Sex and Syntax

...This "history of shame," for whose chronicling Baron apologizes, draws on Anglo-American writings about the English language from medieval times to the present, and on a few foreign-language works—although Baron is no whiz at foreign languages: In his previous study, Grammar and Good Taste, he turned the simple German hoffent-lich into hoffentlich...

...That he cites preponderantly the intolerant utterances of antifeminists is understandable: Without them, no such book could be written and sold...

...Insisting that 'injustice exists in real life, not in dictionaries,' Howard concludes that if we end the real forms of sex discrimination, the English language will look after itself, and he warns that the use of sex-neutral words and pronouns corrupts language and harms the cause of equality for women...

...Grammar and Gender sports an impressive 18-page bibliography, and cannot be faulted for leaving the smallest pebble unturned...

...but the feminists Susan J. Wolfe and Julia Penelope Stanley derive it from *marito, which, they argue, "may at some transitional stage" have designated a "male attached to a woman," i. e.," womaned [or] made into a mate.'' Much of the fury of feminists attaches to female suffixes, making even such harmless words as actress and waitress into acts of gross condescension...

...Baron himself quotes, however fragmentari-ly, Philip Howard, the language columnist and, more recently, literary editor of the London Times: "Howard...

...Thus marriage, according to the American Heritage dictionary, derives from the Indo-European *mari-to, supposedly meaning "provided with a bride...

...Neither the more temperate views of linguistic conservatives nor the more outrageous ones of linguistic radicals of the feminist stripe are excluded...

...Reviewed by John Simon The stated purpose of Dennis Baron's Grammar and Gender is to "attempt to place the present debate over language and sex within the broader context of our linguistic history, to raise our consciousness about the linguistic treatment of grammar and gender in the same way that the woman's Ls/c] movement has raised our consciousness about language use in present-day English...

...also with the way etymologists have found positive derivations for masculine words, but frequently unflattering etymologies for feminine ones...

...Similarly, the feminist Bobbye Sorrels proposes that if women authors are authoresses, male writers be author-epps\ that masterpiece become best work (for me, this raises the question of how many best works one artist can produce...

...As for feminism, it comes in two forms...

...The examples Baron adduces both from everyday usage and from the precepts of experts are indeed unfavorable to women...

...Quite so...

...Baron does point out that most of this linguistic derogation originated in Ju-daeo-Christian religion, since Eve was Adam's rib, and compounded her de-rivativeness with deviousness in consorting with a certain serpent to unfortunate effect...

...by parallelism ("not just their tongues but [no also] their laughter...

...would in time become a woman, a woe to man...

...Whether or not the author, a professor of linguistics as well as the director of Freshman Rhetoric at the University of Illinois' Urbana-Champaign campus, emulates the feminists in their more militant practices, he has certainly adopted their jargon: Two consciousness-raisings in one sentence bristles with revolutionary fervor...

...but] the difference between the standard and the deviation...

...etc...

...No one can reasonably deny that women have been socially, economically, politically, and in fact physically abused, or at least hindered, in patriarchies, and that the language, to some extent, reflects these conditions...

...Still, like everyone else, he does not dare draw the obvious conclusion, namely, that as long as current religions with their strong implicit or explicit male supremacism prevail, it is religion, not language that would have to be changed, quite irrespective of whether all actresses become actors or all waitresses waiters...

...He] does not oppose women's rights...

...And when, on the same page, Baron botches a parallel construction—"based not so much on human nature...

...and by the need to differentiate between while and whereas (or though)—to mention only some of his more glaring solecisms...

...I can work up some sympathy for gynocide, "what patriarchic [incorrect for patriarchal] society does to women," extreme as it is...

...It deals with how certain words and constructions, really or supposititiously, insult women through the use of "gender-specific" terms, or by the derivation of feminine word forms from masculine ones, which allegedly subordinates women to men...

...The other is the unworthy, fanatical sort that proposes, among other things, to right minor or imaginary linguistic wrongs with whopping barbarisms...

