One of the most important skills to learn if you want to be a successful writer is to know your audience. Know your audience and speak to it. If you’re writing for the usual mix of civilization, your audience will be roughly half male and half female. With this in mind, the successful writer is not likely to ignore half of that audience by writing exclusively to one gender or the other. Nonsexist writing is an issue that used to be hotly debated and is now being widely accepted. Most of the resistance to nonsexist writing was based in the idea that “everyone knows that he means he or she.” Well, he does not mean she and it never has. Using the male gender entirely in writing now seems less an issue of the writer being sexist as the writer being lazy. The continued use of gender specific language is not only old fashioned and obsolete, but also tells the writer you are not considering your entire audience.
In the piece entitled “ The Great Person-Hole Cover Debate”, the author argues that there is no justification for the continued use of gender specific language. She cites that during the civil rights movements of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, the manufacturer band-aid had to abandon the “skin color” band-aids as they were only the color of Caucasian skin. Since a band-aid had to be re-named for racial reasons, the writer sees no reason why use of gender specific language should be continued. I agree with the work of this writer that gender specific language should be kept to a minimum. There are two main problems that need to be solved when considering a move to gender-neutral language. First, the sentence structure must be changed to accommodate both men and women equally. For example, “When a student writes a paper, he must proofread carefully.” Becomes “When we students write our papers, we must proofread carefully.” Simply switching he with we and re-wording the sentence achieves the desirable form. The second problem is with male-oriented words such as businessman, chairman, congressman, and mailman. These can be modified to business executive, chair, member of congress, and mail carrier. These new ways of writing are every bit as professional as the traditional ways, but include both sexes equally.
The Essay on Charles Bukowski Writing Life Audience
Charles Bukowski was a hero to some while a degenerate to others. He found beauty in the ugliest aspects of life. He spoke of violence and drunkenness, and did it with pride. In "My Madness" Bukowski has created an opinion on life that's raw, vulgar, and to the point. He had a non-sympathetic attitude in this passage and a non-sympathetic attitude in his life. Bukowski employs no purpose to create ...
The author closes her arguments stating that “she” should get a turn. If he were to be replaced with she, no progress would be made. The answer lies in the need for gender-neutral language, not female dominated language.
The quotes “simple and forthright” and “Respect to long tradition” from the above piece symbolize that male dominant language has been around for many centuries. He was always assumed to mean she also. I think that the inherit laziness in our species has led to the use of he instead of he or she. The English language has shown progress both in ways of technology with the invention of scientific words and in the way of social aspects when considering the above-mentioned band-aid case. It seems appalling that we have not been able to “invent” a word capable of describing both he and she with all of the progression in other areas of this magnificent language.
The Question of whether or not gender exclusive language is every justified must be taken to your audience. Since human kind is approximately fifty percent female and fifty percent male, gender neutral language should be used. Further, the advancements in the twentieth century in the way of social and technological language raise the question of why we still use such an obsolete method of gender exclusion. If continued, sexist language will hold back our language from advancing into the twenty-first century.
Language, Gender, And Culture Essay
In our world there are so people that are being overrated, from their skin color, to how they talk or to where they came from or the way they walk, everything from what people wear to where people come from and their ethnic background. These people are looked down on from the rest of society for just being themselves and doing only what they know to do. For some, it’s wrong if others do not act ...
