{"id":533,"date":"2011-12-12T16:03:19","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T22:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=533"},"modified":"2011-12-13T06:40:37","modified_gmt":"2011-12-13T12:40:37","slug":"feminist-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/feminist-language-533.htm","title":{"rendered":"Feminist Language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>Retta Blaney at the <em>National Catholic Reporter<\/em> doesn\u2019t like <a href=\"http:\/\/ncronline.org\/news\/people\/return-godspell\">the new production <\/a>of <em>Godspell<\/em>, but her chief beef is with the language of\u00a0the\u00a0King James Version\u00a0that\u00a0the script uses:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span>all the scriptural references featured the \u201cGod and men,\u201d \u201cevery man who humbles himself\u201d and \u201cnurses a grudge against his brother\u201d viewpoint.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>I had this same complaint when I reviewed the 30th anniversary off-Broadway revival in 2000 for <em>NCR<\/em>. I mentioned this to Schwartz during a telephone interview then and he told me inclusive language \u201cfails as art\u201d and that he has always felt men represented everyone. I told him I had never felt included in the word men. Why would I? I\u2019m not a man. I suggested substitutes like neighbor or brothers and sisters and he said he liked the idea of using neighbor and would speak to the director, Shawn Rozsa. I didn\u2019t revisit that production so I don\u2019t know if the changes were made, but here we are in 2011 for the trumpeted first Broadway revival, and the language is as exclusive as ever.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span>I have noticed that the <em>New York Times<\/em> and most journals use <em>man<\/em> and <em>men<\/em> to mean all human beings. Man is still current to mean a human being: \u201dman-eating shark,\u201d \u201cmen-working,\u201d \u201cAge of Man\u201d (<em>National Geographic<\/em>), \u201cHope in the Age of Man\u201d (<em>New York Times<\/em>) \u201cA Man-Made World\u201d (<em>The Economist<\/em>),\u201dThe Museum of Man\u201d (San Diego), etc.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>If <em>man<\/em> or <em>men<\/em> is does cannot in any context include all members of the human race, nor \u00a0can <em>men and women<\/em>, because that phrase des not include <em>children<\/em>. One would have to say <em>male and female<\/em> (really awkward) or use an abstraction or a collective noun. As Stephen Schwartz said, it fails as art.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The tortured syntax and plain bad-grammar in many alterations of hymns and biblical translations is a result of a feminist \u201cchurch speak\u201d that is more artificial than using <em>thee<\/em> and <em>thou<\/em> (which were ordinary usage at one point).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span> One example of feminist syntax is the greeting by priests of \u201csisters and brothers.\u201d English has what Fowler called cast-iron idioms: <em>Ladies and gentlemen<\/em>, <em>brothers and sisters<\/em>. When one alters them, it sounds very odd and unidiomatic.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-533\" data-postid=\"533\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-533 themify_builder themify_builder_front\">\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<!-- \/themify_builder_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Retta Blaney at the National Catholic Reporter doesn\u2019t like the new production of Godspell, but her chief beef is with the language of\u00a0the\u00a0King James Version\u00a0that\u00a0the script uses: all the scriptural references featured the \u201cGod and men,\u201d \u201cevery man who humbles himself\u201d and \u201cnurses a grudge against his brother\u201d viewpoint. I had this same complaint when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[594,593],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-feminist-language","tag-godspell","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}