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Renegade read - The Player of Games: Gender and language
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Ruth wrote: "One of the things I found interesting about this book was its approach to gender. In the culture, gender swapping is an easy to do, everyday part of life, which many people swapping back and forth ..."I read a book by Arika Okrent recently,
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language, which talks about this. The idea that language = paradigm is so prevalent an idea in much of academia that it's taken as a truth. I tend to agree with it myself, because it's such a seductive idea. She is the first I have read, however, who points to the complete lack of evidence for this opinion. Despite the considerable effort linguists have made to tailor language and so tailor thought in the doing.
I'm not 100% clear what you are getting at in your comment, but that sounds like a really interesting book. I shall have to have a look at it. :)
Ruth wrote: "I'm not 100% clear what you are getting at in your comment"This:
"Gendered terms are ingrained in our language, such as he, she, brother and sister, mother and father. In the culture, as I understood it, a language has been created to do away with such gendered terms, but I wonder how easy that would be"
It's long been trendy to think of these things as making a difference in how we think about people. It's one of the roots of political correctness, has been a mainstay of feminist criticism, religious studies students love it, and so on and so forth. People have tried to invent languages for hundreds of years to help build ideally thinking societies, through tailored vocabulary. The problem is, there's no evidence it makes any difference whatsoever.
Vocabulary is just a symptom of its social leanings - simply tailoring it to make it just will be setting it in order only externally without approaching the root problem - that of our own heavily gendered thinking. It won't make a difference when only the language is tackled to give an illusion of justice/equality and the core problem of tackling inequality/patriarchy in the social arena is left unaddressed.Language is as much a symptom as a means of perpetuating patriarchy - dealing with it without dealing with the psyche of the people won't make it effective.
Are you talking about Ian Bank's book or some other book?
Lit Bug wrote: "Vocabulary is just a symptom of its social leanings - simply tailoring it to make it just will be setting it in order only externally without approaching the root problem - that of our own heavily ..."I would rather say that our interpretation of vocabulary is the symptom.
Our own damage (and we are, all of us, damaged) is what informs how we interpret a noun. Take "queen" (female ruler). Some people will interpret that as divisive. A ruler should be a ruler. Having kings and queens allows for hierarchies; I don't need to finish the argument; anyone can already see the thread of it. Others will argue the noun acknowledges that women can be rulers, as well as men, and that gendered language empowers, because it allows a woman to hold a position of power without losing her sexual identity. Again, this argument can be finished by anyone with any imagination.
None of this judgement is in the noun itself, though. A queen is a ruler who is female. Good or bad will, intended, unintended or suspected, comes from the minds of those who use the language alone.
Did you read the book, Lit Bug? How do you think the apices inform this discussion?
I haven't read it, unfortunately - just that I'm doing my Ph.D. on a relevan topic - feminist cyberpunk - a subset of cyberpunk that focuses on those things that classic cyberpunk failed to address - gender, cyborgs without a specific biological sex, etc.Hence these discussions are exactly what I'd be tackling in my research - gender, how language constructs and is constructed by reality and vice versa.
I agree to your view, but only partially - language is as much a product of our interpretations as they produce interpretations. Thus language is both a victim and the perpetrator, the parent as well as the child. It is more of a cyclical vehicle - it is created by social roles and in turn creates social roles - the way Lacan addressed Saussure's terms signifier and signified - language signifies our sensibilities and is also signified by our sensibilities.
Lit Bug wrote: "I haven't read it, unfortunately - just that I'm doing my Ph.D. on a relevan topic - feminist cyberpunk - a subset of cyberpunk that focuses on those things that classic cyberpunk failed to address - gender, cyborgs without a specific biological sex, etc."I think you'd enjoy Okrent's book (a relatively quick read). Not all of it speaks to gender, but rather the multiple ways invented languages have been used to help bring about utopian societies (and why they have all failed). I'd never heard of Suzette Haden Elgin, or Láadan before reading her book.
