Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG0205C" ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 03:53:24 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: BDG Native Tongue Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 07:04 PM 5/10/02 -0400, Rachel Wild wrote: >I have read Native Tongue many times and found it started my interest in >linguistics - Interestingly, women as linguists have been explored in several other works, notably Memoirs of a Spacewoman by Naomi Mitchison and Color of Distance by Amy Thompson. In both, total communication is enabled by adding an emotive dimension, as in Ladaan. Memoirs predates Native by quite some years and Color goes it one better in allowing the protagonist to be physically altered to enable her to communicate in a language in which extended "blushes" and chemical overtones add vision and smell to the list of necessary components of language. In both, it is necessary to convey emotion along with "words" or risk being misunderstood. I think Color is better realized than Native, despite the non-linguistic background of the author, in that it posits a deeper commitment to "translation" and really thinks about what communication with an alien species might entail. In that sense, Native falls into a sort of Star Trek Universal Translator assumption that all the aliens will speak with human mouths, being magically related to each other by a process which in Star Trek turns out to be the advanced science of our distant "ancestors" but in much early SF represented either a covert "Divine Plan" or a mere failure of the imagination. Rubber craniums and green face paint on human actors infected more than the movies in the early days of SF; we had the equivalent of "Look, Halrloprillalar. See Spot run" in book after book, with the only discernable difference between human characterization and motivation and their alien equivalents the addition of either a figurative fake nose and eyeglasses or an Evil Empire comic book inclination to be an agent of Satan. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 19:15:56 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Laura Quilter Subject: Re: BDG Native Tongue / related works Comments: To: feministsf-lit@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII fwiw, Louky Bersianik's L'Eugelionne (in translation, THE EUGELIONNE or THE EUGELION) and Candas Jane Dorsey's BLACK WINE both are relevant for discussions of sexism within language ... On Wed, 15 May 2002, Lee Anne Phillips wrote: > > Interestingly, women as linguists have been explored in several > other works, notably Memoirs of a Spacewoman by Naomi Mitchison > and Color of Distance by Amy Thompson. In both, total communication > is enabled by adding an emotive dimension, as in Ladaan. Memoirs > predates Native by quite some years and Color goes it one better > in allowing the protagonist to be physically altered to enable her > to communicate in a language in which extended "blushes" and > chemical overtones add vision and smell to the list of necessary > components of language. In both, it is necessary to convey emotion ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 10:56:50 -0400 Reply-To: judithberman@earthlink.net Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Judith Berman Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] women's languages question Comments: To: FEMINISTSF@uic.edu, feministsf-lit@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Laura Quilter wrote: does anybody know anything about the women's language in, i think, southern china? laura q Some varieties of women's language have been reported from minority areas of southern China. Many years ago I worked with speakers of Hmong, a minority language distributed through southeast Asia and southern China, Hmong is known as Miao in China (a term considered by some Hmong to be an ethnic insult). Our language consultants, male and female, were familiar with the types of Miao disguised speech reported by Chinese scholars as being a woman's "secret language." What we found was that the "secret languages" (called in Hmong lus rov, and resulting from various systematic rearrangements or expansions of each syllable, somewhat like Pig Latin) were known of and used by different groups for different purposes. In the province of Laos where our consultants originated, lus rov was used by teenagers and courting couples to prevent their conversation from being understood by outsiders and older people. Another Hmong woman from a different part of Laos would only discuss lus rov after all men, English and Hmong speakers, had left the room. Disguised speech of this general sort is reported from other places in Southeast Asia, for example, the Phillipines, where there is a similar variety of types and uses. Our report (Derrick-Mescua, Berman and Carlson, "Some secret languages of the Hmong,") was published in THE HMONG IN THE WEST (1982), ed. by Bruce Downing and Douglas Olney. The original Chinese articles on the women's secret language ("A Miao secret language," and "A comment on 'A Miao secret language'" appeared in MIAO AND YAO LINGUISTIC STUDIES: SELECTED ARTICLES IN [i.e. from the] CHINESE (1972), H.C. Purnell, ed. I haven't kept up with the Hmong