The debate over Oxford’s use of the word feminism comes at a time when activists have made strides to distance the word from connotations of fanaticism and extremism. “In the case of the word feminist, the potential for damage through this labeling or subtle propaganda is exacerbated by Google’s use of the Oxford dictionary.” “The image of the ‘rabid feminist’ is one conjured and promoted most often by people who don’t like feminists,” Adams wrote. Proctor, writing that he wanted “women’s voices up front.” He said he became aware of their work on the subject of linguistics and gender bias only after his own story got picked up by national news outlets.Īdams took notice of the language in the summer of 2014 and wrote about it on her blog, noting that the example is particularly troublesome because it’s also tied to Google’s definition of the word. When TakePart reached out to the Memorial University of Newfoundland professor for comment, he referred us to writers such as Nordette Adams and anthropologists like Sarah Shulist and Lavanya M. Oman-Reagan is not the first person to voice concern over the Oxford Dictionary of English’s example of the word rabid. It referred Oman-Reagan to a blog post detailing its use of example sentences.ītw, 'rabid' isn't always negative, and our example sentences come from real-world use and aren't definitions: - Oxford Dictionaries January 22, 2016 But on Saturday, as the tweets continued to garner attention online, the company apologized for the remarks it called “flippant” and agreed to review the example in question. When he questioned the publisher on Twitter, the Oxford University Press–owned company initially shrugged off the criticism, suggesting that Oman-Reagan himself was rabid. “Having studied sociocultural linguistics, I know that dictionaries are not only describing language, they also prescribe and shape the way language and meaning is produced and standardized, whether that is the intention of a publisher or not,” Oman-Reagan wrote, noting that Oxford is the default dictionary used by Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. He also pointed to words such as shrill (“the rising shrill of women’s voices”), psyche (“I will never really fathom the female psyche”), and housework (“She still does all the housework”) as examples of sexism embedded within the language. “Rabid feminist” is not the only example provided by the Oxford Dictionary of English that didn’t sit well with Oman-Reagan. That’s the accusation made by anthropologist Michael Oman-Reagan in a post he wrote for Medium last week in which he criticized the dictionary for using the primary example of “a rabid feminist” to help define the word rabid. VowelsWhy does the Oxford Dictionary of English portray feminists as rabid? Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛd(ə)l/ but /ˈpɛdl̩i/. Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. * /d/ also represents a 'tapped' /t/ as in Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛtl/ but /ˈpɛtl̩i/.
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