as relevant. You will find that no two objects are
exactly the same color, so some chunking is required for you to get anywhere. So, yeah, if you have fewer color words, you won't be as primed to memorize different objects based on their color as someone who has a lot of color words. However, this has nothing to do with hue perception, because in those exact same groups, if you ask about what objects those colors come closest to, they will be comparable no matter how many color words they have.
Remember what I said about interior decorators and painters? I don't have nearly the color vocabulary that either would have, yet I can take a look at a color choice palette and immediately tell that all the little squares of color are indeed different colors no matter how my vocabulary may chunk them. I can perceive the difference in color, and tell you how those two colors are different.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 12, 2015, 10:34:46 AM
This is also far from the only area in which language has been shown to effect psychology. People who speak languages with no future tense have been shown to be far more predisposed to saving money: http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/keith.chen/papers/LanguageWorkingPaper.pdf
The paper completely ignores the role of culture and geography in saving money. If you're not into buying a lot of stuff, then saving money is much easier. The Japanese, for instance, live on this teeny-tiny island where space is very much at a premium, and is very resource-poor. They just don't have a lot of
space to put a lot of stuff, and the stuff they do buy is expensive and so want to keep around for a good long while, so they tend to be better at saving money for that reason alone.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 12, 2015, 10:34:46 AM
Japanese doesn't have pronouns referring specifically to men or women, but they do have pronouns exclusively used by men or women. That's arguably a much stronger linguistic gender barrier.
AHAHAHAHA! Believe me, both sexes can use each other pronouns just fine. When they do use each other's pronouns, they shape others' perceptions of them, but they still understand each other just fine even with the mismatch. Using another sex's pronouns doesn't change the semantics of the sentence. This is completely unlike pronouns with proper grammatical gender, where changing the pronoun can indeed change the meaning of the sentence. Compare
Sally gave David her pencil.
with
Sally gave David his pencil.
These two statements describe a different scenario. Your Japanese gendered language equivalent would not describe different scenarios.
Also, Japanese doesn't have grammatical number either, in any form, yet they are able to tell the difference between a single person and many people, even if they have to glark it from context.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 12, 2015, 10:34:46 AM
You certainly have a point with Chinese, but I'm still unconvinced. It's not that I think he/she pronouns are the only source of the tension between genders, just that it's an unnecessary one.
Really? The only people I see making any sort of deal about 'he/she' are the identity politics twits. I'm fine with people using gendered pronouns when talking about me, and so is everyone I know. The only real use I see for genderless pronouns are when addressing a generic person in a mixed group of people, when there is genuine ambiguity whom you might be talking to.
There's clearly a difference between men and women, and there's no inherent problem with making that distinguishment in grammatical gender. It's only a big deal to those people who have arbitrarily
decided to make it a big deal.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 12, 2015, 10:34:46 AM
Clearly the historical and cultural forces in China have far outweighed it, whatever degree of influence you might think it has.
It doesn't show up in their language, but it certainly does show up elsewhere. Going as far as to commit infantacide on female babies and aborting female fetuses disproportionately is as severe as it gets.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 12, 2015, 10:34:46 AM
Still, there is a huge array of languages with no gender pronouns:
(http://://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Gender_in_Pronouns.png)
It stands to reason that within that group there would be a wide spectrum of relationships between the sexes.
Which you are simply assuming.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 12, 2015, 10:34:46 AM
Sorry, I phrased that poorly. I meant more to say that any given linguistic change has to have started somewhere. Also, the French may have failed to change French, but they certainly succeeded in changing English ;)It's a factor, but if it were the only one I don't think we'd see nearly as much linguistic variation as we have today. Culture, relationships between neighboring languages, and good old fashioned random bullshit all have prominent roles to play, and more importantly, they all holistically interrelate with one another and with psychology.
Again, language evolves to meet the needs of the culture that uses it. Any sort of SWH junk put forward runs right into the problem of what caused what â€"
why does the language under study have the linguistic features and lexical distribution it has? The people find the language to describe what they need to describe. This I think is a very straightforward connection from the language used to the psychology.
Long ass post, so I'm spoilering it.
[spoiler]
Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on November 12, 2015, 03:45:44 PM
The studies you cite test children's their ability for them to be primed on certain colors, and noting that the color differences they do see as relevant. You will find that no two objects are exactly the same color, so some chunking is required for you to get anywhere. So, yeah, if you have fewer color words, you won't be as primed to memorize different objects based on their color as someone who has a lot of color words. However, this has nothing to do with hue perception, because in those exact same groups, if you ask about what objects those colors come closest to, they will be comparable no matter how many color words they have.
Will they, though? I don't know of any studies where that particular avenue was explored. It would certainly be interesting to see the results. If hue perception is affected, I would expect to see more 'mistakes' in a culture with fewer standard color names, where a 'mistake' would be associating an intermediate color with the reference color further from it in terms of wavelength. This would have to be due to associating the intermediate color and the chosen reference color in the same 'chunk.' Still, I'll admit that the confounding factors in all studies of this sort are hard to parse through as they are all so intertwined. An ideal study would examine two different language groups with highly similar cultures, environments, and lifestyles, which is a tall order to fill.
QuoteRemember what I said about interior decorators and painters? I don't have nearly the color vocabulary that either would have, yet I can take a look at a color choice palette and immediately tell that all the little squares of color are indeed different colors no matter how my vocabulary may chunk them. I can perceive the difference in color, and tell you how those two colors are different.
Man, I envy you. I can never tell the difference between all those shades of white.
QuoteThe paper completely ignores the role of culture and geography in saving money. If you're not into buying a lot of stuff, then saving money is much easier. The Japanese, for instance, live on
this teeny-tiny island where space is very much at a premium, and is very resource-poor. They just don't have a lot of space to put a lot of stuff, and the stuff they do buy is expensive and so want to keep around for a good long while, so they tend to be better at saving money for that reason alone.
[Just going to define some terms here as used in the study - languages with a regularly used future tense are strong-FTR whereas languages with no or sparsely used future tense are weak-FTR.]
