Talk:Gender-neutral language in English

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Gender-neutral language in English article. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Ask questions, get answers.	Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Be welcoming	Article policies No original research Neutral point of view Verifiability

	This article is part of WikiProject Gender Studies. This WikiProject aims to improve the quality of articles dealing with gender studies and to remove systematic gender bias from Wikipedia. If you would like to participate in the project, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class.

Archives
Archive 1

Contents 1 Esperanto error 2 Spivak 3 Split article? 4 this article makes sexist language sound like a bad thing... 5 'Common positions' section 6 Swedish 7 Linguistically and psychologically speaking 8 This is Rediculous 9 Not an essay 10 no reference for phrase 11 Rename? 12 About the sentence... 13 contradiction 14 POV

[edit] Esperanto error

The Esperanto examples are good on the whole, but there _is_ a word for "parent": gepatro. Feel free to make the change. SiennaLizard 14:32, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

One tiny change and yet you still let two months go by waiting for someone else to do it rather than just highlighting the incorrect sentance and pressing "delete" all by yourself. There, it's been done. Master Deusoma 17:39, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spivak

The article for Spivak pronouns links here; shouldn't there be a section here discussing it, or a "see also" link? B7T 06:59, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Split article?

Since this page is getting very long, I'd suggest splitting most of the section "Gender neutral language modification in other languages" into its own article and leaving just a short discussion in that section without specific examples from many languages. (Right now, the first paragraph under that section header is very specific to IE languages). Comments? cab 10:46, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I decided to be bold. Basically, I took the old Gender-neutral language article and cut the non-English parts out to Gender-neutral language in Indo-European languages and Gender-neutral language in non-Indo-European languages. What remained turned out to be very English-specific, so I moved the page to Gender-neutral language in English and fixed the double redirects. So far the results feel less than satisfactory, especially for Gender-neutral language in non-Indo-European languages which just feels like a laundry list. I will continue to work on improving it in the coming days; your suggestions are appreciated.

One question I do have for all contributors: is there anything which could be said generally about gender-neutral language regardless of the language in question (e.g. non-specific to English)? Such as the politics of it, or the relation to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, etc. Would it be enough to make an article? cab 15:48, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I applaud your decision to split the article, but I think that, instead of having one article for gender-neutral language in the Indo-European languages and another for gender-neutral language in non-Indo-European languages, it would have been more interesting to have one for languages that have grammatical genders, and another for those that don't. FilipeS 17:05, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] this article makes sexist language sound like a bad thing...

but then again, wikipedia actually has an article on "womyn" so I guess I shouldn't be surprised... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.152.105.16 (talk • contribs) .

Well, isn't sexism a bad thing?

Sexism is a great thing, it keeps us bitches in the kitchen where we belong —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.178.96.229 (talk) 15:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC).

Whether it is or not isn't the business of an article on Wikipedia to say. The article about Adolf Hitler doesn't say "Hitler was an evil man", even though almost everyone reading the article will consider him one based on his actions. I agree with the previous person that this article radiates a general tone of approval towards gender-neutral language and disapproval towards gender-specific language. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.97.214.247 (talk) 11:45, 19 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] 'Common positions' section

I am sceptical of the value of the second half of this section. It discusses a specific article about women's usage of language and their role in society. However, it does not talk about gender-neutral language - it is discussing how the language is used by women, a very different topic. I'm inclined to remove the entire second half of this section (possibly putting it somewhere more fitting, if such a place can be found), because it doesn't actually discuss gender-neutral language. --Sam Pointon 15:04, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

After looking at the page history, I see that the passage in question was added two days ago by a user otherwise uninvolved with the article. In that case, I'm going to be bold and remove it. --Sam Pointon 15:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Swedish

I read the section about the Swedish language and I think the sentence at the end of the section: "Swedish women also generally have lower salaries than men for the same kind of work, because they are all expected to stay at home with children at some point and, while well represented in government, are scarce in higher company positions.", although partly true, really does not have anything to do with gender-neutral language issues and hence I have decided to remove that part of the text. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.64.223.85 (talk • contribs) .

I think you made the right decision. Ruakh 00:02, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Linguistically and psychologically speaking

This section reeks of personal opinion, makes assertions that are uncited and uses "I" and "we" a lot. I'm tempted to remove the whole thing, as that entire section seems based on nothing other than the synesthesia of one user who has nothing else to do with the entry. Not that I have historically either, but it definitely needs to be reworked at the very least.
Kelbesque 16:28, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The use of "I" there is ridiculous (eg, "the few languages I know"), and the viewpoint described, while intriguing, needs evidence. I'm going to remove this section. --Lazar Taxon 05:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This is Rediculous

I'm sorry but seriously, it seems these people think language itself is a conspiracy against women, which is silly. 82.9.230.246 18:35, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

"Rediculous" - please refer to discourse for explanation of the arguments behind gender neutral language.--Cailil 17:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not an essay

As a result of recent edits, the article was beginning to resemble a personal essay in favour of non-sexist language. I've edited out what I consider to be some unsupported and/or POV, but please don't take it personally. It's just part of the process.CJGB (Chris) 22:53, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] no reference for phrase

There is no reason to assume that the traditional linguistic gender hierarchies reflect a bias against women. The female grammatical gender is simply marked and it could actually reflect women being more valued than men.[4]

This phrase has a reference link which goes nowhere.. -- Sy / ^(talk) 12:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rename?

There should be an article about the general topic of gender-inclusive language. It does not matter if all the examples are from English; this is the English language Wikipedia, after all. I think the article should be renamed gender-inclusive language. Are there any objections? FilipeS 18:17, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] About the sentence...

Inclusive language follows the principles of gender-neutral language and extends them to other areas of language, such as referring neither to adults nor children when discussing a person whose age cannot otherwise be determined.

Please give some examples when it comes to age. Georgia guy 19:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] contradiction

...is what I would call "Gender-neutral_language_in_English#In_other_languages" (shouldn't be more than a link), and unless these unsourced claims are moved to the articles now on top of that section, they should better be deleted... Opinion, anyone? --Flammingo^Parliament 21:49, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The stuff you brought from Feminism does not seem to add anything worthwhile to Gender-neutrality in languages with grammatical gender or to Gender-neutrality in languages without grammatical gender (which is where it should be, not here). I would delete most of it, and revert to the previous version of the section. FilipeS 16:51, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

It was redundant there, but it seems to be redundant here, as well. --Flammingo^Parliament 17:08, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

There may be some sentences in it which would benefit the other two articles... FilipeS 17:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV

There is a *lot* of opinion being thrown about in the Affirmative Positions section. "Gender neutral language has become both accepted and expected" is not an NPOV statement. Some of this section is well-written and conforms to NPOV, but much of it requires cleanup. Akqjt 10:23, 4 April 2007 (UTC)