Grammar
Tenses
Present
Present Simple
Present Continuous
Present Perfect
Present Perfect Continuous
Past
Past Continuous
Past Perfect
Past Perfect Continuous
Past Simple
Future
Future Simple
Future Continuous
Future Perfect
Future Perfect Continuous
Passive and Active
Parts Of Speech
Nouns
Countable and uncountable nouns
Verbal nouns
Singular and Plural nouns
Proper nouns
Nouns gender
Nouns definition
Concrete nouns
Abstract nouns
Common nouns
Collective nouns
Definition Of Nouns
Verbs
Stative and dynamic verbs
Finite and nonfinite verbs
To be verbs
Transitive and intransitive verbs
Auxiliary verbs
Modal verbs
Regular and irregular verbs
Action verbs
Adverbs
Relative adverbs
Interrogative adverbs
Adverbs of time
Adverbs of place
Adverbs of reason
Adverbs of quantity
Adverbs of manner
Adverbs of frequency
Adverbs of affirmation
Adjectives
Quantitative adjective
Proper adjective
Possessive adjective
Numeral adjective
Interrogative adjective
Distributive adjective
Descriptive adjective
Demonstrative adjective
Pronouns
Subject pronoun
Relative pronoun
Reflexive pronoun
Reciprocal pronoun
Possessive pronoun
Personal pronoun
Interrogative pronoun
Indefinite pronoun
Emphatic pronoun
Distributive pronoun
Demonstrative pronoun
Pre Position
Preposition by function
Time preposition
Reason preposition
Possession preposition
Place preposition
Phrases preposition
Origin preposition
Measure preposition
Direction preposition
Contrast preposition
Agent preposition
Preposition by construction
Simple preposition
Phrase preposition
Double preposition
Compound preposition
Conjunctions
Subordinating conjunction
Correlative conjunction
Coordinating conjunction
Conjunctive adverbs
Interjections
Express calling interjection
Grammar Rules
Preference
Requests and offers
wishes
Be used to
Some and any
Could have done
Describing people
Giving advices
Possession
Comparative and superlative
Giving Reason
Making Suggestions
Apologizing
Forming questions
Since and for
Directions
Obligation
Adverbials
invitation
Articles
Imaginary condition
Zero conditional
First conditional
Second conditional
Third conditional
Reported speech
Linguistics
Phonetics
Phonology
Semantics
Pragmatics
Linguistics fields
Syntax
Morphology
Semantics
pragmatics
History
Writing
Grammar
Phonetics and Phonology
Reading Comprehension
Elementary
Intermediate
Advanced
Sapir-Whorf and ‘verbal hygiene’
المؤلف: David Hornsby
المصدر: Linguistics A complete introduction
الجزء والصفحة: 59-3
2023-12-12
550
The weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is an important driver of debates over verbal hygiene, or what some call ‘politically correct language’. Consider the following advertisement for a job at a fictional university:
Lecturer in Linguistics – University of Histown
The University of Histown Department of Linguistics seeks a full-time Lecturer in Linguistics. The successful candidate will take up his duties at the start of the next academic year, and he will be expected to take a full part in the teaching, administration and research activities of the department. His remuneration will be determined on the basis of his responsibilites and experience.
The pronouns and possessive adjectives (he, his) are all masculine forms, which have traditionally been used in a gender-neutral way in formal English (e.g. everyone took his place) and do not therefore imply that only male candidates will be considered. Nonetheless, the consistent use of masculine forms subtly suggests that Histown University is something of a ‘boys’ club’ in which women are not welcome, and this might well deter able female candidates from applying for the post. Furthermore, as has often been pointed out, some supposedly ‘gender-neutral’ forms are in fact nothing of the kind: ‘Some men are female’ sounds odd, while ‘Some human beings are female’ does not; ‘Each applicant is to list the name of his spouse’ is similarly strange and sounds better with ‘his or her’.
For this reason, job advertisements like the one above are largely a thing of the past. Employers are required to use gender-inclusive language wherever possible, and terms like fireman, barman and stewardess are generally being replaced by firefighter, bartender and flight attendant (though not everyone accepts postie for postman); many actresses now prefer the gender-neutral actor.
Many European languages have what is known as a T/V distinction in which the second person singular form (e.g. tu in French, du in Swedish) is used with familiars and intimates while its plural equivalent (vous French; ni Swedish), when used with a single addressee, is more formal. The social values which the T/V distinction encodes vary considerably, however: using tu to a stranger in France would be perceived as rude, while the use of ni to one person in Swedish would generally appear odd or old-fashioned. These values are, moreover, subject to change: a famous paper by Brown and Gilman showed how the use of tu and vous in French had shifted considerably in the post-war years, with vous increasingly marking social distance rather than social superiority. Non-reciprocal T/V usage (a boss might once have demanded vous from staff while giving tu) was increasingly avoided in favour of reciprocal T or V use. A society aspiring to greater egalitarianism had begun to signal this by using its linguistic signs differently: the language had not prevented its members from conceiving an alternative social structure. The categories of our language may incline us to perceive the world in a certain way, but they do not make us do so and we can choose to see things differently. We need to be vigilant, in other words, in identifying the ‘conceptual fetters’.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds that our view of the world is dictated by the categories of our mother tongue. Few linguists today would accept it in its strong form, but a weaker version of the hypothesis has influenced the drive for non-discriminatory language.