Yes, it does ignore all those factors, as it should. The more factors you account for in a statistical analysis, the more errors and fluctuations compound. That's not to say that we should ignore those factors, just that it's important to isolate the effects of each variable as much as possible before attempting a synthesis. The study didn't just see the effect in Japanese - it saw it in Finns, Germans, Chinese, and more. The important thing is the trend. The range of percent of households saving in countries with more weak-FTR speakers is shifted significantly higher than the range in countries with more strong-FTR speakers.
I've been thinking about this a lot. I've listened to the study's author speak on the radio, and he goes with a psychological interpretation which goes something like "people who speak languages with no future tense have lower mental distinctions between their current and future selves." I don't think it's a bad interpretation, and there could be some truth to it. On the other hand, I think I've come up with a better interpretation which also happens to be somewhat of a middle ground between our positions. Now, I don't think that current conditions in the countries with better savers explain the results very well on their own. If it turned out to be the case that countries with resource-limited conditions were correlated with higher saving, you would still be left with the question of why a disproportionate number of those countries are dominated by people speaking weak-FTR languages. If you think about how conditions were in the distant past when different groups were fighting for dominance, however, a solution emerges to fill the gaps. A weak-FTR speaker who wants to speak about the future is essentially obligated to specify a time - they can't just say "I pay you," they have to say "I pay you Wednesday" or they won't be understood. This makes holding people accountable much easier, and would therefore encourage people to make good on their plans and promises. Because of that, weak-FTR speakers would have a significant (though not overwhelming) advantage over high-FTR speakers in conditions where planning is a major factor in survival. If this is the correct interpretation, then language would be affecting behavior, but only because conditions affected language. That's all it is, though, an interpretation. If you have a different one which you think works better, I'd genuinely love to hear it.
QuoteAHAHAHAHA! Believe me, both sexes can use each other pronouns just fine. When they do use each other's pronouns, they shape others' perceptions of them, but they still understand each other just fine even with the mismatch. Using another sex's pronouns doesn't change the semantics of the sentence. This is completely unlike pronouns with proper grammatical gender, where changing the pronoun can indeed change the meaning of the sentence.
QuoteReally? The only people I see making any sort of deal about 'he/she' are the identity politics twits. I'm fine with people using gendered pronouns when talking about me, and so is everyone I know. The only real use I see for genderless pronouns are when addressing a generic person in a mixed group of people, when there is genuine ambiguity whom you might be talking to.
I'm only going to respond directly to the bottom quote because I think my response will make it clear what my position on the top one is, but let me know if you'd like clarification.
The kind of tension I'm talking about isn't about direct opposition to gender pronoun use, it's about deep deep down subconscious gear shifts that we make without even knowing it. Hubert Dreyfus is a philosopher who studies Heidegger at UC Berkeley, and I'm going to paraphrase something he said in a podcasted lecture. In Japan, rice paper walls are not an uncommon sight, and virtually everyone there will interact with them to some degree or another in their regular lives. If a Japanese person walks into a room and sees a rice paper wall, it won't stick out to them in any way, and they will simply ignore it, or, if they need to, use it without thinking about it. To a western visitor, on the other hand, a rice paper wall is going to be a relatively novel and interesting sight. They'll probably inspect it, maybe take a picture or try opening and closing it (westerners are rude fucks). Eventually, though, their attention will be drawn elsewhere. The rice paper wall, even though they can still see it, fades into the background. A few hours later they start to get tired, and going to lean on the nearest wall, which they have forgotten is made of rice paper, they crash through and fall to the ground. This is something a Japanese person would never do (unless they were very drunk), and furthermore they would never even have to remind themselves not to do it - the way to deal with rice paper walls is so deeply ingrained that they can do so without any conscious thought at all. The westerner, on the other hand, is just as well equipped to deal with solid walls without thinking, but when they did so in Japan, it led to disaster. If they had been consciously thinking "I will go to lean on this wall," then they probably would have noticed their mistake. They weren't though, the leaning was just an instantaneous reaction to being tired.
That's the kind of thinking I suspect people are doing when a conversation starts with "So I was talking to my roommate and he/she...." Whatever comes after that is automatically and unconsciously interpreted through a very different lens. This isn't inherently a bad thing - as you have pointed out, men and women are clearly different. That's why we have the words man and woman, boy and girl, male and female. But our lenses almost invariably contain falsehoods and biases, even (especially) ones we would never think consciously, just as the westerner would never consciously think to go and lean on a rice paper wall. These lenses exist for a reason, and parts of them are useful and informative. But when the second part of that sentence at the beginning of the paragraph doesn't contain anything that can be usefully interpreted in the context of gender, the only changes the lens can make to our interpretation are at best benign and at worst disastrous - we fall through the rice paper wall through no fault of our own. That's why ditching the gender pronouns seems like a potentially good idea to me. Right now it is linguistically obligatory to specify the gender of the conversational subject, even when it isn't relevant. In a language with no gender pronouns, that wouldn't happen, and people would still be able to specify when it is important (i.e. "I was talking to my roommate, who is a guy, and they said...."
There are, of course, a million different ways in which we can be induced to fall through the proverbial rice paper wall, and it's not only futile but also stupid to try and stop all of them due to the aforementioned usefulness of the mode of thought leading to it. But in this case, we just might have an opportunity to down-regulate the negative effects of one of them. Is it the most effective way for someone who wants to fight sexism to exert their energy? Almost certainly not. Could it backfire? Absolutely, and for that reason i'm only moderately in favor of it. I'm definitely an armchair quarterback on this one.
QuoteIt doesn't show up in their language, but it certainly does show up elsewhere. Going as far as to commit infantacide on female babies and aborting female fetuses disproportionately is as severe as it gets.
Yes, although we have a sample size of one for how one-child policies affect infanticide rates, so while it tells us
that Chinese society is sexually asymmetrical, it can't tell us if it's
unusually so. Unless and until such a policy is imposed elsewhere, we won't know how the Chinese reaction compares to the way a given other country would react. Maybe Americans would go even more crazy with the baby-murdering under those conditions, we just don't have a good way to determine that sort of thing.