Thanks for the recos - i'll look them up - how did you like this current book? Would you recommend me other books if you know them? Mind looking at this link to let me know other works you might know - http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...And I'm looking forward to carrying forward this discussion - I'm fascinated by the issues of gender and language in sci-fi.
If you are interested in gender and language in sci-fi, Lit Bug, I would definitely recommend Player of Games. Hell, I'd recommend it anyway; it's a great read. And in answer to your earlier question, when I started this thread I was thinking about the topic in terms of the way this book covered it, but since the topic itself exists outside of the book, I see no reason why other books that relate can't be discussed too, so long as no major spoilers are given.I agree with Lit Bug that language isn't only interpretation based. I cannot, at this moment, find good examples in English, but there are some striking ones in Japanese that I am aware of. For example, one way of writing 'wife' is to use the characters for 'house', and 'inside'. 'Husband', on the other hand, uses 'master' and 'person'.
I'm glad you're open to discussing other books too here, but we can start another thread too for discussing this if you're not comfortable - I have no issues with that.I see that Player of Games will mostly suit my requirements and am trying to get it asap.
I find it highly irritating when in spite of having common words like people, persons or humans, we keep on using the word 'man' or 'mankind' - it is one of the ways language is created by and creates subconsciously our views.
I've been told my many that the Japanese society is still quite sexist, though things are changing slowly - and that is quite evident from most of their caricatures of women in their manga/animes - cute innocent girls or sexed-up images of women - as if there is nothing apart from that of substance in women.
For that matter, I love Louis Althusser's phenomenal essay - Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus - to see how language is a product of reality and also an agent of production of reality.
Ruth wrote: "I agree with Lit Bug that language isn't only interpretation based. I cannot, at this moment, find good examples in English, but there are some striking ones in Japanese that I am aware of. For example, one way of writing 'wife' is to use the characters for 'house', and 'inside'. 'Husband', on the other hand, uses 'master' and 'person'. "
You study kanji at all, you learn all sorts of those. The writing was invented by the Chinese, thousands of years ago, and it is very possible to overthink things. This doesn't mean that the inventors of Chinese were never sexist, only that it is dangerous to overestimate the impact that has on today's readers and writers of the language.
A pig under a roof is home 家; and yet every Japanese I have ever met has felt quite at home without any pig at all. I have not seen any studies on this, but I am unsure Japanese with pet pigs would be more likely to attach to their homes than Western pet pig owners, despite this lifelong reinforcement in writing.
These sort of linguistic games are amusing, but should not be taken too seriously. In Swedish the word "gift" can mean either to be married, or poison, depending on context. Swedes joke about that, but they still get married. I don't believe they take poison in any larger numbers, either.
Lit Bug wrote: "I've been told my many that the Japanese society is still quite sexist, though things are changing slowly - and that is quite evident from most of their caricatures of women in their manga/animes - cute innocent girls or sexed-up images of women - as if there is nothing apart from that of substance in women."
How to respond to a post which uses an extremely small subset of the society to explain the society as a whole? You can't understand Japan by looking at manga, any more than you can by watching old samurai movies, or Godzilla.
I agree, it is highly erroneous to generalize - this is specifically the POV of a few women from different countries of the West who have been living for at least 7-10 years or so in Japan and are appalled at the sexism there. As I also said, they did say too that slowly things are changing - for most of non-Western countries, there IS an appalling degree of sexism prevalent in every (almost) country, and to some extent, language reveals that.I don't intend to generalize that too - stereotyping is full of invisible pitfalls, but there is a certain amount of truth in it too, sometimes.
I won't judge Japan by its manga - I understand it only reflects a part of its popular psyche that is not outraged by such depictions, while many others would not be appreciative of such depictions. I'm not doing that, since I won't judge America by Lindsay Lohan and say that Americans are drug-addicts or say that Germans are racists because they had Hitler among them. And yet these things are a reflection of SOME part of America and Germany and cannot be denied.
This is exactly what I meant when I said language creates reality and is created by reality in turn. Whatever linguistic/artistic depictions we see are a part of its society though they may not be a faithful representative of it. And yet it creates an undeniable reality for those who seek to wield it as a weapon against the marginalized ones.