literature and unfortunately can't tell you about more recent work. One comment about ladaan and the discussion thereof. The ease with which languages (or, rather, speakers of languages) can form new words for new, or newly interesting concepts, varies according to a number of linguistic and sociolinguistic factors. One place this shows up is with introduction of new objects, ideas, etc. with trade, migration or conquest. Indigenous North American languages vary widely where the origin of words like "horse" is concerned -- is the foreign word adopted, is the new animal named after a familiar one (e.g., dog), is a brand-new word generated? One purely linguistic feature that aids in formation of new words is the degree to which a language is, in the old typology, "synthetic." That is, the degree to which words ordinarily combine various lexical and grammatical concepts. English is generally considered "analytic" (at the opposite end of the typological spectrum), although derivation in English (consider words like "deinstitutionalize") is more synthetic than is, say, verb grammar. In Russian verbs, for example, concepts of person, gender, tense, aspect, determinacy and more can be combined in a single verb form. Meanwhile English speakers would have to use a number of words, each word embodying a smaller amount of information. A single Russian verb becomes, in English, "I was reading that book bit by bit." Many indigenous American languages are so-called "polysynthetic," where the derivational possibilities are extremely rich and flexible. Example: back in the 80s, Ojibwa-speaking students at SIFC made a t-shirt with a single Ojibwa word that trasnlated as "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." (The root, if I recall correctly, being "turtle," with "not adult" "changed" and "warrior" being affixes or internal modifications.) Once when talking with an Ojibwa speaker from a remote northern community I had to take out a contact lens. He knew what it was but had never seen one before -- and on the spot made up an Ojibwa word for it -- "small eyeglass." In later conversations over the years with other Ojibwa speakers I mentioned this and was given other, different Ojibwa words, each made up on the spot -- "worn in the eye" being one. Internal language vitality and pressure from a dominant linguistic community can affect the degree to which new words are generated. For example, in some Native languages where a hundred years ago a new native word would have been generated, today the English is borrowed. I've heard Russian immigrants long in this country say things like parkovala kar (I parked the car) or zeroksovala (I xeroxed). But in general, generating new words for new concepts is not an extraordinary linguistic or social process. It's widespread and common. It is easier in some languages, and in some sociolinguistic contexts. Judith p.s. I'm posting this to both lists, since the discussion has been split between the two. > >-------------------------------------------------- >This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for >discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To >unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to >LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > >Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 13:14:31 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Recent Reading -- Help! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Hi, all -- Maybe you can help me. Lately I have read two books by authors whose previous work I have enjoyed -- and found myself very critical. I would like to see their good points, but I think I need some assistance. So, has anyone read: NEKROPOLIS by Maureen McHugh. As I was reading it I kept thinking, "this is really depressing." That's not necessarily bad, but in the end I felt that was all the book had to offer. No hints about how to address the problems of the book's characters, not even a real investigation of the AI and engineered human themes. I've liked the sparseness and lack of answers in her other books, but this one just seemed tired to me, as if the author herself weren't that interested in it. A PARADIGM OF EARTH by Candas Jane Dorsey. This book's biggest problem is its tone. I found it exposition-heavy and self-congratulatory. I agree with the author on most political issues, but it really irked me to hear various opinions stated as some kind of dogma over and over again. There's a tie-in to the *Native Tongue* discussion here, as its a trope of the book that the Sapir-Whorf theory of language is true, that one's language shapes what one can think about. One of the characters is a sexless alien whom various other characters assign a gendered pronoun, pretty obviously because of their own emotional needs or expectations. That's an interesting topic, but the book's main character, who is the mentor of the alien, is able to avoid assigning a gender and *keeps pointing it out* throughout the book whenever anyone else does it. It seemed patronizing toward the reader and became *very* tedious. Then there's the stereotyping of conservatives, the murder mystery that's bizarrely predictable, and the over-the-top success of the main character in bed... Oy! Please, someone help me appreciate these books. ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: Television -- Television "I've built my white picket fence around the Now, with a commanding view of the Soon-to-Be." -- The Tick ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 00:34:18 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] women's languages question Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU In-Reply-To: <3CE3C8B2.30907@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 10:56 AM 5/16/02 -0400, Judith Berman wrote: >Some varieties of women's language have been reported from minority >areas of southern China. Many years ago I worked with speakers of Hmong, >a minority language distributed through southeast Asia and southern >China, Hmong is known as Miao in China (a term considered by some Hmong >to be an ethnic insult). Our language consultants, male and female, were >familiar with the types of Miao disguised speech reported by Chinese >scholars as being a woman's "secret language." What we found was that >the "secret languages" (called in Hmong lus rov, and resulting from >various systematic rearrangements or expansions of each syllable, >somewhat like Pig Latin) were known of and used by different groups for >different purposes. In the province of Laos where our consultants An interesting point. I seem to recall that when I was in grammar school very few boys could speak Double Dutch or any of the other girl's languages although somewhat more could put together Pig Latin in a more or less halting way. Which of course leads around again to Elgin's hypothesis. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 00:56:38 -0700 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: Recent Reading -- Help! Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020516123312.00aa7590@impop.bellatlantic.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 01:14 PM 5/16/02 -0400, Janice E. Dawley wrote: >A PARADIGM OF EARTH by Candas Jane Dorsey. This book's biggest problem is >its tone. I found it exposition-heavy and self-congratulatory. I agree with >Please, someone help me appreciate these books. One shouldn't *have* to appreciate a book with "Paradigm" in its title. The word is almost as irritating as "proactive," and is usually used by people (with little or no idea of what it really means) as more or less "notion" but with greater pomposity and grandiose self-approval. But to answer your plea, from your description, a better example could hardly be found of giving the reader fair warning that the contents buried within those covers will be ponderous and dull. Congratulations to Ms. Dorsey! Mayhap the sequel will be "A Prolegomena to Earth" and we can all check the "Do Not Send This Month's Selection box when we see the title on the teaser package from the book club. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 10:02:27 -0500 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: "Hicks, Suzanna" Subject: Alice Borchardt Comments: To: "FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain I just subscribed to this list and am interested in hearing (private e-mail is fine) from anyone who knows anything about Alice Borchardt. I "accidentally" stumbled upon her books while volunteering at the local library. I was shelving books and was blown away by the cover of The Silver Wolf (I have a "wolf thing"). Now -- several months and five books later -- I'm nearing depression because I'm finishing the last Borchardt novel... All I want to do is start over again as soon as I finish this one! Has she no Web presence? I've found nothing! Will there be more from this exquisite writer?? Anyone who loves her work as much as I do: Please write!! Thanks. Suzanna shicks@walton.uark.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 20:07:55 EDT Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Christine Ethier Subject: Re: Alice Borchardt Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="part1_9a.25b1ea44.2a1846db_boundary" --part1_9a.25b1ea44.2a1846db_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 5/18/2002 11:14:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time, SHicks@WALTON.UARK.EDU writes: > Has she no Web presence? I've found nothing! Will there be more from this > exquisite writer?? Anyone who loves her work as much as I do: Please write!! > Thanks. > > I liked the Silver Wolf (have a Wolf thing too) but found the next two in the series disappointing. The last one in series the most. She is a much better writer then her sister. But with the last two wolf novels they seemed very disjointed to me. However, I loved Silver Wolf. Chris --part1_9a.25b1ea44.2a1846db_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 5/18/2002 11:14:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time, SHicks@WALTON.UARK.EDU writes:


Has she no Web presence? I've found nothing! Will there be more from this
exquisite writer?? Anyone who loves her work as much as I do: Please write!!
Thanks.



I liked the Silver Wolf  (have a Wolf thing too) but found the next two in the series disappointing.  The last one  in series the most.   She is a much better writer then her sister.   But with the last two wolf novels they seemed very disjointed to me.  However, I loved Silver Wolf.

