Hello!

Phaedrus · Post by **Phaedrus** » 13 Jun 2008 11:12

I just realized that my previous post(out of context) makes it sound like I might have been drinking. Silly wording.

Eh, you're back to defend your honor now.

orald · Post by **orald** » 13 Jun 2008 11:14

Phaedrus wrote:Eh, you're back to defend your honor now.

They will call me Shaitan.

LiquidBlue · Post by **LiquidBlue** » 13 Jun 2008 16:15

holly cow! You guys are some posting fools! I love it! I wish the forum I moderated was this active...thanks for all the new "welcomes"...

SandChigger
Hardman was/is a true feminist, there is def. a slant! She is, however, a friend of Sci-fi...check out the courses she teaches at UF, http://grove.ufl.edu/~hardman/ ... I confess to just applying the concept without questioning its validity...bad me! I'm no linguist, though sociolinguistcs fascinates me...Thanks for the additional Japanese lingusitc info (maybe I can work it in! I can already think of a place for it...)...I plan to futher support the paper with theory about the evolution of language and conciousness. I want to use it as my graduate application writing sample...

Unfortunatly, I had all my work on a thumb drive that was stolen by my 1st period class (they are a unit, even if only one person did the stealing, all felt the wrath!) toward the end of the year, but I do have all of them printed out. I'll try to scan it and send it to you if you really want to read it...

orald
Hello!
I only showed up until the Sardaukar attack on Arrakis and pointed out the inaccuracies of the movie to that point...like Princess Irulan showing up at the party, Paul's age and physical description...and the list goes on...The point was to give them some visual refrence. These are students that are "struggling readers"...4 or 5 grade levels behind...I *know* from reading your posts that you have a better grasp of the English language than they do and most of them are native speakers! The movie was to try and help them get into the story (which is so different from their norm, reading is not a thing of enjoyment/exploration/escapism for them...its hard/terrible/pointless/useless) in a format to which they can at least somewhat relate, film/visual media...

Robspierre
(I think I'm replying to the right person) I have that power point jepordy too...I've made a Dune jepordy as well as some vocab ones...they kids LOVE it...good call

Pardot Kynes
What a strage reaction for a Universit to have...sorry you had to deal with it...

SandChigger · Post by **SandChigger** » 13 Jun 2008 17:11

Da postin' fools! That be us!

(Well, mostly orald, but I figure you've figured that out by now!

)

I saw the SF mention on Hardman's page (I did a bit of googling after a quick look through the paper...which I realize is over ten years old now), so I decided she can't be all bad, ha ha!

Sure, if/when you have time to scan, send them along!

Mandy · Post by **Mandy** » 13 Jun 2008 18:37

Oh, she (Hardman) has a couple of my favorites listed. I love Ursula K Le Guin and Sheri S. Tepper.

Post by **Freakzilla** » 13 Jun 2008 18:54

I like Julian May.

orald · Post by **orald** » 14 Jun 2008 01:34

Real feminist...is that what they call a chauvinist with the other *stuff* between the legs nowdays?

It's not about equality, it's about creating a new masters cast.

Oh, Teg would've got out unharmed for using "pussy", s shown many times, wasn't sure it'll work for me though, hence the longish way of describing.

SandChigger · Post by **SandChigger** » 14 Jun 2008 02:48

Caste?

This sort of comment really is quite annoying. But you know that, don't you? Why not grow a real pair and just say what you want to say without this sort of typographical bullshit?

LiquidBlue · Post by **LiquidBlue** » 14 Jun 2008 08:11

I'm pretty sure he meant caste...but master cast is kind of funny

(I'm just j/k with you, Orald

)

I don't think the feminist movement was about subjugating another group...and Hardman is calling for a change in linguistic postulates to create equality...This is how she started her essay, if you haven't looked at it yet:

To act in a way that is both sexist and racist, to maintain one's class privilege, it is only necessary to act in the customary, ordinary, usual, even polite manner.

--Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women's Writing

In the 1960s, we said to ourselves that we would be nonracist and nonsexist. Now 30 years later, we find that simply saying so was easier than being so. We have, to our chagrin, discovered the truth of Russ' statement and the difficulty of implementing a society where concern and responsibility for the group coexists with respect for individual integrity, where both community and personal autonomy mutually support and reinforce each other.

In Jaqi, the language she uses as a comparison, they make distinctions between human and nonhuman and data source is built into their language. Therefore, every time they verbally acknowledge what they "know" the speaker must say HOW they know (did I learn if from someone else? Did I observe it?) If you constantly must check your knowledge for its source, that might help to emphasize your dependence on others...

