A couple of things that crossed my screen today that might be great starting points for thinking about projects.
Married texting
Alice Zhao analysed the texts between her and her now-husband in 2008 and 2014, looking at what changes as a couple goes from courting to marriage. She noticed things like they no longer greet each other. Seems like a lot could be done with this kind of thing--how does texting change between parent and child as the child moves away? How does it change from fresher's week to knowing people very well in year 3? Or, how does it change in other romantic relationships--would anyone have found what Zhao found?
Woman v female (etc.)
This piece by Maddie York in the Guardian style blog argues that woman shouldn't be used as an adjective as in woman doctor or women writers. She notes that people talk about male doctors not man doctors. What's going on here? Has it to do with the connotations of man/woman/male/female? Is something that's changing? What are the prescriptions, who's making them and why when it comes to these kinds of things?
Married texting
Woman v female (etc.)
This piece by Maddie York in the Guardian style blog argues that woman shouldn't be used as an adjective as in woman doctor or women writers. She notes that people talk about male doctors not man doctors. What's going on here? Has it to do with the connotations of man/woman/male/female? Is something that's changing? What are the prescriptions, who's making them and why when it comes to these kinds of things?
First of all that shouldn't that be "men doctors" (plural with plural). I know we don't do that when we write with other nouns as adj such as mountain-bike or mountain-bikes but it does seem to happen with woman/women and man/men. Indeed, the byspels given abuv are 'woman doctor' and 'women writers'.
ReplyDeleteAs for which one to write, I hav no problems with writing woman doctor rather than female doctor. As for the man side, it doesn't bother me there either. Men doctors over here and women doctors over there. That doesn't bother me in the least.
However, what we're truly seeing here is that the default is a man and, more often than not, if it needs to be clarified, we're more likely going to talk about doctors and women doctors.