Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!ncsuvx!mcnc!ecsvax!rsp@pbhyf.PacBell.COM
From: rsp@pbhyf.PacBell.COM (Steve Price)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Women's Language and Computing
Message-ID: <5623@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 20 Oct 88 16:05:13 GMT
References: <5611@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 38
Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts)
Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu
Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu


In article <5611@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Patricia Roberts) writes:
>I've been reading about Cisoux and Lacan recently.  They have some,
>um, interesting ideas about language.
>According to some French feminists like Cisoux, this means
>that language and logic are always an alien territory to women--that
>we are, in essence, foreigners in that land--that language and logic
>distance women from their bodies (because language is phallogocentric,
>that is, it emphasizes male characteristics like power and force and
>keeps female characteristics like flow and nurturance at the fringe.)

1) Can anyone supply some more details about Cisoux & Lacan and their theories
   on language and culture?  Are they considered important thinkers in that 
   area?

2) Without reading Cisoux & Lacan for myself, I can not be sure of what they 
   are claiming or what their evidence is, but to state that "language is 
   phallogocentric" (that word pricked my interest) strikes me as rather
   absurd -- an emotional overgeneralization.  What specific language or
   language group do they mean?  Do they imply that ALL languages are in
   essence the same in their parsing of reality?  Do they assume that there
   is some universal logic that all languages convey with merely regional
   semantic variations?  Have they ever heard of the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis?

3) Does English language emphasize one over the other?  Can we prove that? How?

4) Do Chinese languages emphasize one over the other?  Can we prove that? How?

5) Are "power and force" exclusively male attributes?  Can women exist without
   them?

6) Are "flow and nurturance" exclusively female attributes?  Can men live
   with them?


Steve Price
pacbell!pbhyf!rsp
(415) 823-1951