Generic Laguage

I have never thought that male generic language excluded women so much. I’ll be the first to say I am a pro-feminist so I think it’s wrong for language to exclude either male or females. I guess because males are the dominant sex in society then male generic language is widely accepted. I really never thought language was that big of a deal. Obviously it is a big deal in society now that women are taking a stand for themselves.  For those of you that don’t know male generic language, according to Woods, “is supposed to include both women and men, but in turn really only refers to men.” (Woods, 118) Also something the media does is spotlighting, which the book states, “the practice of highlighting a person’s sex.” (Woods, 118) Some easy examples are mankind, mailman, businessman, and spokesman. These examples come from the book, but are prime examples. Upon researching more about this ongoing issue, I ran up on a fair amount of sites that talked about teaching people to write in inclusive language instead of exclusive. I found this odd again since I never thought that language was such a big deal in society.  In one article I found this interesting, “Newspaper, like other media, are guilty of symbolic annihilation, symbolically ignoring, trivializing, or condemning women. Men receive more coverage. Coverage of women is more likely to mention the person’s sex (spotlighting), physical appearance and marital status or parenthood.” I find this to be disturbing because everyone should be treated equal and not singled out in any way, shape, or form. Unfortunately, media tends to follow males more and when women are followed, the media makes it known. Further in this article, it also mentions women being shown in a provocative manner. For example, I was watching TMZ last night while doing homework and this coverage of a celebrity came on. It was a women and the only reason they covered this celebrity was because she was not wearing a bra. Other than that, there was no significant meaning to the media following her. IN retrospect, the media wouldn’t even bother with following a man who was going “commando” and not wearing boxers underneath his pants or shorts.

Language and Gender.(n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.public.iastate.edu./~f2004.soc.327/laguage&media(nov05).pdf

Woods, J. (2011). Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender and Culture. Boston, MA: Wadsworth,

Cengage Learning.