Opinionated Article . . .

 

An opinion article on work lexis outside of the workplace for The Guardian 

Work, Work, Work

We all have a specialist field whether that's law or catering we use specialist language so often we may use that specialist terminology at home or when out with friends, is this a good or bad thing?

As a conservationist I am surrounded by scientific and environmental terminology on a daily basis. This can often lead to me using terms in general conversations forgetting that not everyone I know understands the same language I do (this can often be referred to as a lexical field). 

When in conversation I often find that I flout the maxim quantity according to a theorist named Grice's maxims for the theory on how conversation works. The maxim quantity is about whether a participant in conversation gives too little or too much information. In my case I give too much as I go into depth using terminology others who don't work in the area of conservation may not understand, for example when talking about forests or forestry I may talk about coppicing and pollarding, these are techniques used in cycles to increase biodiversity and soil. This can often mean I have small amounts of input from others in these types of conversation making it a very unequal conversation. This type of conversation often means the power is un balanced, with me being the more powerful participant and the other participant the less powerful.

Gender speech . . .

Casual sexism . . .

(Aimed at a young audience to attempt to show them the problems with casual sexism)

... = pause for effect

'What a b***h', 'shes smart and pretty', 'swearing is so un-ladylike' ...
These are just some of the things you may hear on a day to day basis, this language is referred to as casual sexism.
But why do we use this word casual in conjunction with the word sexism? Surely this just makes it seem normal.. ok even. It should not be acceptable now to use sexist terms on a daily basis. Young girls should no longer have to grow up seeing verbal abuse towards women as a normal experience that they have to put up with. If we teach children that this sort of language is not acceptable it may become less frequently used by future generations...
There are hundreds of incidents regarding sexism everyday, upon further research I managed to find several facts including that the UK is joint 57th in the world for parliament gender equality, 18 out of 108 high court judges are female, in the national gallery out of 2300 works only 10 females work is displayed.
These are just a few of the potential examples i could give...
Many different people experience everyday sexism and the 'Everyday Sexism Project' was set up to enable people from across the world of all different backgrounds to share their stories from comments to assault men and women enter their experiences of sexism for others to view, this website encourages a sense of community enabling people to know that they are not alone.
The awareness that this site raised has meant that some more positive stories have been posted where people have stood up to sexism, stories such as one about a woman who was catcalled 'show us your tits' from across the street by two men only for a man who was walking in front of her to turn around and raise his top towards the two men, and another of a woman how goes jogging regularly when she was called over to a car and asked for directions where she was assaulted after telling the man which way to travel...
So next time you hear someone make a sexist remark think about the everyday sexism project ...and be the person who steps in when someone is assaulted on the bus stop ...or be the person to say actually what you just said is offensive...
strive to prevent sexism ...for everyone... everywhere

Holiday hwk- opinionated blog post

(target audience: someone with little knowledge on gender-neutral language and gender inequality)

Gender equality?

Whats with the fuss over gender equality and is our language changing to accommodate this? The following post is a small summary of gender equality and language use.

In summary a gender neutral pronoun is a pronoun which everyone can be referred to using, the same way she/her or he/him would be used however it is not gender specific. This could be extremely useful in the future as our language evolves with the growing amount of gender fluid individuals in society. 

As suggested in this guardian article as humans we are cautious of anything that does not fit into a strict category; eg male/ female, gay/straight. This could be one of the major contributing factors of why we do not yet have any strictly set gender neutral pronouns. However in reality many people do not view themselves as one gender or another they are gender fluid or non binary. For people who view gender as a construct this is not too difficult to understand however written and spoken language fails to display a term for these members of society. Although there is no finalised term for people who are bigender there have been several options discussed, including:

• sie/ hir (sie laughed, I kissed hir)
• ze/ hir (ze laughed, I kissed hir)
• xe (xe laughed, I kissed xem) 

Although these didn't stick the most common gender neutral term used is they/them, this has been determined as not the best word choice but it seems to be the most popular as it is commonly used within society.

If our language is to evolve to be less discerning we will need more than just a noun to call people who are non-binary. A large percentage of women experience casual sexism everyday, this is because we were brought up in a society which sees it as acceptable to slander women as a way to make men feel more powerful. Some phrases which are used often are 'she must be on her period', 'she's pretty and smart', 'swearing is so unlady like' . This  does not  mean men don't experience sexism, just that the majority of sexist actions/ comments are made towards women.

John Grey's popular book 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus' links to this closely, covering the way men and women diverge when communicating, the book has a patronising tone towards men suggesting that they are emotionless bullies.The theorist Mary Beard's ideas about women's voices not being valued also links into this, she suggests that women aren't perceived to be as powerful as men because of the way we have always valued men's opinions more through previous generations. Despite this women do have more power than ever before, could things become equal after all?