Those who claim women are from Venus and therefore condemn aggressive, warring women as un-feminine - maybe it’s time to take a hike? On Mars?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=509693&in_page_id=1770
Archive for January, 2008
In which Buddhahood is narrowly averted
This post is about four great sights that had mind-blowing effects on me. But unlike the Buddha’s epochal sights, two of mine were seen online and one in a newspaper. Ah! The times they are a-changing. You don’t need to go on insomnia-induced midnight walks for pardigm-shifting sights.They’re everywhere.
Sight # 1
Stanley Fish’s blog. (He of the Is there a text in this class? fame. The one-liners we coined for him in literary criticism class! Is there a Fish in this class? And so on!)
Specifically, the post where he writes provocatively about the uses (or the lack thereof) of the Humanities today. A debate that we in the Humanites never tire of, and which never fails to rouse our dormant, just-under-the-surface existential fears.
Fish is senior prof in one of the world’s top universities. And he’s acheived fame, fortune, respectability and all that academia can give. Those of us still climbing, however, can’t afford to cut the branch we’re sitting on. (OK, OK, mixed metaphor. And, unflattering comparison to Kalidasa. Unflattering to him, that is.)
But there’s a point he makes in the post that I quite agree with:
What is in need of defense is not the existence of Shakespeare, but the existence of the Shakespeare industry (and of the Herbert industry and of the Hemingway industry), with its seminars, journals, symposia, dissertations, libraries. The challenge of utility is not put (except by avowed Philistines ) to literary artists, but to the scholarly machinery that seems to take those operating it further and further away from the primary texts into the reaches of incomprehensible and often corrosive theory.
Yes indeed. Shakespeare et al. are in no danger. They will continue to be read. Despite us! The danger lies elsewhere, as the next sight told me.
Sight # 2
A report in The Hindu about the launch of a BPO training centre by a local, state-run university (no, not the one I work for) which will allegedly (and this is appropriate use of ‘allegedly’ Mr Sanyal!) provide communication skills and soft skills to students aspiring to BPO and call centre jobs. With course curriculum and methodolgies provided by a BPO.
Is this the emerging face of our universities? Mass production of clones for BPOs and call centres?
All together then. Let’s kowtow.
The writing is beginning to get on the wall, is what I thought as I turned away from the morning newspaper and to Google Reader for some cheer from my favourite blogs. And then the next sight happened, driving the point home.
Sight # 3
A piece of graffiti. If you’re too lazy to click, this is the text : You hav been deleted.
Given the delicate state of my mind then, this read like an omenous sign. Would you blame me?
The mind was blown. I was ready to give up the world and go in search of the meaning of existence. English teachers’ existence.
But not yet, there was life to be lived – the kid had to be walked to the campus gate and seen safely off into his school bus. Enlightenment would have to wait, but it weighed heavily on my mind as I walked, bracing myself against the morning chill. And the chill of my impending renunciation.
Then the fourth sight happened. The reverse paradigm-shifting one that effectively nullified the earlier three. And this is where my story differs from the Buddha’s. Herstory challenges history and all that.
Sight # 4
As we waited for the bus, I saw someone cycle down to the gate. Prof —–, former Dean of the School of —-, one of the most influential profs on campus and widely respected, nationwide, as teacher and researcher in his discipline. He parked his cycle, nodded acknowledgment of my presence, walked briskly across to the public bus-shelter and boarded a local bus. Not for him the call taxis and chauffeur-driven cars.
I was dumbstruck. This is it, I told myself. This is what academics stand for. Perhaps the urge to live simply, and in the way the common man and woman in India does – that urge is still alive in academicians. Some of them at least. Perhaps they aren’t yet carried away by the “MNC culture”.
We will never compete with swanky private institutes because we serve the teeming masses. Maybe our service isn’t very good, which is why BPOs dare tell us how to teach. But we won’t stop trying.
“Vive La Academia” I felt like shouting as I walked back home.
Maybe I am clutching at straws. Sentimentalizing. Glorifying my professional ilk. But hey, it’s the perfect antidote to renunciation.
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Rumours of my blog-death are greatly exaggerated
I am alive and well.
Just swamped. Teaching. Reading. Working on projects. And being homemaker. Yes, I struggle to manage home and work. And no, pity is not appreciated, thank you.
Posting shall happen tonight and nothing will prevent it.
Or do I mean posting will happen tonight and nothing shall prevent it? English teachers can never make up their minds, can they?
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Yo is relieved of sex
Dennis Baron reports the arrival of a new gender-neutral pronoun, Yo.
What’s that? Well, I’ll let you read his explanation:
Yo is a gender-neutral pronoun because it’s used both for males and females. As the name implies, gender-neutral pronouns are ones which contain no indication of the gender of their referent. In English, all our first and second person pronouns are gender neutral: I, me, my, mine, we, our, ours, you, your, yours. None of these words says anything about sex. Third-person plural pronouns are gender neutral too: they, their, theirs. Get it?
