Well as I promised Jamie, I did update my links. Am I the only one bugged by the lack of inclusive language in that last post of mine? I debated making modifications and now regret it. For those to whom such things matter, my apologies.
[photo from here, thanks JP]
4 comments:
Well, if you're referring to the quote by Gregory of Nyssa, then my response is if you are quoting someone, you need to quote them entirely, without changing words to make the language 'inclusive.' If you do that, then its no longer a quote, its a paraphrase.
Just my .02
There are ways around that Hank. I can use square brackets to indicate where I've adjusted things, which is what I was planning to do. It is something I'm pretty cautious about in my academic writing, simply because when you write you want as few snags as possible so that your reader doesn't miss your main point(s). So I've developed the habit of watching for it in my writing. The side effect is that it bugs me when I see others not so careful. I ultimately left this one because historically Gregory wasn't likely consciousling being exclusive, and also I am working with a translated snippet in another work, so possibly there is more latitude in the original.
Anyway, it is just me being hard on myself.
Don't be so hard. :-)
People got along fine for hundreds (thousands?) of years with out the need to be 'included' by the use of words.
Its pretty sad that when somebody gets bent out shape over a small word in a sentence and misses the whole point of the text.
Sorry, I may be reacting badly to a story I heard recently about folks somewhere in the NE US trying to get Mark Twain's books banned from a NINTH GRADE library because he uses racially difficult language.
I lament the fact that we are teaching kids to be offended by words and by our past.
I read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land in eighth grade, and am not too terribly warped (I didn't much care for it, though I loved his juvenile stuff). We need to teach kids that yes, this is part of our history, as distasteful as it is to us now, but it is in the past. We should not run from it, nor do we need to embrace, we just need to accept it and learn from it and grow from it.
To ban the books teaches kids nothing but taking the easy way out.
Again, sorry. This is a pet peeve of mine.
I hear you Hank.
For me I like to pave avenues of communication and sometimes that takes serious careful stepping. But I'm with you that we need to hear the past, dispite the trouble we might have with way it is presented.
Post a Comment