I cracked open Lakoff's book and began to read it with the expectations pretty low. Besides dealing with those wonderful patrons at the restaurant I waitress at, I had yet another reading to pick apart and relate to. Don't get me wrong, Language War was interesting, but if I had the chance to actually sit down with it without 10,036 other things on my mind I'd like it so much better. Yet theres a lot of stuff I decided made sense. More so then Rhetoric. Compared to The Language War, my trip to Ramageland was like driving thru Death Valley in a car with no AC in between Paris Hilton and The Nanny. Talking simultaneously. Yeah that bad. Sorry Ramage... I just didn't dig your flow that much.
So 2 glasses of wine after work ( it was a rough day. ) and half a pack of cigarettes later saw me at The Markedness of the Feminine and the Female, and about gender-based markedness. Its no longer policeman. Its policemen, policewomen. Language from long ago was based the same as society was run, with a male dominant factor. Besides women not really emerging from homemaker status until the post-war years when the girls had to bring home the bacon, naturally the language was male oriented. Just shows how language varies with time and culture and how the woman's movement changed society, which in turn changed the language.
Welp. DUH. sorry guys, I'm really not going to enlighten anyone with my paper. Besides I think everyone else's points are way better than mine. I can't really draw personal parallels to exactly what Lakoff was saying in The Language War, even though I understand where shes coming from. I understand that language has the ability to mean more than what it marks. You could open a dictionary and find so many words that have come to mean something else than just what theyre supposed to be. Then theres language and reality. Language has the power to make things reality. Philosophically, I could ask "Am I real?" "Am I an illusion?" Language would prove me to be real. People can see me. I can be described collectively using the same words by different people, therefore I myself am a collection of verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc. I am composed entirely of words and phrases. I am the result of society.
Then theres the question of logical and illogical, of plausible and of unlikely. The whole dog bites man, man bites dog example makes sense. If we hear that a dog bites a man, we assume that the dog was pissed off, it was playing hard, it was protective. But a man biting a dog? Why the heck would a human being bite a dog? What kind of person bites a dog? The questions that arise in our minds from the simple swap of words is astounding. Society is Language War for this reason. You've got these words and these exceptions and its just the way we've been taught or programmed to think. You've got your girl that sleeps around. Shes such a hussy. Then you've got your guy that gets the chicks. He's the man. Forgive me for bringing this typical arguement up but seriously, it also links to the whole markedness of feminine and the female language barrier. Not in the name, but in the context.
Okay, so I'm not so proud of my readings with Lakoff. I'm having trouble getting really into her book. Im just tired and cranky and really hoping for a winning lotto ticket. Maybe next time I write I'll be on a beach, looking alot like that saucy doggy up there.
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