QuoteWhich you are simply assuming.
Not at all.
1. I know that there are many different factors contributing to the state of gender relations in a given culture, such as religion and socioeconomic conditions.
2. I know that within the set of countries without gender pronouns in the primary language there is a wide degree of variation in these factors.
3. Therefore, I can predict that there will be a wide degree of variety in gender relations within the set of countries without gender pronouns in the primary language.
QuoteAgain, language evolves to meet the needs of the culture that uses it. Any sort of SWH junk put forward runs right into the problem of what caused what â€" why does the language under study have the linguistic features and lexical distribution it has? The people find the language to describe what they need to describe. This I think is a very straightforward connection from the language used to the psychology.
I would argue that it's a two-way street, or maybe more accurately a roundabout. This roundabout:
(http://www.alternativeintersections.org/html/home_text/ro/Roundabout-Crazy-one-in-Swindon-England-300x229.jpg)
Needs affect linguistic features and psychology, psychology affects linguistic features, linguistic features affect psychology, needs and psychology affect behavior, behavior affects needs, etc. I don't buy at all that usefulness in description is the only or even main factor in use and evolution of language. That's the kind of interpretation Wittgenstein fought against with his 'language games' thought experiments, and I'd strongly encourage you to read "Philosophical Investigations." Here's a passage that pretty well describes what he's trying to get you to consider in it:
"23...Review the multiplicity of language games in the following examples, and in others:
Giving orders, and obeying them--
Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements-- Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)--
Reporting an event--
Speculating about an event--
Forming or teasing a hypothesis--
Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams--
Making up a story; and reading it--
Singing catches--
Guessing riddles--
Making riddles--
Making a joke; telling it--
Solving a problem in practical arithmetic--
Translating from one language into another--
Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying."[/spoiler]
Edit: Noticed some terminological inconsistencies, went back to fix them.
Some people accept the hypothesis of Benjamin Worf, and some do not. Chomsky for example, I would expect, would reject it ... because his interest is in deep grammar which he claims is common to all languages, because all humans use the same kind of brain. On the other hand I have read those who claim that Biblical Hebrew is radically different in thought than other languages ... because the verb comes first, whereas in Japanese the verb comes last. And the semantic content, will vary most of all, where the cultures are most different. Similar cultures with similar superficial grammatical structure ... will be most similar in their thinking ... so goes the deduction.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 12, 2015, 10:32:55 PM
Will they, though? I don't know of any studies where that particular avenue was explored. It would certainly be interesting to see the results. If hue perception is affected, I would expect to see more 'mistakes' in a culture with fewer standard color names, where a 'mistake' would be associating an intermediate color with the reference color further from it in terms of wavelength. This would have to be due to associating the intermediate color and the chosen reference color in the same 'chunk.' Still, I'll admit that the confounding factors in all studies of this sort are hard to parse through as they are all so intertwined. An ideal study would examine two different language groups with highly similar cultures, environments, and lifestyles, which is a tall order to fill.
Color perception is more complicated than "wavelength." Magenta does not exist anywhere on the color spectrum, yet we are able to perceive it. It is thus extremely difficult to define what a "mistake" means here, because the color associations are arbitrary to begin with, and that's the problem with such experiments. It's also rather pejorative.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 12, 2015, 10:32:55 PM
Man, I envy you. I can never tell the difference between all those shades of white.
Neither can I, when they're all out on their lonesome. When placed side-by-side, it's obvious.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 12, 2015, 10:32:55 PM
[Just going to define some terms here as used in the study - languages with a regularly used future tense are strong-FTR whereas languages with no or sparsely used future tense are weak-FTR.]
Yes, it does ignore all those factors, as it should. The more factors you account for in a statistical analysis, the more errors and fluctuations compound. That's not to say that we should ignore those factors, just that it's important to isolate the effects of each variable as much as possible before attempting a synthesis. The study didn't just see the effect in Japanese - it saw it in Finns, Germans, Chinese, and more. The important thing is the trend. The range of percent of households saving in countries with more weak-FTR speakers is shifted significantly higher than the range in countries with more strong-FTR speakers.
The reason why the correlation fallacy is a fallacy is exactly because of those unaccounted for factors. A causation can only be established when you
control for those factors. Remember, a language has a strong- or weak-FTR for a reason, and it may be that underlying reason that may be the true cause of the correleation. Until it is established that strong- or weak-FTR is the proximal cause of this effect, any conclusion that may be drawn from this is speculation.
Also, formally, German inflects its future tense in exactly the same way that English does. It is also true that German substitutes present for future more often than English ("Wir sehen uns morgen." - "We'll see you tomorrow."), but the use of present tense in English to denote a clearly future event are not unknown: "If he finds your sweets, he will eat them." "The bomb will explode where it lands." etc. Therefore, I do not see how any language can be unambiguously categorized as "strong-FTR" or "weak-FTR", because it's a matter of degree, and if it's a matter of degree, then there should be a dose-response curve, not a sharp demarcation.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 12, 2015, 10:32:55 PM
That's the kind of thinking I suspect people are doing when a conversation starts with "So I was talking to my roommate and he/she...." Whatever comes after that is automatically and unconsciously interpreted through a very different lens. This isn't inherently a bad thing - as you have pointed out, men and women are clearly different. That's why we have the words man and woman, boy and girl, male and female. But our lenses almost invariably contain falsehoods and biases, even (especially) ones we would never think consciously, just as the westerner would never consciously think to go and lean on a rice paper wall. These lenses exist for a reason, and parts of them are useful and informative. But when the second part of that sentence at the beginning of the paragraph doesn't contain anything that can be usefully interpreted in the context of gender, the only changes the lens can make to our interpretation are at best benign and at worst disastrous - we fall through the rice paper wall through no fault of our own. That's why ditching the gender pronouns seems like a potentially good idea to me.
Language is digital â€" you are expressing a continuous world through the use of a finite number of symbols. The kind of distortions ("falsehoods and biases") you talk about are inevidable because you're always trying to fit a square peg through a round hole.