I'm curious, SandChigger, does Japanese acknowledge data source?

orald · Post by **orald** » 14 Jun 2008 08:20

Yea, caste. Hope y'all are happy now.

30 years is nothing to change several thousands' attitude.
I doubt women are really descriminated because the base form of some language is male. There're bigger fish to fry than that, surely, and nobody but overzealous and bored liguists ever notice that much anyway.

Pussy.

LiquidBlue · Post by **LiquidBlue** » 14 Jun 2008 08:54

Did you read her essay?

The whole idea is: When we think, we use language. If you can't think without language and the language in which you think is hierarchical (and she demonstrates that English is hierarchical) then how can you truely acheive equality? Even your thought patterens are working against you.

Americans have been trying for equality since the inception of this country and have yet to acheive it. Maybe the source of inequality is linguist or genetic...which is what Lilith Butler seems to be saying in her books. Also, if you don't think language matters, you should read Babel-17. The character called The Butcher has a language in which there is no "I". This language allows him to kill and sabotage without moral implications.

orald · Post by **orald** » 14 Jun 2008 10:49

I never said language isn't important to thought processes, I've read 1984 and the Dune novels after all(I believe it's God Leto who mentions it most).

I'm saying that it isn't really important that the base form of a verb is male(Hebrew, Arabic etc) and such nonsense- this isn't what's causing problems(oh no, I must think males come first because of it!

).

Hierarchial language? So, you're saying if I'm 1.65 meters on a good day and the guy next to me is 2 meters tall, we're equal? Interesting.

Are you saying that if I'm smart enough to read Dune and, like you said, some of your students aren't(or is it just dislexia or whatever they call it nowdays?), then we're still equal?

The universe IS hierarchial, and socialist blabberings won't change that.
All men(and women! oh, here we go again by ommitting women

) are NOT created equal, and equality of life should NOT be enforced on them.

The only equality there should be is of opportunities in life(oh boy, and ain't that screwed anyway? do I get the same opportunity as the rich kid in the mansion or the poor kid selling his private parts in the streets of Bangkok?), as in- you don't descriminate anyone based on anything but qualifications.

That's also NOT how humans work regardless of language(you know, you do descriminate your friends to the better etc, how 'bout that?), BTW, but I guess that's why we've got genetic engineering now, no? To screw up humanity in an attempt to better it.

chanilover · Post by **chanilover** » 14 Jun 2008 13:37

LiquidBlue wrote:Hello all…

I just wanted to take a second to introduce myself and say that I’m happy to have found this forum. I’m a huge fan of the Frank Herbert Dune Series. I took a class in college called Science Fiction and Evolutionary Biology and at the same time saw the Dune mini-series for the first time. That spawned a paper about self-reflective consciousness and the “god meme”. Then, during the next lull from assigned books, I read the original FH series. I’ve since read the books 2 or 3 times in the intervening few years. I also made an attempt to teach Dune in my 11th and 12th grade Intensive Reading class, but it proved too high level for my students (most of them only read at a middle school reading level). I’m teaching world lit next school year and, assuming I get to teach the class again, will try and work in Dune. The themes of cultural conflict and religion would work well, I think.

Anywho! I found this forum through a link from the dunenovel site…I read a 9 page thread about Norma, clicked the Jacurutu link, saw all the posters that I agreed with on this site, and decided to join. (BTW, Chanilover, you’re last post was the piece de resistance, a most appropriate way to end things… “Quentin? God, these books just get gayer all the time.” I literally laughed out loud.) I just finished rereading Heritics and Chapterhouse. I’m trying to re-read Hunters ATM, but its hard…LoL…Hunters and Sandworms are the only BH and KJA books I’ve read…I admit that I’m kind of fascinated with the upcoming Heroes series in a train wreck sort of way. I’m sure I’ll be able to get it used fairly quickly. Reading through things here is a little confusing, its like coming in during the middle of the conversation...so if I ask dumb questions or make irrelevant comments, just let me know!

Thanks!

Hi Liquidblue.

Dunenovels used to be a good laugh, now it's a miserable shithole.

LiquidBlue · Post by **LiquidBlue** » 14 Jun 2008 16:15

Well, Orald, first of all, I don't feel like you are responding to my post.

You said:

I doubt women are really descriminated because the base form of some language is male. There're bigger fish to fry than that, surely, and nobody but overzealous and bored liguists ever notice that much anyway.

