Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cwjcc!hal!nic.MR.NET!xanth!mcnc!ecsvax!mhnadel@gryphon.CTS.COM From: mhnadel@gryphon.CTS.COM (Miriam Nadel) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Re: Women's Language and Computing Message-ID: <5631@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Date: 20 Oct 88 12:46:14 GMT References: <5611@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA Lines: 57 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: > >Lacan argues that babies are at one with the mother. Then, language >and logic in the form of the father intervene and separate the mother >and child. 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.) > This seems really bizarre to me. Even if we equate "power and force" with maleness and "flow and nurturance" with femaleness (something which seems like excessive generalization to me), not all languages have the "power" emphasis. And computer languages certainly differ significantly from "natural" language in this respect. A further problem seems to be this equation between language and logic. I find it suspicious since so many things about language are inherently illogical. (If English were logical, we wouldn't have some of our more peculiar spelling. Or irregular verbs.) Finally, I would be interested in knowing how this theory accounts for women's observed superiority in language skills over men (as borne out by the very same test scores which claim male superiority in math skills.) >1) If the above is true, then the approach which artificial intelligence >is taking may make women and women's ways of thinking even more alienated. > Which approach within AI are you referring to? If you're looking at ideas involving natural language, I think there is a danger if AI designers fail to recognize differences in ways that men and women use language. But there are a lot of aspects of AI beyond the search for natural language processing. >3) This theory, it seems to me, also reflects back on the discussions >of women and expectations. If computing involves a lot of logic, especially >research in ai, and if this sort of theory continues to get as much aca- >demic respect as it seems to, then even feminists will expect that women >just can't be as good as men. That's the danger of generalizing about characteristics which have wide individual variations. A friend of mine used to claim that when he taught introductory programming classes, he could tell within a week or so what his students' final grades would be. People have different inherent abilities and maybe the ability to use sequential logic (the type of reasoning needed to write programs) is one of these. But unless you can prove *no* women have this ability, you have no basis for expecting an individual woman not to be good at computing. AI is a different matter. Problems like pattern recognition (which is one of the hot fields even for mechanical engineers like me, with its obvious connection to problems ranging from machine vision to multi-target tracking) are not best approached by sequential logic. There may be areas in which abilities which women are more likely to have than men are (for whatever reasons, be they genetic or cultural) are just what's needed. Miriam Nadel -- "I deny that I have ever given my opinion to anybody" - George Bush mhnadel@gryphon.CTS.COM !gryphon!mhnadel