Summary
When campaigners discuss linguistic reform, it is often assumed that they are only concerned with suggesting alternatives to particular terms of address, or ways of naming. Very often critics assume that linguistic reform is based on a very simplistic view of the nature of language and language change. In this chapter, I show that suggesting alternatives to sexist terms is only one of the strategies adopted by anti-sexist campaigners; it is only one of many strategies. Since sexism now manifests itself in complex ways, the notion of reform or even commenting on sexism has become much more difficult. Guidelines which were issued on language use in institutions are now much less visible than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. This is partly because feminist campaigns on language have made an enormous impact on language use, at least in the public sphere. But it is also because the view of language reform has changed quite markedly, so that any campaigns on language are now considered to be a concern with ‘political correctness’ – a seemingly excessive concern with the replacement of problematic words with the ‘correct’ term (see Chapter 4). However, Cameron (1995: 143) argues that:
there is nothing trivial about trying to institutionalise a public norm of respect rather than disrespect, and one of the important ways in which respect is made manifest publicly is through linguistic choices: in the context of addressing or referring to someone, words are deeds (compare ‘hey bitch!’ with ‘excuse me, madam’).
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- Language and Sexism , pp. 77 - 99Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008