From your statement, it didn't seem to me as if you read her article in its entirety. So I asked you if you had. A question to which you did not respond. I really think your response is a little fringe and that you are attacking from an emotional position as opposed to an intellectual position. I never said we should be egalitarian or socialist and I have yet to define what it means to be “equal”. I’m not sure where you drew those conclusions.

My personal position, which I am able to support with the existence of a hierarchical language system, is that, as you said, we are hierarchical beings. We are hierarchical because that is the nature of natural selection. Language is a function arrived at through evolution. We evolved brains and organs capable of producing speech because those genetic mutations were favorable. We evolved consciousness, however you would like to define it, because of a favorable genetic mutation. Culture, some would argue, is an extension of genetic evolution...the meme (Richard Dawkins theorizes that the meme is the new replicator)...therefore, our cultural systems also contain this drive toward hierarchy. Hierarchy turns humanity into a competition, a proving ground. Language, as a genetic extension of the hierarchy game, does the same thing. If we ever want to overcome hierarchy, then language is something that must be examined. Just because we are hierarchical doesn't mean that it’s the best thing for us. All evolution is retroactive. A response to an environment that no longer exists....

This is from a paper I wrote:

On the evolutionary time line, hierarchy appeared in animal species long before the advent of proto-humans and then humans and “hierarchical behavior selects for hierarchical behavior, whether it should or not” (Butler, Adulthood 501). All evolution is retroactive. It occurs in response to a past environment that may or may not exist when the winning phenotype is expressed. When primate intelligence enters the picture, it enters onto a scene in which hierarchy is a major feature of primate life. Because of the competitive nature of hierarchal animals, intelligence becomes nothing more than a tool for ensuring the further dominance of hierarchy. The selection of hierarchical behavior becomes an ongoing cycle that needs conflict, often erupting in violence, as a proving ground. Societies that are hierarchical need a continuous cultural narrative that can sustain and perpetuate a hierarchical drive. This drive encourages dominator societies, societies where a majority of cultural attributes reflect humanity’s genetic hierarchical tendencies, to arise and provides an environment in which they flourish. Even the Oankali become subject to the dominator society effect that the existence of a hierarchical society creates.
In her feminist analysis of the development of western civilization, Riane Eisler recognizes a shift from egalitarian societies to dominator societies. In “War, Language and Gender” Taylor and Hardman summarize Eisler’s argument:
These replacement cultures [the Greeks and Hebrews], organized around a primary male god, were both hierarchical and warlike. These cultures, she posits, needed war because they were hierarchical. Because the previous (and preferred) state of human beings was to live in egalitarian relationships, people did not (do not) submit easily to being dominated; hence the elites of the hierarchies had to develop ideologies to justify the domination. … Simply put, dominator patterns create violence; humans do not docilely accept being dominated. As the ultimate exemplar of violence, wars inevitably result from dominator cultures.

While Eisler proposes that humans do not submit to domination because humanity is naturally egalitarian, the existence of hierarchically driven individuals throughout a population will create the same result. Each member of humanity has the drive to be an elite on a genetic level, to be singular at the top. To the hierarchically driven, being dominated is as unnatural as it is to the egalitarian because success on a hierarchical scale is only granted to the individual who dominates all.

Regardless of the original state of cultural expression in human beings, the rise of one dominator society will encourage the change of other cultures to dominator societies because it appears to be an evolutionary stable strategy. An evolutionary stable strategy, or ESS, is “a strategy which, if most members of a population adopt it, cannot be bettered by an alternative strategy” (Dawkins 69). An ESS is not necessarily the strategy that has the most favorable outcome, but it is a strategy that cannot be invaded by other strategies. As shown in Eisler’s analysis, egalitarian cultures were invaded and then replaced by dominator societies. Though the following quote is in reference to the construction of gender, it illustrates the power of hierarchical societies to invade.
it is critical that we understand gender as these currently dominant cultures constitute it and are constituted, not because their view is more accurate, but because those cultures wield massive economic and political power, power that spreads their violence generating views of gender. U.S. cultural views contaminate (for good and ill) virtually every culture they touch. (Taylor)
Because of the nature of hierarchy and the gene, the cultural spread of hierarchy is inevitable.

Please excuse the length...

You're aversion to the possibility of equality, as illustrated by your last post, is an example of the pervasiveness of a cultural narrative that craves hierarchy.

SandChigger · Post by **SandChigger** » 14 Jun 2008 16:33

LiquidBlue wrote:I'm curious, SandChigger, does Japanese acknowledge data source?

Yes, there are optional sentence final elements used for indicating data source.

On the Hardman, I thought her noun derivation point was the strongest (for her purpose), the number one the weakest. Some of her assumptions seem to morph into conclusions rather easily.

