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From: kos@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Joshua Kosman)
Newsgroups: soc.misc,soc.motss
Subject: Re: PBS's 'Story of English'
Message-ID: <15817@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 25-Sep-86 17:40:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.15817
Posted: Thu Sep 25 17:40:12 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Sep-86 01:33:27 EDT
References: <1992@mtgzy.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: kos@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Joshua Kosman)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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Xref: linus soc.misc:25 soc.motss:45

In article <1992@mtgzy.UUCP> ecl@mtgzy.UUCP (e.c.leeper) writes:
>Did anyone else watch Part 1 of "The Story of English" on PBS?  I found
>it interesting that California is now the center of the English language, in
>the sense of creating new words.  MacNeil talked about words coming into the
>language from technology ("I'm in work mode"), surfers, Valley Girls, and gays.
>In the latter category, he spent a few minutes talking about the word "gay"
>itself, and also the "gay culture."  Very straight-forward (no pun intended)
>and matter-of-fact; I was impressed that they included it.
>
>					Evelyn C. Leeper

Actually, I found it fairly diffuse and not consistently interesting.
BUT: what I thought was more than simply a matter of taste was the brief segment
on feminist critiques of language. While discussing the feminist objections
to words like "mankind" and so on, the accompanying film footage was of a
women's self-defense class, in which we could hear instructions like 
"now: groin kick!" This is apparently what feminism is about: women teaching
other women to kick men in the balls. I was so flabbergasted that I didn't
even get offended immediately: it took a minute for the utter outrageousness
of this kind of "journalism" to even sink in.


Joshua Kosman		||
kos@ernie.berkeley.EDU	||
Dept. of Music		||
UC Berkeley		||