TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/062491/0624990.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.8 KB | 126 lines

                                                                                LANGUAGE, Page 51

Defining Womyn (and Others)


Random House's new dictionary is gender neutral, politically
correct -- and an English-lover's disappointment

By JESSE BIRNBAUM -- Reported by Anne Hopkins/New York


    Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than
none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.



    Samuel Johnson should be living at this hour; the English
language has need of him. Though he was never at a loss for
words, the great lexicographical drudge would probably be
confounded to read the new Random House Webster's College
Dictionary. It is bugled as "the New Definition of Dictionary,"
the "newest, biggest and best."

    Newest, yes; biggest, yes -- for a college dictionary
(180,000 entries). As for best, it may be said that this
dictionary goes like Dr. Johnson's watches. It will also tick
off a lot of people.

    Those who believe dictionaries should not merely reflect
the times but also protect English from the mindless assaults
of the trendy will find that the Random House Webster's lends
authority to scores of questionable usages, many of them tinged
with "politically correct" views. Purists will fume, but what
is worse is that such permissiveness can only invite a further
tattering of the language -- and already has.

    At its core, the Random House Webster's is a laudable
achievement, the work of many excellent minds. It is in the
core's wrapping that trouble lies and English suffers erosion,
mainly because the editors choose to be "descriptive, not
prescriptive." As a result, numerous entries and usage notes,
wafting in the sociological winds and whims of the day, are
inconsistent and gratuitous, undermining any pretense of rigor,
let alone authority.

    Most notable in these pages is the influence of
special-interest groups, prominently feminists and minorities.
They are saluted, and placated, to the point where judgment is
often skewed, and where tin-eared or casually invented words and
terms are given approval simply because they are fashionable.
"We tried our best," says executive editor Sol Steinmetz in
justification, "to infuse some social significance into the
language along the lines of what sociolinguists do.''

    An added essay, Avoiding Sexist Language, offers some
useful gender-neutral suggestions (firefighter instead of
fireman). Yet browsers will find as well the stamp of acceptance
on the dreadful herstory ("an alternative form to distinguish
or emphasize the particular experience of women"); the execrable
womyn ("alternative spelling to avoid the suggestion of sexism
perceived in the sequence m-e-n"); and the absurd wait-person
(waiter or waitress) and waitron ("a person of either sex who
waits on tables"). Future lexicons, perhaps, will give us
waitoid (a person of indeterminate sex who waits on tables).

    Straining even more to avoid giving offense, except to
good usage, the dictionary offers comfort to very short people
(though not very tall ones) with heightism ("discrimination or
prejudice based on a person's stature, esp. discrimination
against short people"); and to very fat people (but not very
thin ones) with weightism ("bias or discrimination against
people who are overweight"). Omitted, fortunately, are such
high-fad content terms as lookism (bias against people because
of their appearance), ableism (bias against the handicapped) or
differently abled (alternative to handicapped).

    Scores of new entries, however, demonstrate the extent to
which rotten cliches and cute formulations can worm their way
into acceptance. A celebutante, for example, is someone who
seeks the limelight through association with celebrities; to
Mirandize (verb), as in "Mirandize the perpetrator," refers to
the Miranda rule that requires cops to warn arrestees (noun) of
their legal rights. As might be expected, the ungrammatical use
of hopefully ("Hopefully we will get to the show on time")
receives Random's blessing: "Although some strongly object . .
. ((hopefully)) is standard in all varieties of speech and
writing."

    Even the word Webster's has succumbed to the loose use of
language. Though Noah Webster produced his first American
dictionary in 1806, his name never appeared in the title of his
editions until after his death. Webster's has since passed into
generic usage, and any publisher can slap the word into the
titles of its own lexicons.

    The reluctance of Random House's editors to make tough,
perhaps even unpopular, judgments is an ominous sign. It
encourages the self-appointed watchdogs who bark at purported
offenses and demand revisions that often border on the
ridiculous. Their concern is not only a desire to expel
genuinely vicious or hateful words from the vocabulary; their
activity is calculated mainly to protect the sensitivities of
minority groups, even from objectionable phrases that bear
little or no relationship to discrimination or racism. What
counts, say the watchdogs, is not the origin of a term but how
a person feels about it. Hence waitron.

    If these watchdogs get their way, other words and phrases,
now listed approvingly by Random House, may suffer the same
baroque fate. For example, some feminists have objected to the
word seminal, which refers to something that is original and
influential. They argue that seminal, like seminar and seminary,
fails the gender-neutral test because it derives from semen, the
Latin word for seed. So much for logic.

    It is just as well that the English language, so welcoming
to precision and so rich with metaphor and vitality, continues
to be a growing wonder. Like many living things, it needs
constant pruning to flourish. The Random House version of
Webster's too could use some pruning -- or maybe a good watch
repairperson.