TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE
TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE
“A GUIDE TO FAIR AND ACCURATE LANGUAGE”
By: Rocio Moreno
Language powerfully influences attitudes, behavior and perceptions. Biased language refers to people in imbalanced or inaccurate ways: it excludes certain individuals or groups, it makes unwarranted assumptions, it calls individuals and groups by names or labels that they didn’t choose, it treats groups in nonparallel ways in the same context and it categorizes people when it is unnecessary to do so. Maybe following one simple rule of writing or speaking will eliminate most biases.
The inclusive and exclusive language is often used. The first one includes everyone it intends to include; the second one excludes some people. An example of inclusive language could be: “the students of the Universidad Del Norte have to assist to a speech of the president”; this means that all the people who studies at the Universidad Del Norte must assist to the conference that the president is presenting. One example of exclusive language is: “the students of international business at the Universidad Del Norte must assist to a conference called Catedra Europa”, this means that only this students are assisting to this catedra, not the ones from medicine, nor the ones from administration, just the ones of international business.
In the sexist and nonsexist language, on one hand there’s assume that the male is the norm who is the significant gender, but on the other hand both sexes are treated equally. For example, “ easy work is for woman while hard work is for man” is a sexist example because it assumes that a woman is unable to do hard activities. “If people don’t want to come out of the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them” this is a nonsexist example.
When the gender is free, we don’t indicate the sex and it could be used for either women-girl or men-boys (teacher, student, child…). The gender-fair language promotes fairness to both sexes. If you are describing the behavior of Erin Lowry’s students, it must be refer to every single student in particular and not generalize.
The use of generic is words that include everybody (people, students, politicians…). Pseudogeneric is a word that assumes including everybody but in reality it is not like that. People who use pseudogeneric words are only thinking in themselves and their immediate world.
The pseudogeneric “He” refers to he and she. These words have all the characteristics of a highly effective propaganda technique: repetition, covertness/indirectness, early age of acquisition. Defenders claim that he as a generic term is a longstanding grammatical convention and that its use is not intended to exclude anyone. He was declared generic and legally inclusive of she by an act of the English parliament. The pronoun he can be avoided by rewriting the sentence in the plural, omitting the pronoun entirely, replacing the pronoun with an article.
There exist also man complications about the pseudogeneric “man/men/mankind”. Researchers who studied the hypothesis that man is generally understood to include woman found “rather convincing evidence that when you use man generically, people do tend to think male, and tend not to think female.
Differences between sex gender is important because much sexist language arises from cultural determination of what a female or male want to be. Sex is biological while gender is cultural. It is biological impossible for a man to have babies and it is cultural impossible a woman to be a miner.
With all this terms clear we can understand that the best way to ensure unbiased writing and speaking is to describe people as individuals, not as members of a group.
“A GUIDE TO FAIR AND ACCURATE LANGUAGE”
By: Rocio Moreno
Language powerfully influences attitudes, behavior and perceptions. Biased language refers to people in imbalanced or inaccurate ways: it excludes certain individuals or groups, it makes unwarranted assumptions, it calls individuals and groups by names or labels that they didn’t choose, it treats groups in nonparallel ways in the same context and it categorizes people when it is unnecessary to do so. Maybe following one simple rule of writing or speaking will eliminate most biases.
The inclusive and exclusive language is often used. The first one includes everyone it intends to include; the second one excludes some people. An example of inclusive language could be: “the students of the Universidad Del Norte have to assist to a speech of the president”; this means that all the people who studies at the Universidad Del Norte must assist to the conference that the president is presenting. One example of exclusive language is: “the students of international business at the Universidad Del Norte must assist to a conference called Catedra Europa”, this means that only this students are assisting to this catedra, not the ones from medicine, nor the ones from administration, just the ones of international business.
In the sexist and nonsexist language, on one hand there’s assume that the male is the norm who is the significant gender, but on the other hand both sexes are treated equally. For example, “ easy work is for woman while hard work is for man” is a sexist example because it assumes that a woman is unable to do hard activities. “If people don’t want to come out of the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them” this is a nonsexist example.
When the gender is free, we don’t indicate the sex and it could be used for either women-girl or men-boys (teacher, student, child…). The gender-fair language promotes fairness to both sexes. If you are describing the behavior of Erin Lowry’s students, it must be refer to every single student in particular and not generalize.
The use of generic is words that include everybody (people, students, politicians…). Pseudogeneric is a word that assumes including everybody but in reality it is not like that. People who use pseudogeneric words are only thinking in themselves and their immediate world.
The pseudogeneric “He” refers to he and she. These words have all the characteristics of a highly effective propaganda technique: repetition, covertness/indirectness, early age of acquisition. Defenders claim that he as a generic term is a longstanding grammatical convention and that its use is not intended to exclude anyone. He was declared generic and legally inclusive of she by an act of the English parliament. The pronoun he can be avoided by rewriting the sentence in the plural, omitting the pronoun entirely, replacing the pronoun with an article.
There exist also man complications about the pseudogeneric “man/men/mankind”. Researchers who studied the hypothesis that man is generally understood to include woman found “rather convincing evidence that when you use man generically, people do tend to think male, and tend not to think female.
Differences between sex gender is important because much sexist language arises from cultural determination of what a female or male want to be. Sex is biological while gender is cultural. It is biological impossible for a man to have babies and it is cultural impossible a woman to be a miner.
With all this terms clear we can understand that the best way to ensure unbiased writing and speaking is to describe people as individuals, not as members of a group.
posted by rocio at 4:17 PM
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