English has a residual grammatical gender, so people think that the function of grammatical gender is to categorize humans and animals into male and female. However, we see in languages with more developed gender systems (like German and French) that this is not its purpose, because these languages assign male and female (or whatever) gender to sexless objects, or even a neutral gender to a clearly sexed animal. What we find is that the role of a gender system in a language is to
reduce ambiguity. By dividing the world into a number of gender categories, you increase the chance that two objects you are talking about will belong to different genders, and thus you can refer to them with different pronouns. I can't tell you the number of times I've been frustrated when talking about two "its" in the same sentence, and finding myself wishing that English had a more developed grammatical gender system.
Furthermore, it's not as if identity politics twits are completely on board with eliminating 'gendered' pronouns â€" some of them want to add
more pronouns to emulate the subtlety of their sexuality.
When I say "So I was talking to my X and he/she....", I clearly mean that "my X" is a man/woman in sex depending on which pronoun I use. Even if I make a mistake in referent â€" if I use a pronoun that the antecedent doesn't want me to use, it's not as if it's not easily corrected. I can see the use of an ambiguous gendered pronoun for when writing a general announcement, but their use while talking about a
specific person? No, that's making a mountain out of a molehill. So what if I can't get away with not communicating the gender of my roommate? Big deal! I've experienced what happens when having two people I'm talking about being referred to with the same pronoun, so I'm glad for any distinction I can make. Further, getting rid of "he" and "she" would invalidate a whole mess of literature as outdated. People would have to learn them and their meanings just to be able to read their favorite novel, or the English classics. I certainly want my child to read
Winne the Pooh or
Alice in Wonderland without being confused about the gendered pronouns.
My final thoughts on this matter is that this whole action is based upon microagression, that someone
may be offended by the use of "he" or "she" or even "he/she". Sure, someone
may be offended by this, but they
aren't, are they? It's not as if "he" and "she" were invented a few weeks ago; they've been around in general use for centuries. To me, this is just another instance of SJW speaking as if they were the mouthpiece for some group they don't actually belong to as if they know what will and what won't offend people. This is highly presumptuous of them. And the most shameful thing about this episode is why the University of Kansas didn't just tell these clowns to take a hike.
Technicality ... language is not digital. Some constrained communications channels are digital. Information theory is an abstraction (it implies that all distinctions can be made thru a series of binary yes/no questions) ... but an abstraction is not the same as what is being abstracted. Binary isn't even enough to describe the real number line ... it can only define a countable subset of integers ... let alone real life. In communication, it is what is in the mind of the sender and receiver that is crucial ... the communication channel is a series of semaphores (which originally is something other than binary, but a set of colorful flags) that causes a mental event in the receiver that more or less corresponds to the original mental even in the intention of the sender. Actually face-to-face communication involves tone of voice and facial gesture ... which cannot be reduced to binary.
Digital data (in information theory) is a discrete, discontinuous representation. The symbols of language are discrete and discontinuous. 'Hat' is not closer in meaning to 'hate' (1 change) than it is to 'boat' (2 changes). You have neither an infinite number of symbols in your vocabulary, nor do you have an infinite number of symbols in each message. Language fits the definition of "digital."
Although the voice and face may have infinite range of motion; that's just the context in which the words are evaluated in, and not available in all venues.
Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on November 15, 2015, 06:22:06 PM
Digital data (in information theory) is a discrete, discontinuous representation. The symbols of language are discrete and discontinuous. 'Hat' is not closer in meaning to 'hate' (1 change) than it is to 'boat' (2 changes). You have neither an infinite number of symbols in your vocabulary, nor do you have an infinite number of symbols in each message. Language fits the definition of "digital."
Although the voice and face may have infinite range of motion; that's just the context in which the words are evaluated in, and not available in all venues.
I don't think we disagree, unless you are saying that Information Theory is the theory of everything. Information theory is useful, just as statistics is .... but the universe can't be reduced to any one abstraction ... however useful in limited circumstances those abstractions may be. To the point ... language, even as a denumerable infinity of symbols ... is not commensurate with the rest of human experience, let alone to reality, whatever that may be. The fact that one can even conceive of the continuum ... defeats all finite symbol systems of course. And actual thought or speech is a continuum ... even if we choose to interpret it as a finite symbol system. The world is analog, not digital. One can approximate an analog signal with digital sampling (even a phonogram that is more than one dimension) ... but I don't think you are denying the existence of the real numbers, are you?
He = ghaH
She = ghaH
tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh'a'
Quote from: josephpalazzo on November 15, 2015, 06:49:56 PM
He = ghaH
She = ghaH
tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh'a'
Yes, but do you have ridges on your forehead, and eat fresh gach?
[spoiler]
Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on November 15, 2015, 08:37:35 AM
Color perception is more complicated than "wavelength." Magenta does not exist anywhere on the color spectrum, yet we are able to perceive it. It is thus extremely difficult to define what a "mistake" means here, because the color associations are arbitrary to begin with, and that's the problem with such experiments. It's also rather pejorative.
But there are colors which are associated with pure wavelengths, and they are represented on Newton's color circle (minus the purples which were added later in a misguided attempt to "complete" the circle). The experiment could go on using only these colors and thereby demonstrate clearly if the perceived difference between colors is correlated with the language. I don't think the term 'mistakes' in this context is at all pejorative, it would simply describe a child incorrectly identifying which color is closer to the intermediate.
QuoteNeither can I, when they're all out on their lonesome. When placed side-by-side, it's obvious.
As before, I'm jealous. I've had experiences where someone asked my to choose between two paint colors on a card and I honestly couldn't tell there were two. Only with whites and blacks though, everything else is fine.
QuoteThe reason why the correlation fallacy is a fallacy is exactly because of those unaccounted for factors. A causation can only be established when you control for those factors. Remember, a language has a strong- or weak-FTR for a reason, and it may be that underlying reason that may be the true cause of the correleation. Until it is established that strong- or weak-FTR is the proximal cause of this effect, any conclusion that may be drawn from this is speculation.
