Comments on: Gendered Language

By: Liz

Liz — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 16:46:01 +0000

Doug is very approachable (he was director of Grad Studies when I started working on my Ph.D. at Illinois State U). I ran into him at CCCC a few hours after his address and when I praised his address, he was bashful. That’s Doug.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 04:44:56 +0000

Oh dear! That’s no good at all. I have a friend who is currently an Associate Dean, so we have fun with that one.
You’re pronouncing the Italian perfectly. And FYI, my mother was reading The Great Gatsby at the time. I now own her copy of the book which was the fun film version with lots of photos of the Redford-Farrow production inserted. Awww…

By: mike

mike — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 04:30:10 +0000

Not sure, D. Re “Pignetti”: it’s “pin-yeti”, right?

With a rather bland and boring praenomen and cognomen, I’ve never had anybody worry much about my name, though I’m still hoping to be mistaken for a certain motorcycle racer, baseball player, or lead singer for Jesus Jones. But when I was in the Army and held the rank of E-4, one of my colleagues made the unfortunate connection, “Specialist Edwards. . . Hmm. . . Hey! You’re Special Ed!”

The nickname stuck, long after I got promoted to buck sergeant.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 21:46:26 +0000

So where does your calling me “Doctor Daisy” fit in?

I’m hardly ever referred to as “Pignetti,” I think because people are afraid to mispronounce it, but as you could probably tell, I’m quite laid back when it comes to this sort of thing. I know I should formalize myself sooner than later, but I think being a New Orleans girl [see there I go again, woman] and former folk dancer/musical theatre performer, none of this stuff bothers me. I’ve been called worse!

By: mike

mike — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 20:31:43 +0000

Oops: good catch, Chel. I totally missed Clancy’s point. Duh. So, yeah, Clancy, the “his” Derrida was my Derrida. And Collin, I’m with you: I’m more uncomfortable doing the defamiliarizing thing.

By: michelle

michelle — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 04:17:58 +0000

I thought Clancy was pointing out the “his” Derrida? I may have misread.

By: collin

collin — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 18:17:50 +0000

I must admit that my first thought upon reading this was to go back and check to see what I’d done in my talk. I find myself doing sort of the blog thing–first names for people I know, last names for people I don’t. And in the first segment of my talk, I stuck to this, citing Kathi Yancey and Steve Krause by first name, Carolyn Miller and Duncan Watts by last.

I think I’m actually more uncomfortable referring to people I know by last name than I am overfamiliarizing people I don’t. But I can see (easily) how it might play across gender and other lines as an implicit form of disrespect…

cgb

By: mike

mike — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 04:07:58 +0000

It was totally intentional, especially after Doug Hesse mentioned “pernicious binaries” in his keynote — I realized that setting up my presentation as a set of four binary oppositions might put some people off, so I figured I’d cop to being “someone who’s read his Derrida” and having deconstructionist intent and thereby signpost what I was doing so I wouldn’t get any of those “pernicious binaries” comments. Does that make sense?

(Should I have called him Jacques?)

By: Clancy

Clancy — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 21:23:50 +0000

Yeah, I was wondering why I was “Ratliff” all of a sudden. In light of this post, I thought I’d mention one thing to you; I’m guessing you’ll appreciate hearing it. At the beginning of your presentation (and this might have been intentional, so tell me if it was), you were talking about something — I forget what exactly — and you said, “and someone who has read his Derrida…” Anyway, not that big a deal, but coming from you especially, it sort of stuck in my mind.

By: michelle

michelle — Sat, 19 Mar 2005 18:48:33 +0000

Hmm, that’s interesting. I find myself waffling in how I think of myself. For a while I had that blog called just “Palmer” but I also commonly refer to myself as “Chel” which is a nickname used mostly by very close people IRL — seems odd that I’ve adopted it here at times but I do.

I don’t believe I inherently tend to think of people by first or last names dependent upon gender. But I’m going to think about this a little more. I’ve never considered it. Hmm.