English Language

Intended audience; someone with limited specialist knowledge on language/gender theory. Is the dictionary sexist? The Oxford dictionary has said it will review the sentence example for ‘rabid’; which is defined as “ irrationally extreme in opinion”, using the sentence example of a “Rabid Feminist”. The publisher of the dictionary was taken to task by Canadian anthropologist Michael Oman-Reagan. He tweeted to the publisher of the dictionary, proposing that he consider changing it. Oman-Reagan, who is doing a PhD at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, also suggested that he reconsider adapting other “explicitly sexist examples” that had been included in the published copy of the dictionary. Other explicit sentence examples were used for the following words; Ø   Shrill – “the rising shrill of women’s voices” Ø   Psyche – “I will never find the Phantom the female psyche” Ø   Grating – “Her high, grating voice” Ø   Nagging – “nagging wife” ...

Speech on language – A-Level students Mr, Mrs, Miss and Ms Hello, my name is Lily. First and foremost I would like to thank you all for taking the time out of your busy timetables to hear my speech. Today I am going to deliver a speech to you about the use of nouns that are used every day in language, and the underlying meaning that can be associated with them. Now, when you are writing to someone who has is for example a professional of some sort, we would use the formal address of Mr or Miss, sir or madam etc. However if we knew them on a personal level or if a company knew the marital status of the person they were addressing, they would use either Mr, Mrs or the perhaps the undistinguished ‘Ms’. Are you noticing a pattern with the male noun? It never changes; it is sophisticated and doesn’t reveal any information about the man in question. Whereas the Female noun uses are very intrusive and can carry both positive and negative connotations. Each of the nouns has an ‘ u...