A Man's Language

             Since the early 19th century, American history is laced with the oppression of women and their subsequent fight to reverse it. But was it always that way? Did, in ancient civilizations, women feel the same pang of inequality? Leonard Shlain, in his novel The Alphabet Versus The Goddess, suggests quite the opposite and attempts to explain in three simple words why a drastic change occurred: the written language. His thoughts seem to hover around the idea that the medium is the message, in other words, that the linear and logical makeup of language produces increased importance of the rational. Even when painting pictures with words, those images are still constrained within the framework of the structural written language. In the words of William Irwin Thompson, "Even a positive thing casts a shadow...its unique excellence is at the same time its tragic flaw."
             It may seem, at first glance, rather absurd to partially blame patriarchal society on the invent of the written language. Our language, after all, is pervasive in our daily lives and necessary to the function of women and men alike. Upon closer inspection, however, the negative effects of the written language are apparent. One way in which it is possible to see the effects are through the complaints of women writers. Famous feminist authors such as Toni Morison, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Joyce Carol Oates and others have spoken towards the difficulty of expressing a woman's feelings in the context of a "man's language". Another evidence is in the observations of Noam Chomsky, a well-known linguist. He proposed that language is much like mathematics with the sentences forming a comparable set with a set of explicit rules which yield those sentences. Since it is generally accepted that boys are more adapt to working through arithmetic problems than girls, it naturally follows to conclude that a man's brain is more inclined to func...

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A Man's Language. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 01:55, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/97056.html