I hope I'm putting across well what I'm trying to say - I wouldn't mind trying to explain it again if my writing is not clear enough - I often suffer from obscurity.
Lit Bug wrote: "This is exactly what I meant when I said language creates reality and is created by reality in turn. Whatever linguistic/artistic depictions we see are a part of its society though they may not be a faithful representative of it. And yet it creates an undeniable reality for those who seek to wield it as a weapon against the marginalized ones."This is the part I can not agree with. I did once, and no longer do, simply because the evidence points against it. Political correctness came out of a movement to change attitudes through language. Someone was not a cripple (an insult) they were "handicapped". Like in golf. Who could be offended by a harmless golf term, right? All that happened was that handicapped became an insult, because changing the word did exactly nothing to change attitudes. So the word became "disabled". That became an insult. (Don't quote me on the order, or take me too literally on the origins of the term handicapped). Impaired became an insult. Challenged became an insult. Special, in the wrong tone of voice, has become an insult. The problem has never been the words, though, it is the attitudes of the society.
Of course language affects our reality. Language is a tool, and like any tool it can be used to build or tear down, depending on the will of the one wielding it. If one is looking for more building and less tearing down, one needs to change the will, not the tool.
Well, didn't I say it worked both ways, but depends mainly on the attitude - no matter how much you tweak language to make it sound agreeable, it WON'T become agreeable when people's attitudes don't change.People changed to handicapped from cripple because their attitude had changed and they wanted it to be reflected in their language. That is how they tried to create reality through language and it worked for some people. But those who didn't agree with it made it a point to scorn it with their intonation, and the word became insulting - I think of this as an example of how reality penetrates into language.
Jacques Lacan said, "Language is structured by the unconscious." Just as our conscious mind and unconscious mind simultaneously create each other and are created by each other, I personally feel, IMHO, that reality and language too affect each other cyclically.
What you are saying isn't wrong - it IS true. But I see it as one side of the coin, not as the only side. :) No offence intended!
Lit Bug wrote: "What you are saying isn't wrong - it IS true. But I see it as one side of the coin, not as the only side. :) No offence intended! "Don't worry, none taken. It's hard to talk about this stuff without the argument devolving, most times.
Darren wrote: "You study kanji at all, you learn all sorts of those. The writing was invented by the Chinese, thousands of years ago, and it is very possible to overthink things. This doesn't mean that the inventors of Chinese were never sexist, only that it is dangerous to overestimate the impact that has on today's readers and writers of the language.A pig under a roof is home 家; and yet every Japanese I have ever met has felt quite at home without any pig at all. I have not seen any studies on this, but I am unsure Japanese with pet pigs would be more likely to attach to their homes than Western pet pig owners, despite this lifelong reinforcement in writing.
These sort of linguistic games are amusing, but should not be taken too seriously. In Swedish the word "gift" can mean either to be married, or poison, depending on context. Swedes joke about that, but they still get married. I don't believe they take poison in any larger numbers, either. "
Yes, I'm aware of this. I used Japanese as an example because I've studied Japanese, and find it interesting which kanji have been used to represent certain ideas. I wouldn't say they are necessarily representative of the attitudes of the people using them, but the words were certainly built from the beliefs of the time, and those beliefs are repeated over and over when these words are used.
But gosh, this does seem rather a chicken and egg conversation! I'll agree that political correctness doesn't work. I remember listening to a discussion about racism, where a man, amusingly enough, speaking in favour of equality tried to avoid the seemingly problematic word 'black' by using 'coloured' instead, only to get attacked by a woman who took great offence, insisting she was 'black' and not 'coloured', and how dare he, etc. I suppose you can't change a word for a sensitive term and expect it to be any better so long as the issue remains.
