Does talking about an object as masculine or feminine somehow cause us to think of it that way? In the second part of a Lexicon Valley series about language and gender, Bob Garfield and I discuss the fascinating research by Stanford psychologist Lera Boroditsky involving grammar and perception. We talk also about what may have happened to grammatical gender in English. That’s right, once upon a time we had grammatical gender too. But then we lost it.
Lexicon Valley: How grammatical gender changes our thinking, and how English lost its genders. - Slate Magazine
Tagged with lexicon valley linguistics language
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Lexicon Valley: How grammatical gender changes our thinking, and how English lost its genders. - Slate Magazine
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Lexicon Valley: How grammatical gender changes our thinking, and how English lost its genders. - Slate Magazine
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Lexicon Valley: Seeking a gender neutral alternative to he and she. - Slate Magazine
In the third and final installment of our Lexicon Valley series about language and gender, Bob Garfield and I discuss the ongoing quest for a single, more equitable alternative to “he” and “she.” Since at least the 1850s, English speakers have made many unsuccessful attempts to introduce an epicene pronoun into the language. But University of Michigan professor Anne Curzan argues that we don’t need such a word, since we already have a perfectly acceptable, if controversial, alternative—just use “they.” Don’t like that solution? Maybe she’ll convince you.
Tagged with lexicon valley linguistics language
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Lexicon Valley: What it means for a language to have grammatical gender. - Slate Magazine
Listen to Lexicon Valley Episode No. 8: When Nouns Grew Genitals Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in another tab ∙ Play in Stitcher Languages all across the world have what’s called grammatical gender, which means simply that nouns get divvied up into different categories or “classes.” Sometimes those…
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Lexicon Valley: The role of language in Scrabble. - Slate Magazine
Does Scrabble in fact celebrate language? Or does it merely reduce English to a set of mathematical symbols and probability calculations? In the final episode of our first series of Lexicon Valley podcasts, I talk to Word Freak author and competitive Scrabble player Stefan Fatsis about how a math game disguised as a word game nevertheless unlocks the essential beauty of the English language.