He said a lot of things about language, and I take away two important points from his work.
1. Language shapes the way we think.
2. Language shapes our culture.
An example of this is to consider how far you live from your school or the workplace. Take a minute to think about that. I'll wait...
Did you come up with an answer?
So, how far do you live from school or the workplace?
Many people I know answer something along the lines of 5 minutes, 10 minutes, about an hour and so on and so forth.
Being from NY, I not surprised that when I ask people how far they live from their school or workplace that they answer in time and not in distance. Time seems to be quite important in NY. We even have our own NY minute! This is just an example of how our words can be very telling about what we value individually as well as culturally. It also is telling about how we individually and culturally think.
So with this in mind, I wonder what our language is saying about how we think and feel about males and females.
On one hand, I have heard the word girl often used in place of the word woman when describing an adult woman.
On the other hand, I have heard people tell boys to act like a man, man-up, and be a "real" man. I have also heard people tell a boy that he is now the "man of house." Have you heard these same phrases? What do you think they mean? So, in America, in 2012, if I were to say, "Yo! He's the Man!" what do you think that means?
Please post comments below.
“Yo, he's the man,” means he's the tops. I wonder what it would be like to say, "She's the man!" or "He's the woman!"
ReplyDeleteThe closest equivalent to “he's the man” that comes to mind that celebrates a woman's accomplishment is "Go Girl!" which then points to your comment about women being referred to as girls.