Actually, the reason the correlation fallacy is a fallacy is due to the plurality of explanations possible for a correlative relationship, including but not limited to:
A causes B
B causes A
C causes A & B
A & B correlate by coincidence alone
Controlling for variables can only increase certainty
that there is a correlation, but it still does nothing to establish causality. I totally agree that any proposed explanation is speculative, but unfortunately that's part of how science is (supposed to be) done. Establishing the causality can never be done with perfect certainty, so what we have to do is propose hypotheses and design tests to falsify them. The simplest possible hypothesis which has passed all attempts at falsification to the present date gets the almighty designation of theory unless and until it is falsified. Of course, in practice most scientists only bother with a very superficial level of falsification, so it's not exactly working out the way Popper envisioned it. He won the battle against Kuhn but he's losing the war.
QuoteAlso, formally, German inflects its future tense in exactly the same way that English does. It is also true that German substitutes present for future more often than English ("Wir sehen uns morgen." - "We'll see you tomorrow."), but the use of present tense in English to denote a clearly future event are not unknown: "If he finds your sweets, he will eat them." "The bomb will explode where it lands." etc. Therefore, I do not see how any language can be unambiguously categorized as "strong-FTR" or "weak-FTR", because it's a matter of degree, and if it's a matter of degree, then there should be a dose-response curve, not a sharp demarcation.
He determines most of the "weak-FTR" languages by referring to previous research where there is a consensus that a future tense doesn't exist. In languages which do contain a future tense, he delineates them by comparing the percent of the time when the future is being referenced that a future tense verb is used. Only the North Germanic languages made the cut to be considered weak-FTR by that measure, so the vast majority of them simply lack a future tense. 22 of the 29 languages marked strong-FTR used it 70% of the time or more. Of course, I agree that the study would be better suited with a spectrum, and it's possible that the results would change, but there's little about his designation that could be considered arbitrary.
QuoteLanguage is digital â€" you are expressing a continuous world through the use of a finite number of symbols. The kind of distortions ("falsehoods and biases") you talk about are inevidable because you're always trying to fit a square peg through a round hole.
Yes, as I mentioned there are a million areas where things like this occur and it is futile to fight them in most cases. I simply think that in this particular case we might be trying to put the peg through when we don't need to.
QuoteEnglish has a residual grammatical gender, so people think that the function of grammatical gender is to categorize humans and animals into male and female. However, we see in languages with more developed gender systems (like German and French) that this is not its purpose, because these languages assign male and female (or whatever) gender to sexless objects, or even a neutral gender to a clearly sexed animal. What we find is that the role of a gender system in a language is to reduce ambiguity. By dividing the world into a number of gender categories, you increase the chance that two objects you are talking about will belong to different genders, and thus you can refer to them with different pronouns. I can't tell you the number of times I've been frustrated when talking about two "its" in the same sentence, and finding myself wishing that English had a more developed grammatical gender system.
An interesting theory, but have you considered that the correlation between the gender system and reduced ambiguity does not imply causality? :wink2: I suspect you're right about that, actually, but that doesn't mean it doesn't affect the way people think. In fact, based on what you just said this may be a unique opportunity to truly test objectivism vs relativism in psychology of language. In situations where the original conditions that resulted in a particular construct of language are the same as the current conditions, such as with color in England and Namibia, it's hard to say whether differences in color perception would be due to which colors are important for living in the area or which naming categories are available, because the former caused the latter and so there is insignificant difference between the set and distribution of colors pertaining to either metric. And, of course, it's perfectly possible for both to be true and reinforcing. In the case of gender, though, the force that created the category is distinct from the apparent meaning of the category. It would be interesting to find a set of nouns in German and French which mean the same thing but have different gender in each, and see if there is a noticeable difference in the way a speaker describes each thing which isn't there for words sharing gender. If enough differences existed to carry out the experiment, it would be even better to use very close languages like Spanish and Portuguese.
QuoteFurthermore, it's not as if identity politics twits are completely on board with eliminating 'gendered' pronouns â€" some of them want to add more pronouns to emulate the subtlety of their sexuality.
When I say "So I was talking to my X and he/she....", I clearly mean that "my X" is a man/woman in sex depending on which pronoun I use. Even if I make a mistake in referent â€" if I use a pronoun that the antecedent doesn't want me to use, it's not as if it's not easily corrected.
Yeah, my reasoning is independent of theirs, so I have no disagreements with you there.
QuoteI can see the use of an ambiguous gendered pronoun for when writing a general announcement, but their use while talking about a specific person? No, that's making a mountain out of a molehill. So what if I can't get away with not communicating the gender of my roommate? Big deal! I've experienced what happens when having two people I'm talking about being referred to with the same pronoun, so I'm glad for any distinction I can make.
I guess the point is that it's a much easier step than stamping out sexism altogether, which isn't saying much considering the latter task is impossible. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution isn't going anywhere.
QuoteFurther, getting rid of "he" and "she" would invalidate a whole mess of literature as outdated. People would have to learn them and their meanings just to be able to read their favorite novel, or the English classics. I certainly want my child to read Winne the Pooh or Alice in Wonderland without being confused about the gendered pronouns.
I don't think it would be that confusing. If you've read your Shakespeare, you know that the hard parts are the archaic figures of speech and words which have changed meaning. The thees, thous, and thithers are pretty simple to get past. Still, your point does make me realize that the change would be far harder to make than I was considering, not because people would have a hard time reading, but because they wouldn't - the vast majority of all the works they would ever read would make copious use of the words, so the movement would have to significantly outlive the current generation before it would ever be embedded.[/spoiler]
Japanese is an example of a language that doesn't have a strong future tense. It is considered offensive to be too confident regarding future events.
