Language Change Research Task - The Feminist Movement

The feminist movements of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century consisted of promoting equality between the sexes. From this political movement, we have seen coinages and neologisms enter our language, most of which are still part of our everyday vocabulary. As well as new words, the feminist movements led to words broadening and narrowing in meaning, also some words have undergone amelioration and pejoration.

The word “feminism” is credited to have been coined by Charles Fourier, a French Philosopher, in 1837.  Before this, in 1872 the terms “feminist” and “feminism” first appeared in France and the Netherlands. The words were introduced to Britain in the 1890s and 1910 in the USA. The term “feminism” has three meanings: it is the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men, it is an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women and it can also mean a feminine character. It can be argued that the term “feminism” has undergone narrowing as the last denotation attributed to “feminism” is one that is unlikely we would associate with today. However, if we look at other denotations of the word, such as the ones found on Urban Dictionary, it seems that “feminism” may have undergone broadening to an extent. Part of the Urban Dictionary’s denotation states that “Feminism… embraces the belief that all people are entitled to freedom and liberty within reason-including equal civil rights-and that discrimination should not be made based on gender, sexual orientation, skin color, ethnicity, religion, culture, or lifestyle.” The ending suggests a broadening of the denotations of the word “feminism” in that in the future we may see it to have more associations with other groups in society that deserve equality and not just women. It can be argued that through diachronic language change, the term “feminism” has undergone pejoration because some people may associate feminism with negative connotations possibly because of views and actions of radical feminists which may have had a negative impact on the feminist perspective and views as a whole.

The term “herstory” originated around the mid 1970s. The detonation of this noun is that it means the same as history but it was coined in feminist literature and in women’s studies as an alternative form in order to distinguish and emphasise the particular experiences of women. The term was coined by taking the noun “history” and splitting it as if it were a compound word into two separate morphemes, “his” and “story” and then by changing the “his” to “her” and placing the two morphemes back together it creates a new compound word meaning history from her perspective. This coinage has led to the broadening and the possible pejoration of the word “history” as it can be viewed as a word associated with androcentrism rather than a term that simple is knowledge of past events.

The term “feminazi” is a term used by the radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s and he credits the term being coined by Tom Hazlett. The term is a portmanteau of the words “feminist” and “Nazi”. This term is obviously a pejorative term used to describe feminists that can or have been perceived to be extreme or radical. Ironically, the Nazis were under the rule of Hitler who was against the feminist movement, so by coining a word which is a portmanteau of “feminist” and “Nazi” can almost be considered an oxymoron although the intention of the coinage was to show how some feminists were just as radical and extreme as the Nazis.

Bibliography

• Wikipedia
• Cambridge Free English Dictionary
• Dictionary.com
• Urban Dictionary

Media Text - Redraft of the Beginning

Secret Teacher: Are boys losing the battle of the sexes?

Debates about female language has led to the voices of men being completely sidelined. Now we have to deal with the damage society and the media has left behind.

• More from The Secret Teacher

The stereotypes placed upon does affect our language, not just the girls but the boys too. Photograph: Aleutie/Shutterstock

Angelica King

Friday 23 January 2015 12.00 GMT

Almost 100 years ago, grammarian Otto Jespersen stated that male language was the “norm” and that anything that wasn't male language was deficient by default. However, a recent longitudinal study has been released suggesting that “girls do better in school than boys” and that the biggest gender divide can be seen in language. But to some of us this is not new information. Recent claims of a “boy crisis” within schools is now seen as inaccurate, as in reality this has been going on for over 100 years. So, is male language now being viewed as “deficient” within our schools? There is a suggestion that over time we have come recognise common female speech techniques, such as being cooperative with others during conversation, as being vital in order to succeed in education and that competitive language techniques, usually attributed to boys, may be considered obsolete.

Language & Gender Article

There are plenty of articles about Language & Gender as long as you know where to look (or what to type into Google etc.) and here is another one. I think my goal now is to find one that relates more to male language rather than articles about females wanting to change our still very sexist language (not that I'm being cynical and that I do not agree with the writer because I do to an extent.)

Fuel For a Language Debate

There has always been discussion on the topic of texting and whether the connotations of which are correct when they say that people who cannot spell. Here's an article that may either "preach to the converted" if you already agree with the writer's view or hopefully sway you.

Hilarious Article

I searched "language" on The Guardian's website and found a hilarious article about teenagers and their use of language. Good for Language Change and Language and Technology.

A Multi-Purpose Article

I found this article today and is very useful for Language and Gender, Language and Technology in some ways and is also good to look at as a Media Text.

How Children Read

There has been quite the debate as to whether the use of “synthetic phonics” is really the ideal method to use in order to teach children how to read. Through the answers given in an online survey, some teachers have said that synthetic phonics highly important in order for a child to learn how to successfully read. However, a majority of teachers believe that although synthetic phonics is important, there are other methods which can be just as good. Many people comment that synthetic phonics is not necessarily bad but that children need a variety of different methods in order to become skilled readers.

Many teachers emphasise the importance of reading for meaning, something that is not part of the synthetic phonics method. There has been concerns raised that the current strategy that the government have imposed, synthetic phonics, has led to unbalanced reading curriculums and that certain reading skills have not been developed in children such as the ability to make predictions within texts and being able to make contextual links. It is argued often that the use of synthetic phonics has led to children losing motivation in reading because the reading schemes are not as enjoyable as real books, children no longer enjoying reading and has also led to the development of a reading style where children are simply decoding texts. One of the biggest problems people have with synthetic phonics is that because children become fixated on pronouncing words that they miss all meaning in the text entirely. Children learn to read by engaging with texts and by using their cuing systems but through synthetic phonics children are missing out meaning and therefore not necessarily learning to read “correctly”. Some children may not like synthetic phonics so much that they may get upset as they cannot understand the “nonsense words” that they come across in their reading schemes. Since English is not a phonetically regular language, it make sense that some children may struggle with the teaching of phonics in a very clinical way and has therefore lead to some children set further behind as readers.

In the future, many are hoping that the government change the strategy that teaches children to read from synthetic phonics to something that enables children to experience the rewards of reading and actually enjoy reading. It has to be understood that reading is much more complex than just linking sounds together.

If someone said the names Biff, Chip and Kipper, I would know exactly what they were talking about, would you? They are the main characters in a popular reading scheme some schools use in order to help teach children how to read. Some people think that these reading schemes are great as they stories that children can relate to and are quite engaging. Reading schemes are written in conjunction with experts who know what strategies to use in order for children to learn to read effectively, for example some reading schemes work with experts in synthetic phonics. However, not all schools use reading schemes. Some schools believe that reading real books leads to children engaging more with the texts because they will enjoy reading and then their reading ability will follow. There is much debate on the subject of reading schemes and whether real books would be better and although many believe they would be because they have much more interesting plots and hook more children into reading and enjoying to read, there is a harsh reality that a low budget a school has can mean that they will just use reading schemes. Another big issue some people have with reading schemes is the use of ability ratings on the reading schemes in order for the teachers to know at what level every child is reading at and some believe this can be damaging for a child’s self esteem as they may be aware of where they sit in terms of ability amongst their friends and it may affect their relationship with reading in the future.

Bibliography

Phonic Boom, By John Hodgson, NATE, Teaching English, Issue 4, Page 23

http://www.theschoolrun.com/school-reading-schemes-explained

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/may/05/literacy-learning-to-read

http://www.tremendouslytwo.com/2011/07/could-we-wave-goodbye-to-reading.html

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/mar/04/reading-lessons-phonics-world-book-day