But with regards to the book, what about words which are not offensive in their own right, but which signal a difference between two people when there is no need for that difference to be raised? If I'm talking about a friend for any length of time, I must eventually say something to indicate the gender of that friend, whether there is a need to or not, I will eventually find myself having to use he or she. There is no way for me to keep his or her gender secret without obviously doing so. Yet there are times when the knowledge of gender changes our thinking, not necessarily in big, or negative ways, but tend to think about the genders in slightly different ways. For example, I once read a book told from first person that took quite some time to establish the gender of the protagonist. When I found out, I was surprised to find I'd been sharing the thoughts of a male character, and not the female I had taken him to be. After that, I found I couldn't keep reading until I went back and read it again as a man, and when I did, I couldn't help but view certain things in subtly different ways. If I do that then I can only imagine others do too, and if for fiction, why not for real life. What if I had never found out the gender of the main character? Would it have made a difference?
Don't forget that the Culture drones are referred to as 'it', so in a sense they have 3 genders too.
I'm thinking of He, She and It - one of the characters is a cyborg who can change genders at will - not that he is a male who can be a female at will or vice versa - we simply do not know if he was gendered - he can be both, but essentially, he was born/manufactured as neither. And he was HUMAN in every other aspect - feelings, aspirations, sensitivity - how would you consider a narrative from a character who has all the genders, but none defining the character in entirety?
Ruth wrote: "But with regards to the book, what about words which are not offensive in their own right, but which signal a difference between two people when there is no need for that difference to be raised? If I'm talking about a friend for any length of time, I must eventually say something to indicate the gender of that friend, whether there is a need to or not, I will eventually find myself having to use he or she. There is no way for me to keep his or her gender secret without obviously doing so"Doesn't the Culture have a wonderful solution to this, though? Rather than eliminating gendered pronouns (something I feel could only be enacted in a society which was fundamentally broken) they found a way to let people switch genders. There's that character in the book with all the kids, who becomes a woman at least twice in the course of the novel to have another child, and a man at least once. The name remains constant, but the pronoun is he when male, and she when female.
I thought they did have a different language without such gender words? From the outset, I remember thinking that, given all the gender swapping, it would be difficult to know whether he or she was the appropriate word to use, and wondered if the language might be different, and then about half way through the novel this is confirmed. After that, I began wondering if it would really be so easy to do away with gendered words, since they are so ingrained in our languages.Ah, here we are, it's mentioned in my copy on page 99:
"Marain, the Culture's quintessentially wonderful language (so the Culture will tell you), has, as any schoolkid knows, one personal pronoun to cover females, males, in-betweens, neuters, children, drones, Minds, other sentient machines, and every life-form capable of scraping together anything remotely resembling a nervous system and the rudiments of language (or a good excuse for not having either)."
Ruth wrote: "I thought they did have a different language without such gender words? From the outset, I remember thinking that, given all the gender swapping, it would be difficult to know whether he or she was..."Oh you're right, it's mentioned the text has been translated at the beginning. Well, it's no secret that the Culture has its flaws. :)
Darren wrote: "Ruth wrote: "I agree with Lit Bug that language isn't only interpretation based. I cannot, at this moment, find good examples in English, but there are some striking ones in Japanese that I am awar..."Ruth wrote: "If you are interested in gender and language in sci-fi, Lit Bug, I would definitely recommend Player of Games. Hell, I'd recommend it anyway; it's a great read. And in answer to your earlier questi..."
Indeed, speaking Chinese, you read the character as a word or part of a word. The parts are known but largely unoticed when you actually read.
The Sword and Laser
Books mentioned in this topic
He, She and It (other topics)In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language (other topics)
All this made me very aware of the limitations of all language I know of to deal with such situations. Gendered terms are ingrained in our language, such as he, she, brother and sister, mother and father. In the culture, as I understood it, a language has been created to do away with such gendered terms, but I wonder how easy that would be. Already, there are situations where one might like gender neutral words: People have been having babies for quite some time now, and, at least in English, we have not come up with a satisfactory pronoun to use for the baby whose gender is not known. The rise of internet forums is a more recent problem - is 'catnip 35' (made up name) with a picture of a cartoon cat a he or a she? Personally, I find myself using the person's name a whole lot more, or else using the word 'they' which I know is not accurate or grammatically correct.
It's really strange when you think about the way these things have been build into the very structure of our language - surely affecting the way we think.