Most languages have much stronger gender specificity ... in fact usually for all words if there is no neuter. Newspeak is more imaginable in English than in say French. Mandarin and English have weak gender typing, because they are not proper languages at all, they are creoles created from feral children in England after the Black Death, in the case of Middle English, and from feral children in N China after similar catastrophes in the case of early Mandarin. In each case, a creole is a hybrid language learned by children under the age of 6 ... by necessity in dire circumstances, because their parents are dead and they are being raised in mixed ethnic circumstances. Hybrid languages used by children or adults after the age of 6 are pidgins. Most famously by stereotyped Chinese immigrants in the Old West, which were Cantonese/English. Creole languages have to drop grammar complexity because the contributing languages often have incompatible grammars. This is also why such languages, pragmatically ... develop position sensitive grammar eventually ... native languages have declensions that allow a greater freedom of position in a sentence.
I don't really like "they",or at least "their" when used after a person's name. They is fine and sounds good sometimes but not when used in certain ways. I don't use Facebook, but apparently now if you choose a non male or female gender, it says "Sam changed their profile picture". That just does not sound good at all imo. Why not just reword the sentence to say "Sam has changed profile pictures" or "Sam has an updated (or new) profile picture"? Those sentences sound a lot better than the one Facebook is using. When I think of "has changed their", that is what is used when talking about a group or company.
I think Miley is ok with she, but just to be safe and since I'm not a big fan of they, I'm going to go with calling her bae... I mean calling bae bae. I messed up already. This is not going to be easy.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 15, 2015, 08:21:12 PM
But there are colors which are associated with pure wavelengths, and they are represented on Newton's color circle (minus the purples which were added later in a misguided attempt to "complete" the circle).
You don't perceive pure wavelengths. Your perception of color is accomplished through the combination of the signal strengths of a number of color cones of different species in your eye. Of course, most people are trichromats, and some are dichromats. The cool thing is that up to 25% of people are tetrachromat â€" they have a
forth color cone able to distinguish more color nuances. I somehow doubt that someone with such a gross anatomical anomaly would really have that beaten out by the peculiarities of their language. In fact, people with the extraordinary ability to distinguish color would find they would have to
invent terms just to describe the subtleties of what they're perceiving.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 15, 2015, 08:21:12 PM
The experiment could go on using only these colors and thereby demonstrate clearly if the perceived difference between colors is correlated with the language. I don't think the term 'mistakes' in this context is at all pejorative, it would simply describe a child incorrectly identifying which color is closer to the intermediate.
While an intriguing experiment, I think it will be a definitive negative. See, this speculation that language somehow colors color perception doesn't square away with a peculiar fact about color words: that color word categories always follow a particular pattern
- 2 words: black and white,
- 3 words: add red,
- 4 words: add either green or yellow,
- 5 words: both green and yellow,
- 6 words: add blue,
- 7 words: add brown,
- 8+ words: add purple, pink, orange, and/or gray.
up to a maximum of 11 color categories. There has never been a language that has more than eleven color categories. While individual languages may have other color words, they will always be considered to be subshades of a more basil color. Furthermore, the focal hue of that category always correspond to roughly the same shade in the Munsel color system. This pattern is strongly suggestive that it is the psychophysics (yes, that's a real scientific dicipline) of color that determine language, rather than the other way around.
Regardless of how else you think about color words, this is very highly suggestive that there is no large effect on how people perceive colors, but how they are categorized. Just because you're limited in vocabulary doesn't mean squat. For instance, in black and white manga, I'm able to tell that the stark white faces of the characters are supposed to be closer to bronze, and evoke that sort of sense in the back of my mind, and the pitch black splotch of ink on the page is actually blood, and thus a similar red sense. The limit of the color vocabulary of the manga page is at best a minor incovenience.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 15, 2015, 08:21:12 PM
As before, I'm jealous. I've had experiences where someone asked my to choose between two paint colors on a card and I honestly couldn't tell there were two. Only with whites and blacks though, everything else is fine.
Huh. I don't know what to make of that. Thanks.
Though this does pose a problem for your experiment. Obviously, dichromats, trichromats and tetrachromats would genuinely perceive different colors due to their differences in sensory systems, so who gets to decide which colors are "closer" to each other? After all, the different chromacies are determined by genetics, which can differ between populations.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 15, 2015, 08:21:12 PM
Actually, the reason the correlation fallacy is a fallacy is due to the plurality of explanations possible for a correlative relationship, including but not limited to:
A causes B
B causes A
C causes A & B
A & B correlate by coincidence alone
Controlling for variables can only increase certainty that there is a correlation, but it still does nothing to establish causality. I totally agree that any proposed explanation is speculative, but unfortunately that's part of how science is (supposed to be) done. Establishing the causality can never be done with perfect certainty, so what we have to do is propose hypotheses and design tests to falsify them. The simplest possible hypothesis which has passed all attempts at falsification to the present date gets the almighty designation of theory unless and until it is falsified. Of course, in practice most scientists only bother with a very superficial level of falsification, so it's not exactly working out the way Popper envisioned it. He won the battle against Kuhn but he's losing the war.
Missing, don't try to tell a statistician about the correlation fallacy. Of course a correlation is suggestive, but until you establish one, you don't even get off the ground. For instance, in your own example, how do
polyglots fit into this model? What if someone speaks
both a weak- and a strong-FTR language with native fluency? Does this effect correlate with the number of weak- and strong-FTR languages you speak? If it did, then that would be truly suggestive of a real correlation. Using your categorization, you don't even know that A really correlates with B at all.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 15, 2015, 08:21:12 PM
He determines most of the "weak-FTR" languages by referring to previous research where there is a consensus that a future tense doesn't exist. In languages which do contain a future tense, he delineates them by comparing the percent of the time when the future is being referenced that a future tense verb is used. Only the North Germanic languages made the cut to be considered weak-FTR by that measure, so the vast majority of them simply lack a future tense. 22 of the 29 languages marked strong-FTR used it 70% of the time or more. Of course, I agree that the study would be better suited with a spectrum, and it's possible that the results would change, but there's little about his designation that could be considered arbitrary.
Actually, it is very arbitrary. What's so special about that 70% figure that delineates between weak- and strong-FTR? Also, why is future tense the subject of this study, when there may be other verb inflectional features that may be just as influential in affecting how people save, like verb aspect, modality, or evidentiality. Again, you don't even know that A correlates with B at all.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 15, 2015, 08:21:12 PM
Yes, as I mentioned there are a million areas where things like this occur and it is futile to fight them in most cases. I simply think that in this particular case we might be trying to put the peg through when we don't need to.
