Re: How old is the machismo in Romance languages

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com,


I had drawn attention to

> > Dwight Bolinger, Language, the
> > loaded weapon: the use and abuse of language today, 1980.

and commented that:

> > There is
> > absolutely no cause for male complacency where the pro-male bias

of

> > language is concerned.

Then Mate wrote:

> OK, and untill I read it, would you be so kind to tell us what is

the main

> point of the book?

It came down to the demonstration that a doctrine of feminine
inferiority is much more deeply ingrained in language than I
considered possible until then. To me that was an eye-opener because
until then I'd believed that everything was just fine. Which is of
course what members of the superior party in such configurations tend
to believe anyhow.


Mate:

> And does it have anything to do with what we are
> talking about?
> My point is that there is no point saying that it's chauvinistic

that for

> instance in Slavic lgs one man + a thousand women go with masc.

agreement

> since this is just a remnant of the fact that what we call masc.

gender is

> indeed a common gender.

This confuses diachrony with synchrony. Granted that _originally_ the
msc was a common gender, that statement is irrelevant at a synchronic
stage where "one man + a thousand women go with masc. agreement".


Mate:

> Also, gender in IE is probably a result of a
> number of funny coincedences, it was definitely not a planned

conspiration

> to dominate over women.

I completely agree with that. It goes without saying that nobody
planned things that way. It is just a reflection of a mindset that
regards women as inherently less likely to initiate actions, or that
requires males to be accorded more "respect" than females, or
something along those lines. The complaint of the people who
introduced the subject was that as soon as a single male enters the
picture it is the male that determines the result of the calculation
irrespective of the number or quality of women present. That carries
a strong implicit ideology.



Willem