I'm by no means convinced by what little she brought to the table in that short paper.

Our language helps shape our worldview, but I don't believe that it determines it 100%. The other elements of culture also play important roles.

It's an interesting topic...even if only boring linguists find it so.

A Thing of Eternity · Post by **A Thing of Eternity** » 14 Jun 2008 16:39

SandChigger wrote:
It's an interesting topic...even if only boring linguists find it so.

And wannabe linguists

It's always bugged me that there aren't gender neutral replacements for him, her, his, hers, etc in English. Even leaving aside the way that the language forces a person to acknowledge the gender of the person being spoken of (and the lovely way we default to the masculine when in doubt), it makes communicating into a pain in the ass. He/she is a terrible way to do it on paper, and even worse vocally.

Serkanner · Post by **Serkanner** » 14 Jun 2008 16:51

Wouldn't replacing 'his', 'her' etcetera with 'its' make it gender neutral? Of course you will also have to get rid of 'he' and 'she', but there will not be a need for that anymore anyway.

LiquidBlue · Post by **LiquidBlue** » 14 Jun 2008 16:54

Our language helps shape our worldview, but I don't believe that it determines it 100%. The other elements of culture also play important roles.

Agreed

She has other papers that are all related to the idea...My orriginal paper was mostly about Sexist Circuts, but then I branched into her other papers and evolutionary theory for my second draft...I will have to look more into Japanese language and culture and see if I can find some stuff about data source.

It's always bugged me that there aren't gender neutral replacements for him, her, his, hers, etc in English. Even leaving aside the way that the language forces a person to acknowledge the gender of the person being spoken of (and the lovely way we default to the masculine when in doubt), it makes communicating into a pain in the ass. He/she is a terrible way to do it on paper, and even worse vocally.

Before we knew the gender of my daughter, while I was prego, I had the hardest time referring to her. I didn't want to say "It's kicking" becuse "it" is non-human. I didn't want to say "he" or "she" because I didn't know which and honestly didn't have a preference. I felt so terrible gender-biased when I said "he", then I felt so left wing extreemist when I said "she"!! I was hormonal and taking too many gender theory courses LoL

Post by **Freakzilla** » 14 Jun 2008 17:14

Aren't unborn babies usually refered to as she? Maybe because they are all female by default and it takes the addition of a hormone to make it male.

A Thing of Eternity · Post by **A Thing of Eternity** » 14 Jun 2008 17:21

Serkanner wrote:Wouldn't replacing 'his', 'her' etcetera with 'its' make it gender neutral? Of course you will also have to get rid of 'he' and 'she', but there will not be a need for that anymore anyway.

"It" generally applies only to non-human subjects. Not very polite!

LiquidBlue · Post by **LiquidBlue** » 14 Jun 2008 17:27

Aren't unborn babies usually refered to as she? Maybe because they are all female by default and it takes the addition of a hormone to make it male.

Not sure on that one, sounds likely...I wasn't thinking clearly at the time

Post by **Freakzilla** » 14 Jun 2008 17:37

LiquidBlue wrote:
Aren't unborn babies usually refered to as she? Maybe because they are all female by default and it takes the addition of a hormone to make it male.
Not sure on that one, sounds likely...I wasn't thinking clearly at the time

I haven't birthed any babies myself but I've watched three of mine being born, they do call them "she" unless the sex is known.

LiquidBlue · Post by **LiquidBlue** » 14 Jun 2008 17:42

By "they" you mean doctors/nurses? I never picked up on that, but I also don't recall ever hearing the baby referred to as "it" either, so...learn something new every day

A Thing of Eternity · Post by **A Thing of Eternity** » 14 Jun 2008 17:43

Freakzilla wrote:
LiquidBlue wrote:
Aren't unborn babies usually refered to as she? Maybe because they are all female by default and it takes the addition of a hormone to make it male.
Not sure on that one, sounds likely...I wasn't thinking clearly at the time
I haven't birthed any babies myself but I've watched three of mine being born, they do call them "she" unless the sex is known.

I like how funny that makes the word "woman" (it means "from man" doesn't it)? Kinda ironic that men both come from/out of women and start off as women. Oh, what a wonderful language we have! Right? No, it didn't mean correct, I meant turn right!

LiquidBlue · Post by **LiquidBlue** » 14 Jun 2008 17:50

Language is fluid, we add and create words all the time...too bad we can't get language to drift away from things like that...no, we get to add muggle and shizzle to our vocabulary...

J A C U R U T U

Hello!

Re: Hello!