But for some crazy reason, our third person singular pronouns ooze sex: he is masculine; she is feminine; it is neuter (OK, maybe neuter doesn’t ooze sex, but it can dream, right?).
So, instead of the stylistically messy ‘He/She’ or the awkward ‘They’ to refer to humanity in general, you can say Yo.
As in:
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Always comfort your child when yo cries.
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If a writer wants to avoid sexist writing, yo can.
And what’s the source of this politically correct reference to sex? A study gives the credit to teenagers in Baltimore.
‘Yo’, as I know it, is American slang, a form of greeting among teenagers. In fact, a quick survey of dictionaries (OED, Webster and Urban ) reveals the following meanings -
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a contraction of ‘your’ characteristic of Black English: Here’s yo tea.
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an exclamation/greeting akin to Hey, or even a response to a call: Yo! wassup?/ Hey, you there? Yo!
Although the word picked up currency during WW II when it was a common response at roll calls, it is actually older than that. It’s a Middle English word, dating back to the 15th century! (‘Awesome’ I can almost hear the teenagers, who think they invented it, say.)
Now, am I going to start using a word in a particular way just because a bunch of teenagers in Baltimore do? Not bloody likely!
It’s not about teenagers; I think they’re a creative lot, always fashioning exciting new words. I’m just wondering whether they’re simply misusing/abusing the word.
Call me rigid if you will, but a new word has a feel of authenticity to it that this one just doesn’t. It rings hollow. A new word has to be spanking, squeaking new, not just a distortion of an existing one.
And to be sure there have been earlier attempts to forge gender-neutral pronouns: ne, ip, thon, E, zie, and hiser. Failed words, all of them. There must be a reason methinks.
Could this be the reason – that as long as there is ‘male’ and there is ‘female’ there will be ’he’ and ’she’? That if we cannot think neutrally, our pronouns will not be neutral?
The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. Wittgenstein. Yo said it.
Slightly off-topic: A friend wrote in to comment on the attempted anonymity of this blog. (I declare I’m female but refuse to reveal anything else.) ”Feminine mystique” he psychoanalyzes it away, leaving me gasping for breath and frothing at the mouth. So anonymity is gender-specific, too!
If a man were to hide his identity, he probably has professional reasons for it. But if a woman does, then she’s being a coquette, huh? Why does an anonymous female always inspire sexist notions?
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English underfoot
Why did I do it? Why did I choose to travel by the metro train to my publisher’s office, a good 26 km from home, instead of just driving over? I asked myself this question repeatedly.
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First, at the deserted reservation counter near Platform 1, where I was told to go to Platform 6 to buy a ticket.
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Second, when I was told, after buying the ticket, to return to Platform 1 as the train would arrive there.
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And then several times over as I huffed and puffed it back to Platform 1.
Made it with enough time to buy a Frooti, refusing to think about the calories. I must have lost a few, scampering up and down the foot overbridge. Yes, foot overbridge. Except that it wasn’t written that way.
This is what the sign said: Foot Over Bridge. An ungainly space breaking up what’s legally a closed compound word. And not even a hyphen to bridge the gap.
What’s the big deal, you ask?
An “overbridge” is a bridge built above and across a railway line, used to cross platforms; a “foot overbridge” is one that you take on foot. A “foot over bridge” is just that – a foot that goes over a bridge. Not the same thing at all! “Over bridge”should have been hyphenated or closed.
The Chicago, and any other Style Manual you may care to flip through, will tell you that the point of the hyphen is to avoid ambiguity. For instance, imagine the following without hyphens:
Hands-on applications; Stick-on label
Now, is “Foot over bridge” likely to be misunderstood? Specially considering that the sign is right at the foot of the bridge? One may argue that no literate person who reads that sign will attempt to put foot over bridge. Or imagine a gigantic foot placed, Vamana-like, (nice ethnic touch, eh!) over the bridge, right?
Wrong.
English teachers like me will take it for what it means. No, we don’t see the huge bridge looming across the platform. We are verbal thinkers, not visual ones, you see. Instead, we go crazy searching for that wondrous foot that goes over the bridge. Because that’s what the sign means you see.
Who writes these signs? Why aren’t English teachers/editors/experts consulted?
Or is this a sinister conspiracy? Are there people deliberately, maliciously going around putting up signboards without hyphens? And with misspelled words? So that English teachers are traumatized, robbed of their peace of mind, and thereby rendered unable to teach English?
Is this a plot to eliminate English from this country?
I’m going to be lying awake nights wondering. And wishing I had chosen to drive today instead of taking the metro train.
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