You can't avoid putting the peg through
something. If you avoid language about the sex of your roommate, we may wonder why you're so reluctant to reveal it. This may imply something that is just as much a distortion of reality as referring to your roommate's sex via pronoun. (For instance, is there hanky-panky you're reluctant to imply?) Instead of trying to limit the conversation to a few choice words, why not put in more information to try to refine and revise those initial distortions into something closer to reality?
Then again, SJWs do often avoid real conversations in favor of sound bites.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 15, 2015, 08:21:12 PM
An interesting theory, but have you considered that the correlation between the gender system and reduced ambiguity does not imply causality? :wink2: I suspect you're right about that, actually, but that doesn't mean it doesn't affect the way people think. In fact, based on what you just said this may be a unique opportunity to truly test objectivism vs relativism in psychology of language. In situations where the original conditions that resulted in a particular construct of language are the same as the current conditions, such as with color in England and Namibia, it's hard to say whether differences in color perception would be due to which colors are important for living in the area or which naming categories are available, because the former caused the latter and so there is insignificant difference between the set and distribution of colors pertaining to either metric. And, of course, it's perfectly possible for both to be true and reinforcing. In the case of gender, though, the force that created the category is distinct from the apparent meaning of the category. It would be interesting to find a set of nouns in German and French which mean the same thing but have different gender in each, and see if there is a noticeable difference in the way a speaker describes each thing which isn't there for words sharing gender. If enough differences existed to carry out the experiment, it would be even better to use very close languages like Spanish and Portuguese.
This might be hard. A specific example that comes to mind is that
Pferd (German: horse) is neutral gender (
das) while in French you have to refer to a male horse (
le cheval) or a female horse (
la jument). However, the differences in expression may come down to the fact that in French you have to choose a gender to talk about a single horse, the same way that in English you have to choose a gender to talk about a single cattle.
Quote from: missingnocchi on November 15, 2015, 08:21:12 PM
I guess the point is that it's a much easier step than stamping out sexism altogether, which isn't saying much considering the latter task is impossible. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution isn't going anywhere.
I don't think it would be that confusing. If you've read your Shakespeare, you know that the hard parts are the archaic figures of speech and words which have changed meaning. The thees, thous, and thithers are pretty simple to get past. Still, your point does make me realize that the change would be far harder to make than I was considering, not because people would have a hard time reading, but because they wouldn't - the vast majority of all the works they would ever read would make copious use of the words, so the movement would have to significantly outlive the current generation before it would ever be embedded.
Yep, just as millions of years aren't going anywhere, millions of works of fiction and non aren't either. Most of the books we have available to us were written in the last hundred years or so. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if most readable
text wasn't written in the last ten, the way internet data is exploding. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that all that text is calcifying the grammar.
Quote from: pr126 on November 11, 2015, 01:44:41 AM
University of Kansas Student Senate Bans Gender Pronouns Because They’re Microaggressions (http://atheistforums.com/university-of-kansas-student-senate-bans-gender-pronouns-because-theyre-microaggressions/)
https://twitter.com/hashtag/NationalOffendACollegeStudentDay?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc^tfw
"If you need a "safe space", you shouldn't be at a college/university, you should be in daycare"
Considering that gender dysphoric people make up far less than 1% of the population this is rather absurd.
Not to mention even gender dysphorics do identify as either a "he" or a "she", they just claim that their brain structure doesn't match the body - I'm pretty sure referring to them as an "it" or a "they" would be more offensive if they wish to be called one or the other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYYmjeoZGRY
All of these arguments only look at one side of the issue, how the person being addressed feels about it. Nobody ever seems to look at the other side, how the person using the pronoun may be made uncomfortable by its use. While I am certainly a champion for LGBT rights that doesn't mean that their feelings are the only ones we should consider.
Case in point, I read a few months ago about parents suing to stop gender reassignment surgery (unsuccessfully) for their daughter (born as their son). The father kept calling her his "son" until the judge ordered him to use the proper pronoun. The judge was considering only the feelings of the defendant, who was a woman as far as she was concerned and demanded that she be referred to as such. But he never considered the father's perspective. He took a baby boy home from the hospital. He was old and this really is rather new territory for this country. He was not comfortable referring to her as his "daughter". She had always been his son and, as far as he was concerned, she always would be. Now certainly he was closed minded and selfish. He was, after all, suing to prevent his daughter from having the surgery, which is what she truly believed would make her happy. But why must we be concerned with her comfort zone and hers alone? They will clearly never see eye to eye on this matter. The father clearly doesn't want to see this happen (I believe he lost, by the way). And, yes, referring to her with the female pronoun did make her feel more comfortable, which I, personally, am more than happy to do. But it doesn't make me uncomfortable to do so, so there's no conflict. In this case either the father was uncomfortable or the daughter was. Yes, the father's beliefs were bigoted and outdated, but they were still his beliefs. Why are we concerned only with the feelings of one and not the other? Is it not enough to say, "You are wrong. Everyone has the right to be happy."? Must we then go further and demand that they make themselves uncomfortable, that they offend themselves in order to prevent offending the other? It's not like what he was saying was derogatory or anything. He wasn't using negative words to describe her and he wasn't hurting her on purpose. But he wasn't comfortable describing his boy as his daughter, from his perspective.
I understand that not everybody "feels" like they fit into one of these two categories, but really, that's life. People label us all the time in ways we are not comfortable with. Personally, if it bothers you then tell the person using what you feel is the wrong pronoun which one you prefer, but don't expect them to make themselves feel uncomfortable to make you feel comfortable. It's selfish and childish, in my opinion, and if they refuse to do it then you can easily tell who is more concerned with their own feelings than yours, thus, who to avoid in the future.
We can go Solomon on this, find someone's baby, and offer to cut the baby in two!
Attend to a divorce, particularly your own. Ask anyone if anyone cares about the husband/father feelings? They don't. Not saying that things are easy for women ... but in a court ... your example, the judge considers the citizens to be bugs under his feet.