...Baron sees nothing odd in their argument, and cheers the authors on when they haul out their heavy artillery, to wit, that though we have, or had, the supposedly offensive Negress, Jewess and Quakeress, "no one ever came up with Whitess, WASPess, or Protestantess...

...Yet the answers are obvious: White is primarily an adjective and does not take a suffix any more than black does (whereas Negro, in English, has historically been both nominal and adjectival...

...Of course, male prejudice has its maddening manifestations in language, as when the poet Robert Southey (1847) derives lass from alas—a sigh "breathed sorrowfully forth at the thought the girl...

...another advocates "In Godess We Trust because women have been hidden by language and must become more noticeable...

...and no entry whatsoever for woman," where the plural are cannot do double duty...

...finds the attempt to neutralize English misguided...

...Finally, Baron considers how through constructions such as the generic masculine man, through compounds ending in -man, and through the use of the masculine third-person pronoun in such constructions as "Everyone loves his mother," women are silenced and become invisible...

...Baron lists some five pages of proposed epicene pronouns, a few humorous (the best is Joel Weiss' h 'orsh 'it, ablend of he, she, it) and very many dead serious, I fear...

...or when, more significantly, the distinguished grammarian Otto Jespersen "concludes his impressionistic list of women's linguistic failures with the questionable compliment that women represent the golden mean: they are more average when it comes to language...

...He himself favors a "stylistically inob-trusive singular they [i.e., "everybody loves their mother"], in combination with an occasional he or she [and the] rephrasing of sentences," though he neglects to give us guidelines for the ideal proportions...

...and, further, with real or imaginary women's languages within English that have been considered variously inferior...

...but [sic] on the accidents of social class"—I wonder whether one would want one's children to imbibe their Freshman Rhetoric at so turbid a source...

...The fact that it violates gender concord," writes Baron, "is either ignored or rationalized by alleging the inclusive-ness of the masculine pronoun" (note that tendentious alleging: Usage and allegation—and sometimes logic—are all we have in grammar...

...andnounsin -ant (e.g., militant, applicant, postulant) have, for better or worse, never had feminines in English...

...But these are things of the dim and dimwitted past, whereas it is in the present that, in Women's Studies, God-dard College has ovulars rather than seminars...

...In Baron's defense be it said that, though he is clearly a convert to the feminist cause and thanks his wife, Iryce, for saving him "time and again from infelicities of style that could prove explosive in a work on the sensitive topic of feminism, antifeminism, and language," he scrupulously records the opinions and fiats of the whole spectrum of grammarians, lexicographers and bona and mala fide authorities on usage...

...Even in newly coined languages like Esperanto and Unilin-gua, women are claimed to get the short end of the linguistick...

...W/lSPwithasuffixwould cease to be a punning acronym and lose the joke (but humor has never been the strong suit of militants, feminist or other...

...It is true that there are constructions where an "epicene" pronoun would be a great help, and so there have been many attempts to coin one—thon (from "that one"), as in '' everyone loves thons mother," having been the most nearly successful...

...rather, he objects to meddling with our vocabulary and syntax...

...but gynaesthesia, meaning "women's synaesthesia," is separatism running amuck...

...All this seems to have contributed greatly to women's subservience and discomfiture over the ages...

...The arguments are not new, but, then, the book claims to be only a sort of catalogue raisonni...

...by a professor who is thrown by numerical agreement ("there are no synonyms for man...

...What has never been proved is the reverse effect—that language stunts feminine egos, damages women's lives...

...According to Casey Miller and Kate Swift, actress vis-a-vis actor is "not a distinction between male and female...

...One is the worthy, responsible sort that endeavors to eliminate social, economic and political discrimination against women...

...And it is surely pitiful that, as Baron relates, "women were actually granted degrees as Mistresses and Maids of Arts and Vestals of Philosophy...

...and that maestro be changed to expert ("music, expert, please...

...But the bloodiest battle rages around the generic masculine pronoun, he...

...Into etymology the battle is carried...

...Other horrors follow apace...

...One feminist uses womban "to emphasize the negative stereotype of woman as a baby-maker...

...I must confess that I resent being lectured on the importance of becoming "sensitized to sex-related language questions" (note how execrable that wording is...