Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!brantley@vax1.acs.udel.edu
From: brantley@vax1.acs.udel.edu (brantley)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Women's Language and Computing
Message-ID: <5680@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 22 Oct 88 07:03:27 GMT
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.5680
References: <5611@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu
Organization: The Lab Rats
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.  And those ideas got me thinking
}about artificial intelligence and computers.
}
}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.)

Some how, I just can't take this argument seriously.  I haven't read
either Cisoux or Lacan, but the idea that "language and logic are
always an alien territory to women" just doesn't seem reasonable to me.
In what way is language alien to women??  Do girls acquire their language
skills more slowly than boys?  Do women not reach the same degree of comfort
or familiarity with their native language that men do?  Do women in general
have more trouble learning a second language?  It doesn't seem that any
of my questions have any support in real life.  I would be interested to
hear of any research in this area.

And how can language be "phallogocentric" (assuming this word means what it
looks like it means :-)?  The idea that language emphasizes male 
characteristics instead of female ones sounds like a gross over-generalization/
simplification to me.

Boy, and I haven't even touched the issue of women and logic yet. :-)
Well, that's just my two cents worth for now.

brantley
-- 
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*                     ask me if i care, go ahead, ask me                      *
*                         brantley@vax1.acs.udel.edu                          *
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