Chris --part1_9a.25b1ea44.2a1846db_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 20:42:00 +0100 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Angela Barclay Subject: straying/upcoming discussion Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Comments: cc: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit *This message has been posted on both the "on-topic" and "off-topic" lists. As Joy has recently indicated, our discussion this month keeps veering off the intersection between feminism and science fiction. Some members have voiced frustration over this, while others are obviously engaged in spirited discussion. This is a recurring problem on our list and points to the need to make some compromises. As a member of the BDG steering committee I would like to make some suggestions: The membership on each list tends to hover around 200. While many members belong to both the FSFFU and FSFFU-Lit listserves there are a considerable number of people who choose to subscribe to just one or the other- for the ability to more freely explore SF and feminism or alternately the desire to participate in a more structured discussion about a democratically selected feminist fantastic work. *So, let's continue to post general comments about SF and feminism to the FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU list and responses to the book of the month on the FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU list.* While we are united in our passion about FSF we obviously differ in such significant ways as cultural background, political bent, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, age, gender . . . It has been interesting to learn more about Capitalism and Judaism, for example, in the past couple of weeks, but the discussion seems to have gotten rather acrimonious of late. Who was it that wrote political and religious debates are a lose-lose situation? I'm not saying we have to be namby-pamby nice to each other all the time- we wouldn't learn and grow that way. I am saying I felt that turning the computer on today and deleting a long list of emails about "Capitalism and War" was a disappointing waste of time. On a positive note, I was able to delete what was not interesting to me because most posters had used an appropriate subject line. *So, let's continue to change the title in the subject line when the discussion thread changes so that members can quickly determine what they wish to read.* *It would also be helpful if subscribers did more snipping and streamlining. There has been some very intelligent discussion this month, but at times it has been difficult to determine who said what. Perhaps members who want to make a statement about "Capitalism and War" or "Women's Language Abilities" could condense five posts on the subject to one per day.* I make these suggestions because I have found that the number of posts this month have been almost overwhelming. I think the sheer level of traffic on the FSFFU list may be silencing some members who might have something to say on the FSFFU-Lit list. Even though most of us sit quietly in front of our computer terminals, this asyncronous discussion seems like a loud public forum in which a small group of individuals are having a debate and others are having trouble getting a word in edgewise. *Our code of conduct demands that we share the floor- it also suggests that we take it. If you want to just lurk, listen and learn that's fine; but if you have a point to make or a question to ask, formulate it thoughtfully and hit "send."* Our listmistress also encourages us to have discussions behind the scenes. We can send private emails to congratule eachother on a particulary well-made point, to ask for clarification, to indicate our feelings have been hurt. I have had my most enjoyable FSFFU/FSFFU-Lit experiences one-on-one with other listmembers. And now I get to the task at hand: to remind you that from June 3 - 30 we will be discussing Marge Piercy's _Woman on the Edge of Time_. If you haven't read this 1976 FSF classic there's still time before the discussion begins. I've devoured half of it in the past two days and am really looking forward to hearing your interpretations of it. Angela ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 09:22:09 EDT Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Rachel Wild Subject: list guidelines Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="part1_53.16f17060.2a1ba401_boundary" --part1_53.16f17060.2a1ba401_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think the list guidelines suggested/ [reminded] are very useful. Would it work to put a guide in subject headings, as the book discussion group does, to indicate a thread - but instead to indicate it is offtopic? e.g. we could use the word 'tangent' - to indicate a subject that has come from the list but gone off to a life of its own? I have been participating heavily in the discussions on FSL and this has made me less likely to post to the strictly on topic FSf-lit --part1_53.16f17060.2a1ba401_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think the list guidelines suggested/ [reminded] are very useful.

Would it work to put a guide in subject headings, as the book discussion group does, to indicate a thread - but instead to indicate it is offtopic? e.g. we could use the word 'tangent' - to indicate a subject that has come from the list but gone off to a life of its own?

I have been participating heavily in the discussions on FSL and this has made me less likely to post to the strictly on topic FSf-lit --part1_53.16f17060.2a1ba401_boundary--