I don't have a problem with a new pronoun - I've seen 'sie' appropriated from the German as a non-gendered personal pronoun. A new pronoun that stands for unknown or indeterminate gender seems a perfectly reasonable extension of the language to me. What form it might take, I don't know. I've seen 'sie' and 'ce' used, but they decline awkwardly. The objective for both is frequently rendered 'hir', which is fine on paper but sounds too much like 'her' for clear speech.
Quote from: widdershins on December 04, 2015, 02:35:08 PM
All of these arguments only look at one side of the issue, how the person being addressed feels about it. Nobody ever seems to look at the other side, how the person using the pronoun may be made uncomfortable by its use. While I am certainly a champion for LGBT rights that doesn't mean that their feelings are the only ones we should consider.
Case in point, I read a few months ago about parents suing to stop gender reassignment surgery (unsuccessfully) for their daughter (born as their son). The father kept calling her his "son" until the judge ordered him to use the proper pronoun. The judge was considering only the feelings of the defendant, who was a woman as far as she was concerned and demanded that she be referred to as such. But he never considered the father's perspective. He took a baby boy home from the hospital. He was old and this really is rather new territory for this country. He was not comfortable referring to her as his "daughter". She had always been his son and, as far as he was concerned, she always would be. Now certainly he was closed minded and selfish. He was, after all, suing to prevent his daughter from having the surgery, which is what she truly believed would make her happy. But why must we be concerned with her comfort zone and hers alone? They will clearly never see eye to eye on this matter. The father clearly doesn't want to see this happen (I believe he lost, by the way). And, yes, referring to her with the female pronoun did make her feel more comfortable, which I, personally, am more than happy to do. But it doesn't make me uncomfortable to do so, so there's no conflict. In this case either the father was uncomfortable or the daughter was. Yes, the father's beliefs were bigoted and outdated, but they were still his beliefs. Why are we concerned only with the feelings of one and not the other? Is it not enough to say, "You are wrong. Everyone has the right to be happy."? Must we then go further and demand that they make themselves uncomfortable, that they offend themselves in order to prevent offending the other? It's not like what he was saying was derogatory or anything. He wasn't using negative words to describe her and he wasn't hurting her on purpose. But he wasn't comfortable describing his boy as his daughter, from his perspective.
I understand that not everybody "feels" like they fit into one of these two categories, but really, that's life. People label us all the time in ways we are not comfortable with. Personally, if it bothers you then tell the person using what you feel is the wrong pronoun which one you prefer, but don't expect them to make themselves feel uncomfortable to make you feel comfortable. It's selfish and childish, in my opinion, and if they refuse to do it then you can easily tell who is more concerned with their own feelings than yours, thus, who to avoid in the future.
Fuck the father's feelings. What if a father is upset that he can't call his gay son a fruitcake in a joking manner? I mean, he doesn't want a gay son afterall, just like the father in your case doesn't want a transgender for a son. Shouldn't we also respect that he doesn't want a gay son? Well, not really. Fuck him. Refusing to accept that your son is no longer your son but now your daughter, is like refusing to accept that your son is gay and trying to set him up with girls and joking about him to try to embarass him and get him to change back to straight.
Christians do the same thing with atheists. We're not really atheists. We're just mad at god. It's just a phase and we will come out of it. My parents tell me I'm still a Christian. Even if I don't believe, I'm still saved they say, right after telling me to repent or burn. Now, I don't find this offensive. I actually get a kick out of being insulted, and the only thing I really find offensive is the actions of governments, but I can imagine that it might not be too fun having your womanhood/ manhood constantly questioned like the father in your story was doing. I would say he wouldn't even need to refer to her as his 'daughter' or use 'she' anyways. You only use the words daughter and she when you are talking to someone else about your daughter. When you are talking to her directly, you just talk to her. There is no need to use the word 'daughter', 'she', 'her', etc. when actually talking to the daughter. If the father is used to calling her 'son' rather than calling the child by their name, just replace 'son' with 'sport' or 'buddy'. Problem solved. Now he doesn't have to be a prick and call her son.
Edit - Oh, the Judge ordered that the father refer to her as daughter in court? That is dumb. He can refer to her as 'my child' in court, and 'buddy' or whatever at home. Again, no need for the word daughter to be used. Problem solved.
Quote from: widdershins on December 04, 2015, 02:35:08 PM
Is it not enough to say, "You are wrong. Everyone has the right to be happy."?
That's a noble sentiment, but it's impossible for everyone to be happy. The best we can do is minimize the number of people made unhappy.
My question to the father in that court case would be: what's more important, your fantasy of who your child is... or the real, live, living human being that is your child, of whatever sex? It seems to me that the father was more fixated on what he wanted his child to be, than on who his child actually is. And that is dehumanizing, and what is particularly dehumanizing about this case: to this father, his child is a possession, not a person. And once his child is an adult, and absent a clear incapability and an assignment of guardianship,
it's not his fucking decision.
Simply put, in this case, the father
does not have a right to be happy, certainly not one that trumps his daughter's personal medical decisions and needs.
Quote from: trdsf on December 06, 2015, 07:23:24 AM
That's a noble sentiment, but it's impossible for everyone to be happy. The best we can do is minimize the number of people made unhappy.
My question to the father in that court case would be: what's more important, your fantasy of who your child is... or the real, live, living human being that is your child, of whatever sex? It seems to me that the father was more fixated on what he wanted his child to be, than on who his child actually is. And that is dehumanizing, and what is particularly dehumanizing about this case: to this father, his child is a possession, not a person. And once his child is an adult, and absent a clear incapability and an assignment of guardianship, it's not his fucking decision.
Simply put, in this case, the father does not have a right to be happy, certainly not one that trumps his daughter's personal medical decisions and needs.
We don't even have the ability to control our own happiness, though we try to do so with intoxicants and drugs. And as narcissists ... of course I am more important than my child or anyone else! I am not saying that being transgender is an illness, but clearly the father has more psych problems than his "daughter".
Offence is taken, not given.