The Politics of Language
Feb. 19th, 2001 08:56 pmIn Douglas R. Hofstadter's satire "A Person Paper on Purity in Language", he uses the analogy of race to show how the idea of male supremacy is built into our language, and to illustrate the fact that male does not equal generic:
This is directly analogous to the use of "guys" as in the phrase "you guys." I don't want to be greeted with a friendly "Hey, you guys," because I'm not a guy, and most of the time people say that to me, neither is anyone else in the room. Sherryl Kleinman, one of the best professors I've ever had a class with, and one or two of her former students put together what have become known as "you guys cards." On the cards, we are urged to use "you all," "y'all," or even a simple "you" in place of "you guys." While "y'all" sounds unnatural coming out of my mouth--I'm a Californian at heart, not a Southerner--I've taken to using it in writing and "you" or "you all" in speech.
A related issue is that women often refuse to take ownership of the term "women." Not only do other people call us "girls," which implies that we're children unable to live our own lives and make our own choices, but many of us refuse to identify ourselves as "women," choosing instead to identify as "girls." Those of us who spend a lot of time in chat have been dubbed "the chatgirls." While I appreciate it that we can be referred to as a collective, I'm not a girl. Nat is the only one who could reasonably be called a girl, and even she's too grown-up to truly be a girl anymore.
There is great beauty to a phrase such as "All whites are created equal." Our forebosses who framed the Declaration of Independence well understood the poetry of our language. Think how ugly it would be to say "All persons are created equal.", or "All whites and blacks are created equal." Besides, as any schoolwhitey can tell you, such phrases are redundant. In most contexts, it is self-evident when "white" is being used in an inclusive sense, in which case it subsumes members of the darker race just as much as fairskins.
This is directly analogous to the use of "guys" as in the phrase "you guys." I don't want to be greeted with a friendly "Hey, you guys," because I'm not a guy, and most of the time people say that to me, neither is anyone else in the room. Sherryl Kleinman, one of the best professors I've ever had a class with, and one or two of her former students put together what have become known as "you guys cards." On the cards, we are urged to use "you all," "y'all," or even a simple "you" in place of "you guys." While "y'all" sounds unnatural coming out of my mouth--I'm a Californian at heart, not a Southerner--I've taken to using it in writing and "you" or "you all" in speech.
A related issue is that women often refuse to take ownership of the term "women." Not only do other people call us "girls," which implies that we're children unable to live our own lives and make our own choices, but many of us refuse to identify ourselves as "women," choosing instead to identify as "girls." Those of us who spend a lot of time in chat have been dubbed "the chatgirls." While I appreciate it that we can be referred to as a collective, I'm not a girl. Nat is the only one who could reasonably be called a girl, and even she's too grown-up to truly be a girl anymore.